Rattle from rear on bumpy road

[randallamoore]

My daughter's Protege5 makes a rattle, or clunking, sound on bumps in the road. I've jacked it up and checked everything, but no suspension parts appear to be the culprit. I tried driving the bumpy road with my foot on the brakes, and the rattle stops. I did a brake job on the rear a couple of months ago. Since I don't drive the car, I don't know how long after the brake job the rattle started.

There's a fair amount of play in the left rear caliper. With the wheel off, I can rattle it around, and it sounds like the source of the noise. I tightened the parking brake adjuster. The caliper is properly bolted to the axle (spindle?). I'm accustomed to the pads staying tight to the rotor, but there doesn't seem to be anything that keeps them tight.

I put on new pads and rotors, and just greased the calipers. I don't recall getting any new anti-rattle clips with the pads, so I just reused the existing clips.

Does anyone have experience with rattles from the caliper?

 

[TheSwapnessMonster]

There's an adjuster for the pads on the inboard side of the caliper. You have to take off a 13 or 14mm bolt and then turn the adjuster with an allen key. The service manual specifies that you tighten the pads to just touching the rotor and then loosen by 1/3 of a turn. http://www.floptical.net/mazda/service_web/04-11.PDF

Another common source of clunks is the front sway bar.

 

[P5freek]

Could be trailing arms. Mine only made noises on bumps.

 

[mtnbiker26]

Double check the sway-bar endlinks. They usually get noisy around 75k miles. The female part of the ball joint is lined with a plastic and it wears. Whack the sway-bar with a rubber mallet near the endlinks and see if it sounds solid or if it clunks. Mine were pretty rusted so I had to cut them out with a grinder and replace the nuts. Lots of endlink threads on here if you need more info.