Brake Clunk

Replaced front pads and front rotors the other day. Now I get an intermittant "clunk" which generally comes when braking in reverse (once or twice in forward - but rarely), and usually only on the first reverse after the Jeep has been started after being parked.

Thoughts?

Do your front knuckles have grooves like these?:


The pads will clunk/click as they shift in these grooves. I've noticed a lot of brake pad manufacturers finally became enlightened to this issue and are now including little pieces of metal that slide over the knuckle rails to give the pad a "new" flat surface to glide along.

All four of our XJs have had the groove problem to varying degrees, and my '96 got so bad that a pad got caught and wouldn't release. The caught pad dragged, overheated, and the front would pull in the opposite direction when stopping. I should have known something was wrong when the clunking stopped! To fix it, I cleaned up the groove with a grinder (like a dentist fixing a cavity), filled it with weld, and buffed it down with a flapper wheel. After two years it's showing a little wear, but still effective.

Your picture shows a groove that's not too bad yet, and may be salvageable with some careful flapper wheel polishing. Good luck...