I cannot figure out this problem. Please help!

It's a 1998 Jeep Cherokee, I6/4.0L, AX-15 Manual Transmission, Dana front, Chry 8.25 rear, 50,000 miles.

When I drive it hard-- which can mean running through the gears pretty rough, and come to a complete stop pretty abruptly right after doing it, I get a noise coming from the front end.

It feels on the gas peddle, floorboard, etc. like I'm running over little sticks. It makes kind of a slapping noise. Now it only does this with NO brake applied. If I apply the brakes, it squeels and will stop doing the slapping.

It doesn't do this all the time, and I've counted out the 4wd system by playing with it when it happens. I believe it's happening on the passenger side, but the mechanic who rode with me when I made it happen thought it was coming more from the middle. The passenger side rotor has heat spots and only has ~3500 on it.

Any ideas? This is driving me nuts and we have Rausch coming up and I'm going to be doing a lot of highway driving and it's really annoying and embarassing when riding by people and it's slapping away.

On another forum they asked: "Possibly be a warped rotor and you hear the caliper slapping back and forth in the bracket."

My answer:
This is my feeling too.

Here's the deal though. I bought this XJ about two months ago, and when I bought it, they charged me $400 for the brake work and the battery they had to do for inspection. This is Win Kelly Chevrolet in Clarksville. So I've been taking it back to them bitching because I had to pay for it in the first place and I don't feel like buying another rotor and doing it myself. It's under warranty and I've taken it there twice now and they want me to drop it off for three or four days so they can "tear into it."

Mike, I see on the caliper a spot on the passenger side (Suprise), where it looks like the caliper is slapping back and forth off its mounts because the whole thing is black, but about 2mm on each side of it, there's shiny steel.

i had similar symptoms once before, turned out that one of the disc pads was not seated properly...and would walk around within the caliper.

By seated properly i mean the notch on the pad was not setting on the slider.

HTH..