What's that sound?

So, I rechecked the front camber this morning.  Pretty close to -2.75 on each side.  I checked it in the driveway rather than moving into the garage where the floor is more level, so I didn't get too accurate.  But it's definitely closer than it was from side to side.  I tweaked the front toe to get back to zero... ended up with 1/16" toe in.  Cool.

Then I went to meet my boss for lunch.  On the way over there, I started hearing a scraping noise.  Sounded like something scraping against the brake rotor slightly.  I was thinking maybe it was just the new pads at first, then I started thinking maybe I'd put a shim or clip in wrong.  Either way, it didn't seem too bad, and I needed to get where I was going, so I just kept driving.  The noise got more consistent after a while, especially when rolling to a stop... curiously, the noise didn't change when I applied brake pressure.  So, I stopped and took a quick look to see if something was hanging down and rubbing against the caliper or something was wedged between a dust shield or something.  Nothing.

On the way home I kept alert to the issue.  It was still there.  Curiouser, at a couple points, I smelled hot rubber.  I figured maybe  one of the tires was rubbing on turns or something and let that go.  The last oddity that I noticed was that under high cornering load, the front tires DO rub a little bit.  So, I got home and let the car cool for a couple hours before looking at it.

Jacked up the LF, spun the wheel... light scraping noise, but really nothing more than typical brake pad dragging noise.  I pulled the wheel off anyway and looked at everything.  Nothing seems out of place there.  Go to the other side and jack it up... hmmm... the wheel does NOT want to spin easily.  WTF?  Pulled the wheel off and immediately saw the problem.  The floating collar that holds the bracket for the swaybar end link had come loose and was allowing the top of the end link to contact the tire!  Fortunately, the point it was contacting is where the tire's rim protector bar is, so the material that was removed (not much... but it sure made a sticky mess in the wheelwell!) is a non-issue.

Fixed that problem, and before One Lap, once I'm sure I have all the ride height adjustments where I want them, I'm going to hit all of thse coilover locking rings with some loctite.  Gave the brake rotor a spin and found the FIRST noise that I heard today.  The light scraping noise.  When I was pulling on things trying to set the camber on the RF yesterday, I guess I bent the heat shield a little bit.  Fixed that, too.

Now, all is well.  Took it out for a test run, and bedded in the brake pads while I was at it.

Ready for some autocross action Sunday!