I was riding around San Mateo yesterday, after which the area of my front right wheel started making a noise, which sounds like something between grinding and clanking. I have bad spindle bushings on both front wheels, but this is a different noise.

It gets much louder if I turn on 4wd (without hubs locked) but after a while will disappear. If I stay in 2wd it won't go away.

I'm stumped as to what this is.

 

what happened when you jacked the truck up and wobbled the wheel back and forth? sounds like you fubared your wheel bearings.
why not fix the spindle bearings? burn them up and you could be in deep doodoo

 

I plan to fix them.

I hope my wheel bearings are ok. I just inspected the one potentially in question a month ago and packed it and out was fine. I will fix the spindle bushings soon.

I wasn't doing anything rough, didn't even use 4wd. Quite surprised that anything like this came of it.

 

maybe a rock stuck between the backing plate and grinding on the rotor
i got my 4Runner for $400 after a family member had no frigging clue how to do brakes.
said family member was driving happily along when the right front wheel locked up causing this

I started the tear down and found this

bolts jammed between the caliper and rotor

a similar noise to what you described was heard before the tire locked up

 

Yepp.

​​​​​​That thar is a bolt right off of the disc shield. There's a trillion of them on there so I don't think I'll worry about it until I do spindle bushings.

Fortunately in my case it caused zero damage. Seems I caught it earlier.

Those little bolts are so easy to strip. I remember now that I partly stripped one of them, but it tightened still so I rolled with it. Lesson to be learned, if you strip one of those it will fall out.

 

glad you found it. In my case when the previous owner's husband replaced the rotors he didn't torque the 6 bolts all the way, 2 were gone, other 4 were barely there.

I take it the truck is a bit quieter..

 

It is.