Rattly noise coming from my Cavelier- possiblley the brakes

Please accept my apologies if this sounds bleeding obvious but why not take the front passenger side wheel off and have a look at the brakes?

New pads have a backing plate and roughly 10mm[1] of friction material. If there is little or no friction material on the backing plate, the brakes make a nasty grinding noise when you brake and it means the pads are goosed, check the front drivers side and see if it is the same or similar. A big imbalance between the passenger and drivers side pads or the 2 pads in each caliper means there's probably something wrong with the calipers.

Cavaliers IIRC have anti-rattle springs attatched to the front calipers, if part of this arrangement has come adrift then it could make some sort of funny noise, although I would think it would be more likely to happen when you were not braking. Worth checking anyway.

Without seeing and hearing the noise in operation it's very difficult to diagnose a fault from just a brief description. Hopefully I've given you something to be going on with though.

First thing to check is whether the wheel nuts are all on and tight, if you have a wheel trim check that is tight.

Brakes do not commonly make 'tin can' type noises, exhausts and loose bits of trim etc. do, especially catalytic converters and silencers breaking up.

mrcheerful

Er yeah I had the brakes checked at a national company and they told me it was the brake pads, something about not coming out of the mold properly when they were made and having rough edge - hence causing the rattling. But it rattles when when Im not braking! And the stupid bloke checked the wrong side after I told him twice it was the other side! Someone else did sugest that it was a anti rattling thingy on the brakes to prevent it from ratting but i thought they were taking the micky! Is there anywhere in Plymouth (uk) that i could take it to get it checked without anyone trying to see me off?

Well which is it? You said there was a rattle when you were slowing down and now you're saying there's no rattle when you're slowing down.

Due to the forces that brakes are subject to when they have to stop a tonne and a half of car, it's quite difficult for them to rattle. When they are not stopping a car they can move about a bit more. If the car rattles when you apply the brakes its possibly got nothing to do with the brakes.

Yes, yes there is.