^ I never thought about the sitting with the brakes applied but it actually makes a lot of sense.

 

The noise was from warped rotors. I now have new rotors and the noise is gone and they feel great.

Not only were both of the six month old rotors warped, but none of the lug nuts on the front tires were torqued down at all. Also, one of the lug nuts was completely loose. I'm not too happy with my "mechanic" right now.

 

Glad to see you got everything fixed though. And yeah, I'd be trying to find another mechanic if I were you.

 

This is late and hardly relevant at this point, but.. Sometimes rotors can come straight from the factory warped. This happened to me the last time I swapped the fronts on the WRX. There was an extremely minor vibration after the change, then a few days later it felt like I was rockin warped rotors again.

My advice, find yourself a new mechanic AND a parts supplier.

 

Rotors can come warped from a parts store if they were improperly stored. Rotors must be stored upright and never flat and stacked one on top of another, especially on a cold concrete floor. Nothing you could have done to know if that was the case, but some smaller parts suppliers aren't aware of this.

 

Ha, I didn't notice that until you pointed it out, nice guess! I'm probably going to start taking my car to the guy who put the new rotors on. He's been a friend for a couple of years and he manages a tire/battery pace but they do brakes/inspections/etc. too. I like it because I know he won't screw me over and I can watch him do the work on the car.

This is a possibility, but I didn't notice the creaking sound until around June and the rotors were put on in February. That is a good point to keep in mind though.