Talk about sloppy freeking workmanship.......

mrvette

Phantom of the Opera
Joined
Mar 24, 2008
Messages
15,207
Location
NE Florida
DAMN lucky a friend's son didn't die.....'04 Sebring, 4 dr....bought it a few months ago for him to drive V6 auto, nothing special....

so they go to do a brake pad job on the front.....the idiots did not tighten the caliper mounting bolts tight/secure/whatever!!! and so within a couple days, the top bolt of the forward mounted caliper comes out and is no where, when I pulled the wheel off....

the kid got hit on driver's side, tore shit out of the mag wheel and the chrome plastic hub cap....the caliper managed to swing forward on the upper edge and of course hit the weld joints of the spokes on the wheel....weakening and destroying it.....and I not sure but the kid looses control at slo speed, and so gets hit by a lady on the left front wheel....neatly snapping the spindle just a inch below the upper ball joint..... it's flat bedded here by same guy with his wife's Escort with the piston, and the Chapparal boat....his kid.....so here it's in my driveway....

the fender is destroyed....the spindle, the hub, the 1/2 shaft, the headlight assy is total junk, the plastic liners can be saved....

the crazy part is....the car is not all THAT bad a shape for what happened....

when a spindle snaps...you know something major happened.....

I wonder if that brake caliper didn't set up some harmonic or other that caught the upper section of that spindle, and broke it clean off, it looks like something like that happened, as opposed to a stress/bent/snap thing....

teach kids to tighten their caliper bolts....jeebus H Christ man.....

:hissyfit::crylol::censored::surrender:
 
well, the good news is that he's ok (at least you didn't say anything about anybody getting injured).... with a loose caliper he could have been in a serious accident and could have ended up in hospital or worse....

about a year ago I found a loose caliper bolt on my Mustang, noticed it because it made a clunking noise when hitting the brakes "stop/go" (push the pedal, let go, push, let go) ... first I thought maybe it's a ball joint, I'm glad I took the wheel off and had a closer look....
 
It would be hard to enforce but there should be some kinda law that laymen did not work on brakes. As an auto parts man for many years and frequenter of auto wreckers it used to scare me when I saw absolute morons buying brake parts .......
 
It would be hard to enforce but there should be some kinda law that laymen did not work on brakes. As an auto parts man for many years and frequenter of auto wreckers it used to scare me when I saw absolute morons buying brake parts .......

In all honesty, I never thought about it, but then again I have done all my brakes since the 4 wheel DRUM daze yet....so a simple caliper is nothing....

but I tighten the damn bolts....

the top one was missing caliper into the wheel, the bottom one was finger loose....went to spin out easy....

:hissyfit::surrender::censored:
 
I have seen a 4 year mechanic do it to his own car when he put on a brake upgrade kit!!! almost wrecked a borrowed mag wheel of the bosses. Its what can happen when you work after hours with a brew on the side with mates helping.:bomb::devil:
 
I have seen a 4 year mechanic do it to his own car when he put on a brake upgrade kit!!! almost wrecked a borrowed mag wheel of the bosses. Its what can happen when you work after hours with a brew on the side with mates helping.:bomb::devil:

I do wonder, a few brews too many and who knows WTF....

:surrender::eek:
 
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