I once saw a picture of a Range Rover caliper where the pads friction material was worn away, then the metal back plate has worn right through and the caliper piston had come through the backplate and was hitting the disc itself. Driver compalined of 'squeeling noise'.
I find it incredible that people can be so stupid to let things get to that stage!!!!
One of my neighbours used to repair cars and he had one in almost as bad.
The worn pad had almost 'turned' the disc off the centre so was in danger of ending up just a free-turning ring.
I would take that 1mm disc and play it on my record player and see if the grooves in the disc had recorded the sound of the farmer swearing as he hit the muck pile!
a customer came to me on saturday complaining of bad brakes which had got worse since he heard a bang, it was a 91 pajero
on removal of the wheel (which took ten minutes as it was corroded in situ) i found there to be remains of one brake backplate but the other had worn so bad it had jumped out
as it was a single piston anvil type it was now using the caliper body as a brake pad
That reminds me of a woman that came in one day with an elderly honda accord making the most horrendous metallic screechine noise and she said the car is very hard to drive as if something was stuck on,we revealed that the pads on both front calipers had fallen out and jammed themselves between the caliper body and the disc!
It never ceases to surprise me how many people ignore maintainance etc on their cars until they have a catastrophic failure.
I can't believe discs can get that thin before breaking.
I've known Ralph for years and he doesn't live very far away so it's shameful that I haven't visited recently. I've had a scan around the rest of his website and it sounds like that cup of tea we meant to organise last year needs to happen. There are lots of new daft projects on there to catch up on. Thanks for posting the link - very good reminder.
My brother in law is a builder/groundwork contractor and had a Nissan pickup. He came home from a day at work and just as he parked on the drive his brake pedal went to the floor. The piston came clean out of his front right calliper as the pad and disk were non-existent, he had just come 40 miles down the motorway at 60+mph. He now looks at things occasionally to see if they need attention.
Some good bits on his site Malc, like the idea of the GT double-six
Bought a bike, had the caliper/pad thing, the piston punched through what pad was left and caliper/piston/pad were basically welded together...
Not the same sort of thing, but another bike purchase, PO had "mended" a leaky union on the back brake with silicon and a rubber glove cable tied round... For a sec it looked like a human hand trapped in the swingarm
Brought an old feista years ago and one of the discs was like that, tin foil springs to mind, was obviously hardly anything left of the pads. Funny enough the drivers side disc and pad was fine. Seems like whoever done the brakes on it last forgot to do one side. I really cant believe how anyone could of been driving the car around like it was.