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Feel free to have a laugh at this!!

So when I bought my car the rear brakes needed doing and I knew what they cost (except for a nice 35% off code the misses found). So I ordered the parts and on Saturday I started pulling them apart. Starting with the near side I as it was the noisy one I expected to find a very worn inner pad.... but I didn't find that..... I didn't find a pad at all! The outer one was there and had a few mm of material but the inner pad was nowhere to be seen. Which meant the piston was pushing straight onto the disc. As you can probably imagine the piston looks very unhealthy, which was backed up when I tried to rewind it and it is seized completely solid. I even broke 2 rewind tools attempting to turn it back in. Sheared them off completely. Oddly the piston still pushes out when you push the pedal, but it will not rewind.

Needless to say a new pair of rear calipers are on their way.....

UPDATE: See post 10....

Oh my, that is rather unfortunate. You're lucky that the piston didn't get wedged and cause a lockup on that wheel - I've seen it happen to someone before.

MeTsU wrote: ↑

Tue May 01, 2018 1:26 pm

Oh my, that is rather unfortunate. You're lucky that the piston didn't get wedged and cause a lockup on that wheel - I've seen it happen to someone before.

Or came out completely and started losing brake fluid every time you press brakes

Who puts a caliper on without pads?! Weird.

Must’ve been driving metal on metal for some time to ware the pad thin enough to fall out, didn’t you hear it?

V!per wrote: ↑

Tue May 01, 2018 10:09 pm

MeTsU wrote: ↑

Tue May 01, 2018 1:26 pm

Oh my, that is rather unfortunate. You're lucky that the piston didn't get wedged and cause a lockup on that wheel - I've seen it happen to someone before.

Or came out completely and started losing brake fluid every time you press brakes

Horrific thought.

Wow on a car this fast and heavy it’s not ideal. I’m surprised it wasn’t causing more issues than a little noise.

Was the handbrake not slack?

I should explain I have only just bought the car and barely driven it (because I knew the braked needed doing). It must have fallen out some time ago judging by the state of the piston. The short distance I had driven it there was a heavy grinding noise similar to metal on metal with a pad in there.... So nothing to indicate what was really going on.
Handbrake worked fine. It wouldn't be slack unless the piston had reached the extreme of its travel. At which point (as pointed out above) there would be greater issues than the handbrake not working.... Plus it would still work on one side. Thankfully the outer pad had enough material left to keep the piston doing its job. Fingers crossed the calipers turn up today and I go fit them and go for a spin this evening!!!

Caliper replaced and new discs and pads. And all is running good. The only issue I ran into was the clip that holds the handbrake cable in was fused to the bracket.... So I had to remove the bracket from the old caliper and bolt it onto the new one. I will invest in some new handbrake cables at some point and then I can replace the bracket again with the new cable. Until then all works as it should.

UPDATE!!! Side 2 was the same with the missing inner pad..... Which means it wasn't a freak accident it was done on purpose. My guess is that the previous owner attempted to replace the rear brakes, found the calipers were seized and the only way he could put them back together was to leave the pads out and sell it on quick. Have to say in all my years I have bought a lot of cars. Mostly ones with issues I can fix. But whenever I have bought a car with noisy brakes I have never thought to check the inner pads are actually there.... Lesson learnt for the future I guess....

Anyway I sent the previous owner a message expressing my displeasure, not expecting to hear from him. But he instantly called me and offered money. Sign of guilt if you ask me. He has covered the cost of new calipers so for now no harm done except a bit of frustration. Car is going to a specialist next week to make sure his p**s poor repairs haven't been done anywhere else on the car.