****! No brakes!

[ash59fifty-uk]

https://www.facebook.com/ScottTuningFork/videos/855769447882065/

Reminds me of a school friend in his car when his brakes failed, going down a hill at a silly speed. He has a lisp, I still remember the sheer panic/laughter to this day "Thit, no brakeths!"

 

[gaz_l]

Some 30 odd years ago I had a Mini 1000. It wasn't fast, and consequently I drove it flat out, all the time. Braking was for wusses.

One day I was was heading into work, did the 90 degree left/right combination into the car park without lifting as normal, pointed the car at my spot and finally jumped on the anchors.

At this point the pedal went down to the floor, the car having split a brake line somewhere along the journey, and I proceeded to mount the kerb and impact/bounce out of the thankfully dense hedge in front of my spot.

All this was observed by one of my colleagues who was walking across the the car park. I was greeted with a cheery "Morning.. nice parking!" when I fell out of the door, slightly stunned.

Fortunately the car wasn't damaged much (some light scratches) and neither was the hedge so we all lived to fight another day. I must admit I wish we'd have had CCTV at the time, it would have been an easy £250 on "You've been framed".

Cheers,

Gaz

 

[ash59fifty-uk]

Some 30 odd years ago...

Sounds like you got a lucky escape with that hedge in place, as I was reading your post I was picturing you going through the building into your bosses lap

One situation I hope I never find myself in!

 

[Doodle]

Years ago I did have a caliper bolt shear on the bike. Felt a "thunk" from the front end and looked down to see the caliper pivoting up around the remaining bolt, clear of the disc.

Thankfully I found a gap in the traffic...christ knows how.

 

[MancMike]

A couple of years ago I had an RX8 that didn't tell me the pads needed changing, and they didn't squeal with that strip of metal they have, as it didn't.

The first I knew of the state of the pads on the front was when I was getting a grinding noise! I couldn't tell what it was at first, but when I figured it out I went straight to ECP for new discs and pads.

On the way back, ready to fit them, I came to a long sweeping right hand downhill curve, I touched the brake and it pretty much fell off my foot, went straight to the ground and the pad backing got fired out of the calliper, hit my **** under the car and bounced off up the road.

I obviously shat myself, then shifted to first gear and used the clutch as a brake, along with the hand brake. Luckily there wasn't a car for some distance in front or behind (as there'd have been no brake lights on).

I managed to pull over safely, and went to retrieve the pad, burnt the skin off my fingers on it, but kept it anyway as a weird souvenir.

When I got back, I inspected the calliper, and it would have turned out that if I'd have just pumped the brake pedal more, it'd have taken up the ~3mm gap and put the piston on the disc, giving me pressure again.

 

[TheFoX]

I had a sticky piston on the left calliper of my Vauxhall Chevette, which started pulling the car to the left. Eventually, it stopped pulling to the left, and I carried on home. As I approached the next junction, I applied the brakes only to realise that it wasn't pulling to the left because it had boiled the brake fluid. It was the quickest handbrake stop ever, and isn't it amazing how useless drum brakes actually are.

I actually hurt my arm that day pulling the handbrake up with such force to try and stop a brakeless Chevette.

 

[zipdip]

My no brakes was in the firms vauxhall van,it had been into the main dealers for a service,and as I was hanging around doing nothing,a art form I had mastered with honors,
so I had to walk and get the van,the main dealers was on a busy road I signed for the van and drove to the exit and there was no traffic so I turned towards the lights which had just changed red, foot on brake ,no brakes,I went sailing over the lights,and ended up the pavement wedged between a lamp post and a garden wall,I was not very happy when the garage said they had let the boy change the brake fluid and he had put engine oil in as it looked the same.

 

[MancMike]

I'm curious as to why engine oil would cause total brake failure. I know brake fluid isn't slippery like engine oil, it feels quite grippy on your fingers, but surely still has the same hydraulic incompressibility as brake fluid?

 

[markjay]

Several possible explanations... including oil contaminating the brake pads during the bleeding process, rubber seals in the cylinder or callipers succumbing to the engine oil due to incompatible chemical or mechanical characteristics, thick oil not responding quick enough through narrow passages (hydraulic fluids are usually low-viscosity), or compressing too much... but above all, if the the young lad mistook engine oil for brake fluid... one wonders what else might he have gotten wrong...?

 

[st13phil]

Some 30 odd years ago I had a Mini 1000.

That story brought back memories.

In the early 80's my then girlfriend (who later became my ex-wife ) had a 998cc Mini Clubman. I can't for the life of me remember exactly where in south London this incident happened, but we were coming down a stonking great hill at the bottom of which was a T-Junction with a main road. I'd braked a couple of times coming down the hill with no ill effects (or so I thought), but as we approached the junction, I braked again and no matter how hard I pressed on the pedal, the retardation effect became less

I swear I nearly pushed the back off the driver's seat, I was standing on the pedal so hard. I wrenched on the handbrake too, all to very little effect. With no options left, I positioned the car for a high-speed left turn onto the main road, hoping to find a gap in the traffic which miraculously appeared at the right moment.

That day I discovered two important facts:

1. Drum brakes can suffer monumental brake fade
2. Adrenaline is brown in colour

 

[zipdip]

Several possible explanations... including oil contaminating the brake pads during the bleeding process, rubber seals in the cylinder or callipers succumbing to the engine oil due to incompatible chemical or mechanical characteristics, thick oil not responding quick enough through narrow passages (hydraulic fluids are usually low-viscosity), or compressing too much... but above all, if the the young lad mistook engine oil for brake fluid... one wonders what else might he have gotten wrong...?

That was my thoughts markjay just what else has been wrongly done,I picked up a loan van and tried the brake twice while exiting the garage just to make sure,they had to renew the brake system on the van,and I made certain I did not go and collect it,and just like Phil with his experience of brake failure I just kept my foot hard down on the brake peddle,going across that junction it was only after I crossed it and then bumped up the curb that I grabbed the hand brake bit too late scraped the wing on the garden wall but did not hit the light,of course everybody laughed their silly heads off back at work

 

[Benzowner]

Why didn't the driver use the gearbox to slow the car down, he seemed happy enough to get the car up to speed using the gears.

 

[TheFoX]

My no brakes was in the firms vauxhall van,it had been into the main dealers for a service,and as I was hanging around doing nothing,a art form I had mastered with honors,
so I had to walk and get the van,the main dealers was on a busy road I signed for the van and drove to the exit and there was no traffic so I turned towards the lights which had just changed red, foot on brake ,no brakes,I went sailing over the lights,and ended up the pavement wedged between a lamp post and a garden wall,I was not very happy when the garage said they had let the boy change the brake fluid and he had put engine oil in as it looked the same.

So, a Franchise Dealer, who are known to charge more for servicing than independent dealers, allows an untrained wally to put engine oil in to a brake fluid reservoir, while charging you the Earth for doing the service.

Why do we pay top Dollar for a qualified service that is actually being performed by a Del Trotter? 'Anyway, the oil light doesn't stay on now'. 'You mean you went to the trouble of changing the oil?'. 'No, I removed the bulb'.

Mind you, when I had my old Triumph Sprint service by Raffs, they were repairing a 2 stroke moped owned by a young lady that had seized up. Turns out that her brother had been refilling the 2 stroke oil tank with Castrol GTX, and it was way too thick for the injector nozzle.

Just goes to show that for every person with common sense, there are five others who are senseless. I can't believe just how many idiots there are in our community, and how many of them manage to get top jobs, such as Members of Parliament, or local councillors.

 

[llewe]

Approaching a stationary line of cars at a set of temporary traffic lights in my Hillman Imp sometime in the mid '80s I had the pedal to the floor moment, rapid downshifting , handbrake yanking and slewing from side to side as much as I could to try to scrub off speed- I stopped about 2 inches from the car in front! Examination of brakes revealed a burst wheel cylinder -it seemed to have a fracture/ weakness in it from manufacturing. That was the last time I used cheap unbranded parts!

 

[TheFoX]

When a neighbour pulled in behind my mother's parked car, stopping when the two cars collided, my mother confronted the neighbour who responded with, 'That's what bumpers are for!'. Cheeky bitch...

Mind you, when I borrowed my girlfriend's Fiesta to pop down to the Chip shop, I discovered she had no brakes either. When I told her that her brakes weren't working, she smiled and said, 'Why do you think I sit on the tail of the car in front? It's so that I can use them to slow down.'.

I am amazed at how many people have no idea of how a car works, or their duty of care to other road users. I mean, when I am changing tyres at my local tyre centre because they are down to 3mm of tread, and another customer is being told that their tyres are so bad that you can see the cord, it makes me wonder whether these people actually bother with their vehicles. The two worst incidents I recall are of a C350 owner running on slicks (yep, no tread), and a BMW Mini Cooper running on slicks (again no tread). Both cars were modern vehicles with rubber that was shocking.

Accidents do happen, but how many accidents are down to outright neglect? There's one thing when a brake line fails, but another when the reason the car won't stop is because there is no brake lining left.

 

[markjay]

I have seen a local police car (Polizia Municipale) -
Fiat Panda - in the south of Italy - on slicks....

 

[Doodle]

When a neighbour pulled in behind my mother's parked car, stopping when the two cars collided, my mother confronted the neighbour who responded with, 'That's what bumpers are for!'. Cheeky bitch...

People never seem to do that when you have winch bumpers front and rear.

Well, more than once anyway