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First time for me was on my old 122 (second car I ever owned). The pins retaining the front pads fell out, and they rattled out and started scraping against the inside of the wheel. I decided the sound was worth checking out, went to slow down and pull over - oops! Not too exciting, on a straight road, nothing ahead, I was able to just slow down and pull over without getting too excited.
Next time I'd been hearing a light scraping/squealing sound from the front end of my winter beater Bronco II. Looked a time or two, didn't really see anything. Then one hot summer day I was approaching a sharp left hand curve in the road and went to apply the brakes, and nothing (split circuit brakes too - huh). Post mortem diagnosis on that one was a sticking RF caliper that got hot enough to boil the fluid, which must have blown a steam bubble back through the lines and emptied out the master cylinder somehow, since the rears didn't work either.
And the PV, this one was purely my fault. I'd done a complete overhaul on the brakes (car had sat for 17 years in a carport prior to me getting it). New wheel cylinders all the way around, new shoes, new master cylinder rebuild kit, new rear drums. Got it all together, all worked great, no problems for about a week. then I was zipping along on an overpass, in the left turn lane, approaching a line of cars stopped in my lane waiting to turn left. Put the brakes on a little more firmly, got some braking, then bam, pedal lost pressure and went to the floor. Pumped, nothing. Cars coming up fast! Hauled on the handbrake, and something popped loose under the car and it loosely pulled all the way up. Luckily, there were no cars in the lane to the right of me (going straight), so I was able to (in the nick of time) swerve hard right and avoid the cars, sailed through the intersection (I honestly don't recall if the light was red or green, but I didn't really have a choice in the matter at that point) then just geared down, down, down, pulled over in a parking lot and tried to settle my heart rate and adrenaline level back down. Post mortem on that was that the little slotted pushrod on the rear brakes that goes between the shoe and wheel cylinder piston must have been just sitting on one of the 'ears'. Worked fine for a while, but the first time I pushed a little harder than normal, the ear bent over and popped off the shoe. Then the wheel cylinder piston popped out and released all the pressure. After that, i sort of learned to slow down my wrenching, do it in shorter batches, be a lot more careful. I'd done all the brakes in one sitting, including an epic battle with the rear drums, and I'd simply gotten sloppy on the last one I did, being tired, stressed out (really struggled with those drums), and wanting to be done.
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'63 PV544 rat rod, '93 Classic #1141 245 (now w/16V turbo)
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