Av8tr
Member
Looking for some advice.
I took my 2005 C6 in to have the parking brake checked. It wasn't holding on any sort of slope (which includes my driveway). My driveway is about a 30-degree slope.
I took it to a shop to have it checked out.
The shop did not properly repair my Vette, and caused further damage which caused me to have a loss of control on the highway. Looking to understand what happened and how to explain it to the shop. This shop has a great reputation with more than one of my neighbors.
My 2005 Corvette parking brake was not holding so I took it to a local shop that was highly recommended. Upon inspection, they determined that the parking brake was fine and just needed to be tightened. They looked at the pads and said they were fine with plenty of meat and did not need to be replaced. But I needed all 4 brake pads and rotors replaced. So I spent $1400 doing all four wheels.
They adjusted the parking brake to tighten it (this will be important later) and had some trouble with it and eventually adjusted it as far as they could get it to go.
$1400 later, with new pads and rotors I take my car home to find the parking brake still does not work properly. And the brakes are mushy. When I step on the pedal, the brake pedal is not as responsive as it was previously. It goes further down before the brakes start applying to slow the car. Lets call it not as aggressive as they were previously.
I called the shop and they said I needed to drive the car a bit to wear off some of the coating on the brake rotors and get the pads to settle in and the brakes will work better at that point. They are not dangerous at this point just not grabbing as much as I am used to so I accepted this explanation.
On the part of the parking brake, the shop said 1st, maybe the brake won’t hold on a hill. When I explained it had done so previously, they changed the story to I needed to adjust the brake by pulling the handle 3 times in succession to reset the cable. And give that a try, then bring it back it in if it did not work.
I had to go out of town and it sat for a week. When I got back into town, I had an important meeting a little over an hour away from my home and decided to use that as the test drive. Shortly after getting on the highway, I noticed the tire pressure was way overfilled based on the dash TPS display. The correct tire pressure should be 30 PSI and the TPS display was showing 40, but this was after 5 minutes of highway driving. So I pulled over and checked with a manual pressure gauge. Sure enough, all four tires said 40 PSI. So I let enough air out to equalize to the proper PSI and went on my way.
Not 20 minutes later, while driving down the highway, I started to hear a rumble from the rear of my car. I at first thought it was the highway pavement. But then, suddenly, I lost control of the car and swerved pretty aggressively to the right. I was able to avoid an accident and ended up on the side of the highway on the median. Managed to miss every other car and didn’t do any physical damage to the car or anything else.
Upon getting out of the car to survey the damage, I immediately noticed smoke coming from the back right side of the car and found heavy smoke coming from the wheel, but not sure from where specifically.
Here is a video of the wheel smoking right after I got out of the car.
Video of the wheel
(Note the white of the rotor hub. That is not the normal color. This thing got hot. I was doing 70 when the wheel locked up.)
I called the first repair shop and they told me it was likely a failed caliper or a collapsed brake line. They told me not to drive the car and get it repaired.
I found a local place that was willing to fit me in and got towed to the shop.
After investigating, they found the original repair had over-tightened the parking brake and it caused the failure. Brake lines and calipers were fine.
How it was explained to me was that by tightening the parking brake settings, they pushed the pads too far out, where they were in constant contact with the rotor. Eventually, the friction heated up the pads, which expanded and locked the wheel and caused the pad on one side to delaminate and come completely apart in the rotor, damaging the rotor in the process. It completely cleaned the rotor on that side. I have the parts and pieces of the brake pad that were remaining in the rotor.
Bottom rotor is the left side with meat on the pad and the top one is the one from the wheel that seized up.
I contacted the original repair shop and told them the story, and they questioned that explanation from the second repair as my original complaint was that the parking brake was not holding so how could it cause the accident. They claim my pads were too old and just failed and its not their fault.
The 2nd shop was able to replace the parking brake pads but the accident also destroyed the parking brake actuator and it wasn’t something they could fix till after the holidays, they could not even get the part in before next week. They disabled the parking brake, which allowed me to drive it home. They do not want to get in the middle of any legal dispute so they were very careful how they documented it so no help likely from them if I need to seek legal remedy.
$600 later, my parking brake repair is now over $2000 and still not fixed. And the part may not be available anymore. But everyone is ok. No one got hurt and my car has no physical damage beyond the mechanical issues. And fortunately I was wearing my brown pants when this happened.
So now I need to get the parking brake actuator fixed here locally. As someone else I know suggested the rotor needs to be replaced (it's a week old), and possibly due to the heat my entire hub may be damaged. The rotor crown actually changed color and is much whiter than the others. The dealers here in town won't touch this. I called all three. One won't work on a car this old (nothing over 10 years), another says the part doesn't exist on this model, and the last one can't get the part new so they won't work on it with an aftermarket part.
So which shop makes sense? What is the real story of what happened here? How do I deal with the original shop if they caused the damage? I know I will likely need a mechanic to explain it.
I took my 2005 C6 in to have the parking brake checked. It wasn't holding on any sort of slope (which includes my driveway). My driveway is about a 30-degree slope.
I took it to a shop to have it checked out.
The shop did not properly repair my Vette, and caused further damage which caused me to have a loss of control on the highway. Looking to understand what happened and how to explain it to the shop. This shop has a great reputation with more than one of my neighbors.
My 2005 Corvette parking brake was not holding so I took it to a local shop that was highly recommended. Upon inspection, they determined that the parking brake was fine and just needed to be tightened. They looked at the pads and said they were fine with plenty of meat and did not need to be replaced. But I needed all 4 brake pads and rotors replaced. So I spent $1400 doing all four wheels.
They adjusted the parking brake to tighten it (this will be important later) and had some trouble with it and eventually adjusted it as far as they could get it to go.
$1400 later, with new pads and rotors I take my car home to find the parking brake still does not work properly. And the brakes are mushy. When I step on the pedal, the brake pedal is not as responsive as it was previously. It goes further down before the brakes start applying to slow the car. Lets call it not as aggressive as they were previously.
I called the shop and they said I needed to drive the car a bit to wear off some of the coating on the brake rotors and get the pads to settle in and the brakes will work better at that point. They are not dangerous at this point just not grabbing as much as I am used to so I accepted this explanation.
On the part of the parking brake, the shop said 1st, maybe the brake won’t hold on a hill. When I explained it had done so previously, they changed the story to I needed to adjust the brake by pulling the handle 3 times in succession to reset the cable. And give that a try, then bring it back it in if it did not work.
I had to go out of town and it sat for a week. When I got back into town, I had an important meeting a little over an hour away from my home and decided to use that as the test drive. Shortly after getting on the highway, I noticed the tire pressure was way overfilled based on the dash TPS display. The correct tire pressure should be 30 PSI and the TPS display was showing 40, but this was after 5 minutes of highway driving. So I pulled over and checked with a manual pressure gauge. Sure enough, all four tires said 40 PSI. So I let enough air out to equalize to the proper PSI and went on my way.
Not 20 minutes later, while driving down the highway, I started to hear a rumble from the rear of my car. I at first thought it was the highway pavement. But then, suddenly, I lost control of the car and swerved pretty aggressively to the right. I was able to avoid an accident and ended up on the side of the highway on the median. Managed to miss every other car and didn’t do any physical damage to the car or anything else.
Upon getting out of the car to survey the damage, I immediately noticed smoke coming from the back right side of the car and found heavy smoke coming from the wheel, but not sure from where specifically.
Here is a video of the wheel smoking right after I got out of the car.
Video of the wheel
(Note the white of the rotor hub. That is not the normal color. This thing got hot. I was doing 70 when the wheel locked up.)
I called the first repair shop and they told me it was likely a failed caliper or a collapsed brake line. They told me not to drive the car and get it repaired.
I found a local place that was willing to fit me in and got towed to the shop.
After investigating, they found the original repair had over-tightened the parking brake and it caused the failure. Brake lines and calipers were fine.
How it was explained to me was that by tightening the parking brake settings, they pushed the pads too far out, where they were in constant contact with the rotor. Eventually, the friction heated up the pads, which expanded and locked the wheel and caused the pad on one side to delaminate and come completely apart in the rotor, damaging the rotor in the process. It completely cleaned the rotor on that side. I have the parts and pieces of the brake pad that were remaining in the rotor.
Bottom rotor is the left side with meat on the pad and the top one is the one from the wheel that seized up.
I contacted the original repair shop and told them the story, and they questioned that explanation from the second repair as my original complaint was that the parking brake was not holding so how could it cause the accident. They claim my pads were too old and just failed and its not their fault.
The 2nd shop was able to replace the parking brake pads but the accident also destroyed the parking brake actuator and it wasn’t something they could fix till after the holidays, they could not even get the part in before next week. They disabled the parking brake, which allowed me to drive it home. They do not want to get in the middle of any legal dispute so they were very careful how they documented it so no help likely from them if I need to seek legal remedy.
$600 later, my parking brake repair is now over $2000 and still not fixed. And the part may not be available anymore. But everyone is ok. No one got hurt and my car has no physical damage beyond the mechanical issues. And fortunately I was wearing my brown pants when this happened.
So now I need to get the parking brake actuator fixed here locally. As someone else I know suggested the rotor needs to be replaced (it's a week old), and possibly due to the heat my entire hub may be damaged. The rotor crown actually changed color and is much whiter than the others. The dealers here in town won't touch this. I called all three. One won't work on a car this old (nothing over 10 years), another says the part doesn't exist on this model, and the last one can't get the part new so they won't work on it with an aftermarket part.
So which shop makes sense? What is the real story of what happened here? How do I deal with the original shop if they caused the damage? I know I will likely need a mechanic to explain it.
