I recently bought a sports car as a race track project car, and started modifying it. I’m somewhat mechanically inclined and alot of my friends and neighbours think of me of some wizard who can make their lawn mower run. Despite of this I havn’t really worked on cars before. I’ve changed oil and wheels and easy stuff, but now I’m changing suspension, doing wheel alignments, fitting exhaust, roll bar etc. and sometimes it feels like I’m taking on too much of a challenge.
Two weeks ago I went to the tracks and my car worked out great except for the brakes fading badly due to excessive wear – the brake pads clearly wasn’t up for the task. I didn’t change the pads before the race and didn’t really know how old they were. So I ordered new pads and went to work.
I struggled for two days on my driveway with rusty nuts, broken threads, oil everywhere and air in the brakelines. Finally I was done – but they were screeching badly when I drove. “It’s a ridge of rust from the old pads” someone told me. I went for runs in high speeds braking hard to remove the rust. But it still sounded bad. It sounded almost as if the pads were running out, metal to metal! The car was also pulling the the other side from the sound, as if it didn’t grip as well on the left side.
Suddenly it hit me. Maybe I’ve made a mistake. A photo with flash turned on from under the car showed me the bitter truth – I had fitted one of the brake pads inside out, with the metal plate to the rotor instead of other way around. It took aproximatly 3 minutes to remove the wheel, loosen one bolt and flip side of the pad. Thankfully the pad looked okey, aswell as the rotor. Suddenly the brakes worked great. No scraping, no screeching.
I’m so ashamed. I’m working on the single most important part for my own security while driving, and I made a stupid dangerous mistake which I should’ve checked twice before driving the car at all. I’m a father of three small children and I’ve been out there running 125MPH, braking like a maniac while the car pulls hard to the right trying to wear down some rust that doesn’t exist. Basically risking my life and potentially others on the road.
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