The Iggblog

Yes, my Legacy went leper on me last night. I was driving along at around 75 on the highway. It was pretty packed and I had just gotten out of work. All the sudden I hear a loud BANG! like I’d just hit something pretty solid. I hit the brakes and my foot just sinks to the floor. I pump it a couple times and the feeling comes back. the brakes are really shaky. I figured I had a flat and the shakiness was due to that. so I pull over and whip my piece (flashlight) out. I looked at each wheel. everything was fine. full pressure in all of them. So I took off again, relieved that I’d survived the hit apparently without damage. I wondered what made my foot go to the floor with the brakes, but whatever. chalk it up to gremlins.

I noticed my brakes were still real shaky, and they would grind a little as I came to a stop. “that’s odd,” I thought. I figured I should take a closer look at my brakes to make sure nothing was damaged. By this time I could tell the shakies and grinding was coming from the rear. I got out and inspected teh rear brakes. right rear… fine. I get to teh left rear. disc looks fine. caliper looks fine. hmm.. something isn’t right with this caliper. It looks like something’s missing… I can see too much…. …

A brake pad had fallen out. yeah. fallen out. and my caliper fingers were rubbing on the disc. it took a moment for this idea to sink in. a brake pad… fell out… huh?? isn’t the caliper supposed to… I don’t know.. um… kinda hold onto those pad thingies? It occured to me now how this had happened.

When I had first gotten the car, one of the first things I did was to check out my sweet vented rear brakes these things are famous for. I noticed some tool back in the day had replaced them with solid rears. prolly cause you can’t find the vented disks anywhere and they’re about 3 times as expensive. A friend of mine was looking on and said the calipers were prolly different too since solid disks are thinner. I remember thinking to myself “damn, those calipers look stock tho…” Well guess what. they were stock. I’ve known for a while that my rear pads are low. I get the godaweful noise when I back up that lets me know they are low. Apparently when they got low enough, they had enough clearance to fall right out of the caliper. so some poor soul got a 75mph backing plate in the radiator/windshield. and those things are pretty solid .

luckily the disc was not damaged yet. I’d been using engine braking and soft e-braking since I started hearing grinding. I got some pads at a local mom’n’pop auto store. 23 bucks. no big thing. threw them in last night. the pads on Subarus are so easy to change, I didn’t even get halfway done with my beer before I was finished .

so yeah. my car’s a leper.

-IggDawg