problem car

hey

for the last few months the car's been on the road its been good. untill today. today with the e brake set. on a slight incline at a family members house after 30 min or so the car decided to roll away. backwards into the woods and into a drainage ditch on the side of the road.

bumper and quarter panels are bunged up, 1 bent rim, busted tire. Bent rear axle it looks like. pull it out of the hole, change a tire to the spare, check it over.. nothing with the brakes looks out of wack.

car has all it can do, throttled up to pull the rear axle on pavement. in reverse again throttled up it'll go backwards, clutch roll a foot from ~10mph down the same driveway.. rear calipers and brakes are a few months old. cabes are 2 years old.. anyone know why it stayed for 30 minuets or so then left? and the front alignment is out of 1/4 turn of the wheel.

oh, the car was totaled in july, i went and rebuilt it, now this..
just to salt my wounds.. 287K. so close to the 300K i want out of it.

thanks
-Rob

the rear axle toe is 5/16th in in the front, but the shocks are the same measurement as the other car. so it's got to be that spindle end bent forwards.

anyone know why the alignment would be off on the front axle?

Rob02f350 said:

hey... anyone know why it stayed for 30 minuets or so then left? ...

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I do not know the particulars of your situation, but a strong possibility on parking brakes not working on an incline is the situation where the rotor and pucks are hot, the parking is set, then as it cools (and you are not there to watch) the shrinking via cooling pucks and rotors no longer have sufficient clamping force to hold the car on the incline.

This is especially pronounced in cars whose rear parking disc brakes are not all that strong in the first place.

As I said, this is not a guarantee, just a possibility.

Cheers,

PH

Parking brake on my '04 wasn't working that great. I finally took them apart this summer, and found that the pad ears were basically frozen to the caliper. Cleaned it up and applied some brake grease to the ears--and got vastly better parking brake.

I suspect you need a full new alignment, maybe things got bounced out of place.

Sorry for the bum luck, that sucks.

I learned to test my handbrake on both my car and truck every once in a while, you need to get a feel for what kind of holding power it has for the given grade, then go a few more clicks past it. I've been surprised a few times where holding power had degraded since last test (on truck, car has been consistent).

And leave the tranny in gear.

Something is probably bent in front end hardware, but that might be ok and the 1/4 turn wheel going straight issue might actually be from the reare being bent, but that seems like alot. Need to get it on a lift and check iit out.

Powder Hound said:

I do not know the particulars of your situation, but a strong possibility on parking brakes not working on an incline is the situation where the rotor and pucks are hot, the parking is set, then as it cools (and you are not there to watch) the shrinking via cooling pucks and rotors no longer have sufficient clamping force to hold the car on the incline.

This is especially pronounced in cars whose rear parking disc brakes are not all that strong in the first place.

As I said, this is not a guarantee, just a possibility.

Cheers,

PH

Click to expand...

thats where i am at in thinking. after we got it out when i was trying to push it down the hill, it would hold. the car was driven 15-20 miles at highway speeds before being parked and it was in the low 30's.. so it's all very possible and the rotors weren't quite a shiny evenly worn across from the old calipers dragging and pads cutting them in so the surface area was not that large.

getting insulated up now to go replace the spindle, hub& bearing assemble's, rotor's the rear calipers are 2 months old along with pads 2 months old.. the rotors should have been done but money was a little scarce after the calipers and pads. lol

but im going to verify the ratcheting of the calipers, and reset them. i do have the special caliper re-winder pressing tool to do so.

Check the oe specs on the rear toe in. The three mkivs around here all have significant rear toe in.

yesterday sunday, tire ware house did my snows on spare rims, did the alignment. after being totaled out from front end damages the wheel was still straight and drove straight, but after it's roll down the hill it was off. 6* the rear axle with a new spindle and new wheel bearing/hub assembly was 1* total.. the mount bolts (4) above the bushing in the front looked like it shifted so i loosened them up and slid the axle back and tightened them back up. was going to take it back today to have it rechecked but worked to late. some point this week i hope to have it rechecked, but 1* total toe both tires cocked off to the drivers side shouldn't
ware tires to much?