I'm sure all of us have let maintenance on our cars slide sometimes. I've had a fan belt that was so worn looked like it was made of woven vines break on the road, and I felt a little ashamed as I replaced it on the shoulder of the 5. But this worn brake rotor is just terrifying.
It's sent to us by an anonymous tipper, and it's said to be from the SUV owned by a "buddy's sister." Anonymity is best here. Look at that thing. If you'll recall, a brake rotor is usually built like a sort of disc sandwich, with the friction surface disc on one end, a bunch of cooling fins in the middle, and then the backing disc. This person managed to turn the entire front face of that rotor into heat and dust, and kept on going.
While we got this image emailed to us by the please-don't-tell-anyone-who-I-am tipster, it also appears over at Reddit, so feel free to enjoy the schadenfreude there, too.
Even those fins on the interior are almost worn down. How can you ignore something like this on brakes? There had to be enough noise and sparks coming out of this thing that it looked like a tiny blacksmith set up shop in the wheel well. And the vibrations from the fins grinding away against the brake caliper (maybe there were some pads left, for a while?) had to be horrific.
I know none of our regular readers would do anything like this, but please, people, check your loved ones' brakes and show them this picture. Or better, show them videos of cars exploding in fireballs. Whatever it takes.
Yikes.