“Hey there, can you jump on a quick call with me in about 10 minutes?”
This was a direct message sent on Slack to me by my Director (my boss’s boss) a couple weeks ago at 9:13 a.m. on a Thursday shortly after starting my day at my corporate job. This immediately started my mind racing, because there would be only three reasons for a Director to reach out to a lowly Engineer Spec III such as myself:
1) An HR complaint
2) A drug test
3) A layoff
Pretty much this was a lose-lose-lose because any of the above three would be wicked bad (even if you’re not on drugs, if your employer thinks that you may be, that’s really not good)! The next 10 minutes are probably the longest of my entire life, until I nervously joined the conference video call with my Director, Mike.
A little background, I have been working at Verizon for the past 22 years, it’s the only job that I’ve ever had since I got out of college in ’03. I worked my way up the ladder over the past two decades, continuously attaining positions of greater responsibility and difficulty. CX/UX, Telephone Number Inventory, Supervisory roles leading various teams, Compliance, UAT testing, and finally ending up in Production Support over internal systems along with the .com site and Mobile App.
“Steve, it’s been a pleasure working with you all these years but your position has been terminated due to the company’s focus on an AI future. Thank you for your service, and if you don’t return your laptop you’ll be charged for it.”
22 years ended in about 22 seconds.
My grandfather worked for Verizon when it was called NY Telephone after he got back from Iwo Jima and Guadalcanal in ’45. Both he and his grandson worked for the same company. He got a gold watch when he retired. I got a mild threat to return a laptop.
I was 24 years old when I got that job and I was driving a five-speed, two-tone, ‘95 Sebring hardtop coupe when I applied for it. A total “straight outta college” ride. When the Verizon interviewer asked why they should hire me, I told her that I had built the car that I arrived in, out of a junkyard. I saw a look of surprise wash over her face back in ’04 that I’ll never forget. I was offered the job shortly after.
So, my life has been completely turned upside down in the past 30 days. Bills don’t stop though, and I currently have the same amount of cars that we showcased here, which is way too many for somebody who is currently unemployed.
You have to move, shake and adjust. This means you need to take a hard look at your current skill set and figure out how to make money, wicked fast! Many of my current collection of 13 cars are for sale, and I have been doing some mobile mechanic work to keep the lights on.
Let’s Wrench: Somebody Else’s Chevy
One of my best friends is a guy named Chuck, whom I have referenced over the years in a few articles, (such as what I believe to be the best piece that I’ve ever written here). Chuck owns and runs a paint shop, and has been a lifesaver to me for almost 20 years; he has painted numerous cars for me. The guy has big heart and is always paying it forward for others; he’s kinda awesome.
Anyway, upon hearing that I was down and out, Chuck wanted to help. He said that he had a customer’s car up at his shop that had lost brakes, and thus smashed into something, damaging its front end. He was putting a new front end on it, and asked the owner what he was going to do about the brakes, the owner said he planned on towing the car out of Chuck’s shop and figuring out the brakes later.
Chuck suggested that he had a buddy named Steve who was a pretty decent wrench who would slap some new brakes on it for a couple hundred bucks.
The customer agreed, and I was hired!
Ok, Now What’s Wrong With This Thing?
The next task was figuring out why this guy lost brakes and smashed into something. What he hit was never disclosed so that remains a mystery. Popping the hood I noticed that the master cylinder was completely dry, which was a huge clue. It pointed us towards the fact that the brake fluid had to go somewhere, meaning that there was a leak!
A quick peek underneath the truck fully solved the mystery of the missing brake fluid, as the right rear tire was completely soaked with brake fluid on the inside. This means either a line or the caliper was leaking. Both are pretty easy to fix!
I smiled at my good fortune, knowing that I didn’t have to reverse bleed an ABS block or deal with other, more difficult brake scenarios (ex: Google SBC brake issues on the Mercedes sl500/r230 as a great example of a gross overcomplication of the already-solved-problem of automotive brakes).
Time to grab a C-clamp and some wrenches; let’s go!
Dude, You OK Man?
Removing the tire, and squaring-up to the hub, I noticed the leak was coming from the piston boot. Popping a new caliper on this thing should be a wicked cake job I thought to myself, figuring I’d have this done shortly.
What I saw next was the absolute worst brake repair scenario in my 31 years of wrenching.
Pulling the caliper off of the caliper bracket, the caliper piston fell apart in pieces in my hand! There was no rear pad whatsoever, and the inboard side of the rotor was worn to the cooling fins!
This means that the owner of that truck went completely through the inner pad, through the steel pad backing plate, through the inboard face of the rotor, and through the rotor cooling fins until the caliper piston disintegrated!
[Ed Note: Holy crap! -DT].
I’m not sure if that charts up to willful neglect, a legendary level of laziness, or just a complete disregard for both one’s own safety and the safety of others.
In fact, the reason the truck was at Chuck’s body shop was due to it smashing into something from not having brakes after the brake fluid escaped from the blown caliper piston seal!
This is a perfect example of kicking your own ass, needlessly. None of these events had to occur.
Let’s Wrench: Cheapassery To One’s Own Detriment
The saying “pennywise and pound foolish” comes to mind for the next phase of this repair. Chuck called the owner and told him that he needed new pads, since one had completely turned to dust, and also a new rotor.
The owner, in his (continued) lack of wisdom, cheapassery and dumbassery, chose to spend $34 on new pads, but did not want to replace the rotor!
The cooling fins on a rotor are there for a reason; to cool the rotor and prevent it from warping. Not having those fins (along with necessary thickness) guarantees this rotor will be warped badly in short order. Also, the thickness of the rotor is important so that the piston on the caliper doesn’t become overextended and blow out its seal! Wicked dumb.
[Ed Note: Look below at how thin the back part of the rotor is inboard of the cooling fins. This rotor is TOAST! -DT].
I told the owner that without replacing the rotor, he’s just going to overextend the piston in the new caliper and then be forced to buy another caliper. More importantly, he would be placing himself and others in the same danger yet again that ended up with his truck smashing its front end off.
Those words of alarm and of concern fell on deaf ears as he told me to put it back together with the badly worn rotor, bled the line, and put the wheel back on.
A Feeling Of Uneasiness
The owner of the truck paid Chuck for the new front end, and I got $120 for the caliper/pad replacement job for labor.
There’s something that I’ve been focusing on lately which I found is very helpful towards my well-being on multiple levels: a focus on the things that I can control.
I can’t control the move towards AI replacing white collar human workers, and how my former employer chooses to reduce payroll costs in hopes of improving their financials and “increasing shareholder value”. I didn’t think my life would change so drastically in 22 seconds, yet that event was out of my control.
I also could not control the very dangerous decisions this truck owner was making, and he’s the one who’s going to have to live with the potential negative outcomes of his decisions. I did my part in advising him of the danger he’s placing himself and others in, and by doing the repair to the best of my ability.
I can control reducing my car collection, doing my best to write wicked-fun wrenching adventure/shitbox rescue stories here for this awesome website, and saving as many broken cars as I can from the crusher. That sounds like a great plan to me. Time shoots forward and all you can do is to try your absolute best at whatever you are doing.
And you can control the distance between you and the car in front of you, with a focus on defensive driving, as this article is yet another reminder that due to the shape of many of the cars on the road around you, doing so could possibly save your life.
It’s good to be in control. We got this.
Until next time, my Autopian friends.
88mph into the future.
More SWG below in “Related Stories“!
All photos by Stephen Walter Gossin
- I Took On A Bad GM Design In A Hail-Mary Attempt To Fix My Friends Broken Suburban But It Was Too Little Too Late
- Sparking Joy And Plugs: How To Repurpose A 31-Year-Old Junk Buick
- What I Learned Restoring A $600 Dodge Ram With A Burned Up Transmission And Ruined Interior
- How I Bought A Broken Version Of My Dream Car For $300, Then Nursed It Back To Glory And Let It Free
- Proof That A $700 Car Saved From The Junkyard Can Make Someone As Happy As A New Lambo Can
- How I Saved My Buddys’ SUV After It Died At The Most Embarrassing Possible Time
- Rescuing A 75-Year-Old Car From An Older Car Enthusiast Reminded Me How Important Every Minute We Get Doing This Truly Is
- How I Rescued A Long-Neglected Citroen 2CV Covered With Bullet Holes
- Kumho Flew Me To The Mojave To See If Their New ‘R/T’ Tires Are As Good As They Claim
- How Learning Saxophone in 1990 Led Me To Rescue A Dead Xterra From A Bouncer’s Driveway
- This Toyota Tundra Was Unstoppable, And Not In A Good Way
- How To Re-Owner And Re-Purpose A Sad 2007 Exploder In One Week
I keep heat about mechanics that won’t put something back together because of liability, and thought that most of the time it was bogus, but when that brake fails and insurance companies get involved, that might come to bite you.
Also, won’t those cooling fins shred the new pad almost immediately.
My mechanic had a sign “the customer is usually wrong, if he was right I would be out of business because he would not have broken it”
You should insist they sign a liability waiver.
And I think you should video that one for the coroner.
I suggest the phrasing
I VOLUNTARILY ASSUME THE RISK OF SERIOUS INJURY OR DEATH
That should read VIOLENT INJURY OR DEATH.
My bad
Great write-up as always,hope the upside of all of this is that we see more of you around here at least. I know it’s probably easy to state this without being in your situation,but I would refuse to finish the job without that rotor being replaced. Also,as so often when reading this site, I am actually grateful to live in a country that requires an inspection every two years to keep a car on the road. Sorry for you losing the job, I wish you the best of luck.
My condolences on Verizon shafting you. If the AI fails, which it probably will, make them pay through the nose for your knowledge. So far AI is good at log analysis, but still requires humans to do something
In the meantime good luck with the mobile mechanic gig. I will confess one car in the fleet got almost that bad due to our daughter not noticing but I did the right thing and Rock Auto provided pads, rotors, and a caliper, while her brother provided the skills.
Typical Verizon.
I am reminded of the time shortly after the merger, they had an “all hands meeting” at one of their switch buildings, a breaker tripped and the batteries stopped charging, and since everyone was at the all hands meeting the batteries ran down and lower manhattan lost phone service. Like many systems that were never ever turned off, getting it up and running was something they had never done.
The all hands meeting was about the importance of reliably and uptime.
Many jokes tying that to New Jersey drivers’ knowledge of left turns persisted for years.
On a personal note when I got an ISDN line, the the management of the office that was in charge of taking out the POTS switch was trying to get their stats looking good by cutting my POTS service a month before the line was ready for ISDN.
The management by meeting metrics there is something to behold.
I have an Envoy XUV that ate up the backside of a rear rotor too. It didn’t make any weird noise until the remains of the pad fell out and one of the pistons (twin piston caliper) caught in the fins and locked the rear wheel from turning. It turns out that an ABS sensor had gone bad and the only caliper doing any real work was that one.
These are among the kinds of cars and drivers that make me wish we had a better public transit system
I think you meant “had a public transit system”.
since the dot com bubble burst, always keep the resume updated and always see what jobs are out there every so often so you can make any resume additions / learn new skills while you are employed.
Having said that, I’ve gotten a few jobs being able to describe my troubleshooting skills both in my job and outside in interviews.
R/justrolledintheshop, if you haven’t checked it out already
Sorry about your job woes, but I am really here for the brakes.
Believe me I am not Mr. Mamby Pamby don’t do that you could get sued guy. I think it is goofy that many shops won’t fit tires that are a size up or down in width or aspect ratio from factory spec, or that commercial brake jobs pretty much automatically include a rotor swap these days, but that rotor is beyond marginal/hundredths of an inch out of factory spec.
I don’t only think you could get sued, not likely, but possible enough to think about, I also think you could lose. In most states both you and the owner could conceivably be found negligent if the brakes fail causing damages to others.
I know it is a tough call and not easy to turn back work, but I think the best call would have been to walk away from that one.
Presume you were working as an independent contractor. Sorry, and I really am usually on the other side of these “oh my god the liability” comments, but in this case, “oh my god the liability!”.
The three hubs on the truck that were left untouched are far more likely to cause a liability issue for the owner than the one hub with the new pads and new caliper.
I love your writing and mission to keep crap cans on the road. BUT: Seriously though, this is asking for trouble. Ethical at least, if not legal. Half-ass the power windows or something, but anything safety critical – please don’t right. And if the customer won’t pay for it, just walk. I know you need the money, but still… Heck, I’ll pay you $120 to consult on some of my car’s issues just to prevent a serious safety issue like this.
Walmart and Discount Tire are scamming people by offering tire work, free in the case of Discount, only once you get there, “Oh, sorry, the tire is too old or the repair wouldn’t be safe blablabla”, while they try to stitch me up with $1000 set of tires.
I made arrangements to never go back, but there are good reasons the public doesn’t trust shops!
As a corporate job holder who has survived many reorgs, I have never taken my employment for granted. I just assume I am going to get canned at any moment.
That said, AI is utter horseshit.
Now for the deathtraps on the road, I live in a state with inspections and also road salt. I see very few terrifyingly decrepit cars on the road. When I lived in Georgia where’s there’s no inspection because freedom, I frequently saw terrifyingly decrepit cars on the road. My sharpest memory is the Ford Taurus with all four wheels rolling emergency donuts. On I-285, at 80mph.
I know there’s a contingent of inspection-haters who call it a government scam (sigh) but I wonder what the alternative is.
The alternative is fix your own damn car, in enlightened self interest.
We had inspections here for years, and the numbers proved how regressive it is.
You can’t make someone that can’t afford to repair their car, or is unwilling, fix it.
Mostly it caught people for engine codes no one could explain or fix.
Same reason punishing people for debt by taking driving licenses away is being done away with for multiple reasons, including losing your job and going to debtors prison doesn’t help collect money.
And there’s that pesky constitution again.
Some towns have been forced to have amnesty, as companies couldn’t get workers without cars to show up.
To this day however, Tennessee has NO due process at the DMV for revoking licenses.
I recently had purchase of my tags blocked by central DMV for arcane reasons!
Correct!
The state was refusing money!
Thanks that makes sense. Here in Maine, land of road salt, you have folks on fixed income out in the boonies who are real victims of failed inspections.
Maybe we need Medicare for car repairs.
I’m not in Maine woods boonies, but enough that transport is a mandatory medical expense, besides everything else.
But no one counts it.
It can count against me.
The rules require calling an ambulance for anything remotely urgent.
It’s Byzantine.
Condolences on the sudden joblessness, 22 years and not even given a fruit basket as a thanks for your years of service, empathy is just seen as a weakness in today’s business culture, sigh.
On a more positive note, 95 Sebring Coupe, yes! Brings back great memories of my 95 Sebring Coupe LX, 5speed, 7 grand redline 2.0 4cylinder, one year only emerald green color. My first and only brand new car purchase, 12 years and 112,000 trouble free miles, and I frequently enjoyed the 7grand redline!
Again, wishing you a successful reboot of your life and thank you for all the wonderful articles you’ve written for here!
I’ll chime in with what I was told 26 years ago when I was fired from the company I’d worked for over the previous fifteen years: “Good people will always land on their feet”. I ended up shunted into what turned out to be a far better career for me, and got to hear about the doofus who fired me getting fired himself. Your long tenure with Verizon, along with consistent upward mobility demonstrate that you have the smarts and the dedication to do well wherever you end up. A professor of mine used to do a lecture on the “random variables that impinge upon our lives” and help make them what they become. I hereby predict that somewhere down the road, you’ll see being laid off as one of these, and as a bump in the road if not a shove into a better future.
And Christ, that’s a really scary story regarding those brakes! Back when I was really strapped for cash, I used to let some repairs go longer than they should have but nothing like this!! And to think this idiot lost his brakes, smashed into something, and still doesn’t want to fix his brakes!!!
Surely a junkyard rotor would be better than what’s on now!
My father grew up working in telecom and retired from it. I never wanted to be like any of my parents. Funny how that works, I got a job at a startup VoIP company and have been there 15+ years working up the ranks from support to software development.
Recently there was a acquisition and I was scared like you that my career was over. They kept me for the moment and funny you said AI ..they gave me a paid AI license that I have been incorporating into work.
I work on all my fleet the ones that go on the road and the ones that don’t. Hell I spent 2 hours today on a freaking lawn tractor.
Wish you the best and look forward to reading more of your work!
I have to say AI really does help churn out code if you have the experience to babysit it, which is why entry level developer jobs are going to evaporate.
I will charitably believe that the owner of that truck was strapped for cash, and that’s why they declined such an inexpensive and important repair. But I’ve also met people (my ex’s dad comes to mind) who drive cars like that, despite having plenty of money to fix them.
My ex’s dad had a late 90s Plymouth Voyager that was in a constant state of disintegration. He’d buy nearly bald used tires and drive them down to the cords. As in, you could see all the cords on the tire. Not just a glimpse. Half his wheels were missing lug nuts, and he had a wheel almost come off on the highway. On more than one occasion he lost a control arm and was lucky there wasn’t anyone else on the road. Hell, he wouldn’t even fit a passenger side windshield wiper, so the arm just scraped a deep divot into the windshield. Once I watched him hold up a traffic light while he got out in traffic and reinflated a tire. He had been doing that for days, apparently. One of his used tires blew out catastrophically, on his wife’s car, and she almost went over the side of a bridge.
I thought he was an anomaly, but enough people have told me “I know someone like that” to make me give cars like that an even wider berth than I already do. I get not being able to afford something, that’s why I DIY’d some truly miserable jobs in my 20s. But I don’t get cosplaying as a poor person, and neglecting your car more than even the most cash strapped folks would. Not saying the owner of this truck is like that, but it did give me flashbacks to that old Plymouth Voyager.
There’s gonna be a day when the shitbags authorising these layoffs have the AIs come for them too, and my schadenfreude at them thinking, ‘my god, what have I done?’, will only be eclipsed by my schadenfreude at them being unable to do any subsequent AI- proof Real Work, because they are middle management bootlickers with no real skills and no human warmth or charisma.
So sorry, but not surprised, in today’s world. On the bright side, I hope we get to see more articles from you.
Nice article. Thanks. Anyway that values both a Jag and a Nash Metropolitan gets kudos!
Wow. I’m sorry. Good luck. I hope you find something even better.
That rotor is scary. And there are lots of people driving like that based on the number of YouTube “customer states” videos!
Sorry about the job. I got the boot after 14 years at a company that I had once loved. Bad feeling. That said, you’re a great writer. I always look forward to your articles. Hopefully we’ll be hearing from you more frequently.
I have a rotor like that on my ‘wall of shame’ in the garage, from my dad’s ’03 Focus. You’re exactly right, dad, it was making a strange noise! Sheesh.
This… this is not a good practice as a mechanic.
I understand the justification that you advised them of the issue, but you also sent a vehicle with a guaranteed brake failure out onto public roads.
Regardless of the legal liability, that is a vehicle that you released back into service that could potentially harm road users other than its operator. The owner of that truck already had an accident because of being neglectful, and you just put them back on the road with brakes bound to fail! Hopefully the only person that failure harms is the owner of the truck.
And while you may not technically be liable for that by the letter of the law, that does not protect you from being sued and the costs that come with that. Even if you do not need to retain an attorney, the time and stress it takes to deal with being involved i a lawsuit over stuff like that is INSANE. I have had to sit for an 8-hour deposition over an engine failure of an engine I never actually worked on; I was just the last person to touch the aircraft.
I get it; it is hard to pass up income and walk away from compensation for the labor time invested. But when you do repairs like this, you are doing yourself and the trade a great disservice.
I know this is a negative post, but vehicles like this out on the road are putting other road users at risk of life-changing injuries or even death; as a trade, we should be working to keep stuff like this from ever being on the road.
Brake failure was not “guaranteed” as you state above.
We didn’t even touch the driver’s/left rear hub, which means it was probably in similar condition to the rear right (the one that was serviced).
I wouldn’t say that putting a caliper and a set of pads on this guy’s hunting truck is doing a “disservice to the mechanic trade” nor a disservice to myself, since the truck was in better shape after we wrenched on it.
When you say: “We should be working to keep stuff like this from ever being on the road”, exactly what type of enforcement mechanisms as a for-hire day laborer could one do to either force this guy to fix every safety concern on his truck, or to attempt to “take it off the road” as you suggest?
You cannot seize someone else’s property and the local cops probably won’t do much more than write a ticket.
I understand that being involved in lengthy lawsuits is expensive, but you also have to keep perspective towards the mobile mechanic day laborer tradesman. Most of those guys aren’t going to show up with legal release forms and legally shielding paperwork to do plugs & wires or such on an older used vehicle.
The same risk applies to every repair that’s done on every vehicle, every day in this country. We’re a nation of litigation, and really what you’re suggesting is a release of legal liability in regards to small mobile mechanic jobs.
And that’s not a bad thing to have! I’m going to look into creating some type of legal document that releases liability for future for-hire jobs.
You don’t think the exposed cooling fins are going to grab that pad and tear it out just like it did the one that was in there before?
And I don’t expect any shop to seize a vehicle or call the cops or anything else like that; that is a ridiculous exaggeration of my stance of refusing the work. I never said to hold the truck hostage and force them to repair the truck.
What I would do, and would expect from any responsible professional, is to simply refuse to perform any repair other than the recommended caliper, pads, and rotor. If the customer refuses the repair, I simply reassemble it to its prior condition and politely ask them to take their business to a different shop that may be willing to cater to their standard.
However, if I believed it to be an issue of financial hardship and the customer needs the vehicle to survive life, I would probably just spring for a rotor so they could have a functioning and safe vehicle.
I also would have done the other side of the axle and at least checked the fronts, as that is accepted good practice for almost any professional.
And it does harm the trade; repairs like this, and articles bragging about them, are what create the perception of it being a legitimate repair and give customers the ammo to pressure other professionals to keep a lower standard.
Choices like this, in my opinion, are what separate what I like to call a ‘talented amateur’ from an actual professional. As a trade, we all have to work together to maintain standards and keep roads safe.
Required warning: not an attorney.
I’d suggest focus on the “against advice” part similar to what doctors are fond of asking you to sign.
You can ask for all sorts of things in a contract, but it only counts when a judge says it does. Signing away liability for something you would actually be responsible for, is unlikely anyway.
Like mounting cardboard pads.
There is, in theory, a mechanism to force a car off the road, but all you’d probably achieve is prove you tried.
from Veronica Mars
Do you know a good attorney?
“I know AN attorney!”
Not SWG’s call. He informed the owner. What’s he supposed to do, put a Club on it and call the cops?
What I expect from a professional is to refuse the work.
You just say no, return it to the condition it arrived in, have them sign an acknowledgement that the customer refused the recommended repair and that you consider the vehicle unsafe for use, and politely recommend that they find a new service provider more in line with their standards.
Although, honestly, if it were me and I felt the choice was the result of financial hardship, I would spring for a new rotor; wholesale on a rotor is quite cheap.
Not SWG’s call, again. He’s not acting as “a professional” here. He’s “a buddy” of the body shop guy.
> Chuck suggested that he had a buddy named Steve who was a pretty decent wrench who would slap some new brakes on it for a couple hundred bucks.
> The customer agreed, and I was hired!
Keep you head high and build on your wrenching skills Stephen. You’ll get through this. I’ve been laid off well over a dozen times in my IT career. It sucks but you’ll get through it. You have resources to draw in and people who support you.
What people do to their cars and how they neglect them is appalling.
Good story! I always enjoy your writing. Keeps me an Autopian.
Sorry about the job. That blows.
Some people are too cheap for their own good. Some people are too even cheaper for everyone else’s good.
And then there’s this cheapassery. What an idiot.
“When the Verizon interviewer asked why they should hire me”
I’ve long wanted to answer this question with an exasperated sigh, an eye roll and some version of:
Isn’t it obvious? Because everyone knows there’s a shortage of STEM workers, you need a STEM worker and I am a STEM worker. YOU’RE the ones who put out the ad remember? YOU need ME, capiche?
*leans back and crosses arms*
Now answer me this; why TF should I accept your offer?
Seriously though I hope you find better pastures soon if for anything to be in a position to tell Verizon to FO when they realize their mistake.
I had a similar question and replied because I very good at this as you should be able to tell from my CV. Now what does your firm offer that would compel me to work for you?
That got a snicker from the tech side of the interview team. The HR droid looked confused. I did get that job.
My hero!
Sorry about the job, that blows. Good luck moving forward.
Re: that rotor.
NO
FUCKING
WAY
I would never allow that. Go pull those new parts off that truck and give that money back. I will chip in to replace that money if I have to. It’s not safe, and that idiot already proved he does not care on so many levels. You don’t want someone dying because of your negligence, which if we are being honest, is what this is.
Full stop Stephen.
Not replacing a tentioner pulley will not cause someone to careen into another someone at speed. This is not that.
After reading your defense of this in other comments, I understand. But, I would have refused the job. I change my stance and instead offer to pay for a new rotor. I’m going to lose sleep over this tonight.
“Negligence” is not what this is.
We called the owner, texted photo evidence, wrote a published article, and fully advised that additional parts needed to be replaced in the near future and that the brakes were currently working.
The next step would have been calling the cops on a customer with working brakes, and telling them that there’s a chance to brakes would fail sometime in the future. If the cops played ball they would just write a faulty equipment ticket.
I could not seize the customers vehicle as it is their property.
You have to think also this was just one corner of a vehicle that has four corners. There are three other wheel hubs, and the brakes on those are probably in similar condition to the one hub that was serviced.
Forcing the owner to go through every brake component on the car is not something I had the power to do as a day laborer, temporary, for-hire, mobile mechanic. That truck probably needed front pads, front rotors, rear rotors and another caliper for the rear left/driver’s side.
I understand what you’re saying about putting safety first, and I’m with you. I really am. But you cannot force an owner such as this to address every safety concern on a vehicle such as this.
Even if I forced the guy to tow the truck out of there, he would have just started driving it as soon as it got back into his possession. There’s no enforcement mechanism to prevent him from driving it.
This is just an inherent risk of working on someone else’s car, and being a mechanic. Documenting what you did and advising to do the right thing are best practices.
He still has front brakes, right. Yeah, it’s fine. Also, that tire worn down thru the wear bars, has 20,000 miles until it hits the cords, then another 10,000 miles, then it’s time for new tires.
Brother, your responses seem to be willfully obtuse. You will be sued, and you will lose, if this vehicle does more harm. These folks are trying to warn you: you are kidding yourself about how the law works in practice; and in writing. Heed them. This risk is not worth the reward, by a large margin.
What SWG did is no different than if the owner had said “do not replace the rotor. I will have someone else do that work. Give me my property back.” The end result is the same.
What you’re arguing for is mandatory vehicle inspections, not something SWG has any authority to enforce.