Car Mechanics please respond.

In My Humble Opinion
1

I had the oddest thing happen to my car last night, I’ve never experienced it before and am now wondering if it’s normal.

I was driving my commuter (87 Ford Escort) when I started hearing scraping sounds. This eventually progressed to loud thumping when stepping on the brake. By the time I got home a loud scrunching sound was accompanying the thumping.

I get home an remove a wheel at a time. Eventually I get to the front drivers side wheel. The caliper has come loose. I pulled out my hex wrench reset the caliper and tightened it back up. It’s back to normal. But, I have never heard of this happening (In case you’re interested, I last changed the front brakes 1yr ago almost to the day, I bought new tires about two months ago).

Anybody see this before?

2

The bolts came loose cause they weren’t tightened hard enough.

Hey…these things happen.

3

No. I’ve never heard of a caliper coming loose before. It must have been that it wasn’t tightened properly in the first place.

You can consider putting a threadlocker on the bolts if you’re concerened of it happening again, but it shouldn’t be necessary. If you do, be sure to use the removable kind, like Loctite 242.