Stupid Kia...

So I drive a 2002 Kia Rio. It's been a good car since I got it brand new back in September of 2002.

I like the car. It's small, and it rattles a little bit, but it works really well most of the time, gets good gas mileage, is fun to drive, and relatively cheap to own.

With that said, I was driving it home from work on Sunday, and all of the sudden my brake pedal went all the way to the floor. I'm fairly knowledgeable about cars and how they work, so I quickly pumped the brakes a few times and I got the pressure back in the system and was able to stop in a normal distance...but it was making some pretty strange sounds. So Cathy and I pulled into a parking lot to look at it, and when we were pulling in it sounded like something broke off of the car.

Upon inspection, it appeared that something had happened to the brake pad on the passenger side. It LOOKED like there wasn't any pad left...which would be impossible seeing as I put new pads on just last fall. So I limped the car to my parents house and borrowed their car to go home.

I went back to Lansing today to fix the problem. When I got the wheel off and the brake apart, I noticed that somehow...some way...the brake pad HAD actually fallen off of the car. There was no pad on the outer part of the caliper on the passenger side of the car. It was just the metal plate that mounts in the caliper that was left there. The ONLY thing that I can think of is that the pad somehow got damaged and broke, and then it flung itself out of the caliper while I was stopping when the pedal went all the way to the floor.

After a bit of a hassle getting everything all back together (I had to go to the store again to get a c-clamp to push the caliper piston back into place) I got everything taken care of and got the car home. I'm pretty sure that it also needs some new rotors, but those are on there with screws that will need a nice impact driver to get them off, so I don't have any way to easily get them off. I think I might end up having to pay the guy at work to do them sometime in the next few weeks or so.