Jay's been around the block a time or two. Hang around long enough, and you'll see some interesting stuff.
I used to have an absolutely EPIC series of photographs from a car that was towed into my shop. I took them with an instant camera, and at some point in the last quarter-century, I seem to have parted company with them.
The vehicle was towed in because it would no longer move under it's own power. I normally give a vehicle a pretty good inspection in addition do diagnosing the concern that it was presented for, especially if it's one that I've never seen before. It belonged to a female real-estate agent, and that along with a few other red flags, piqued my interest.
The first thing I noticed when pushing it inside, was that it had the original tires on the rear, at nearly 50,000 miles, and they were so square from lack of rotation, that the car actually went "bump-bump-bump" as we were pushing it. I've played this game before, so I knew to glove-up before touching the front tires, and my suspicions were sound- the inside shoulders of the used-mis-matched front tires were both worn THROUGH the tire's casing, with plenty of little steel "traction fibers" hanging out, that would have gaffed me if I had been bare-handed. She had basically just driven it until the tires would pop, and then had whatever cheap used tires were laying around put on. The current fronts looked like they were about to give birth to little baby tires, bulging like they were 40 months pregnant.
Then I noticed that the brake pedal went straight to the floor, and you could yank the E-brake just about into the back seat. Upon removing the wheels, I found that she had driven it until the front brakes went metal-to-metal...and then kept driving it, until the front brake pad backing plates and the front brake rotors began thinning each other down, pushing a paper-thin layer of iron down over the internal vent ribs in the front brake rotors. It eventually spit the backing plates out the front, and then began grinding down the front brake caliper PISTONS. They eventually wore down to the point that they cocked and lost all fluid pressure. So to stop the car, she began using the E-brake (and probably jerking the automatic transmission down into the lower gears for engine compression braking). Eventually, she wore through the friction material and backing plates, and the rear brakes fell apart and got all balled-up inside the rear brake drums, at one point jamming the adjuster rod right through the backing plate, bending the backing plate on one side at an odd angle. The wheel cylinders fell apart of course, with the pistons/cups/springs laying in the bottom along with the rest of the mess. The original rear wheel bearing cotter pins were untouched- I was the first person to EVER inspect her rear brakes.
She then began using the park pawl to stop the car (after jerking the transmission down into first gear). Eventually the park pawl failed, and the transmission failed shortly afterwards, for reasons that I cannot recall at this time. I remember the transmission fluid smelled like DEATH, the pan still had the factory "cherry" in it, and if you've ever heard an automatic transmission guy talk about "panning for gold", this was like panning for hard parts- it was pretty freekin' grim. The head gasket and rear main were gone, the original spark plugs had become "innies", the original fuel filter was plugged solid, the original oil filter and engine oil drain plug were still painted to the engine from when it left the assembly line, the dipstick came out encased with a full-length round black plug of tar, the OEM air filter looked like a chia pet, the fan belts were cracked and about as hard as diamonds, the steering rack was leaking, the inner tie rod ends were about to fall apart, the struts and shocks made that cool "whooshing" sound when bouncing on them, and the coolant was mud. The car was only four years old, coming up on 50K miles, and it was a TOTAL loss. It was AWESOME. She just wanted me to patch it up with used parts, just to make it move under it's own power, and didn't care about the tires or brakes. I told her to come get it before I started charging storage on it- I didn't need her business that bad, and I felt that I had a moral responsiblity to other motorists out there, to not be responsible in any way for putting her back on the road. I charged her an hour's D-time, and told her not to let the door hit her in the ass on the way out.
