Scary moment

[a91_formula]

I was driving home in my 88 GT Fiero on Wednesday night. It was a stretch of two lane highway with a 50mph limit and I was doing 50mph, when the steering started shimmying and vibrating, followed by an almighty bang. I went to brake but the pedal went to the floor and the dash light came on.
I shifted to neutral and steered onto the verge as the traffic slowed for an intersection, where I called my husband. The positioning of the car when he got there was a bit precarious but to make matters worse a quick inspection of front brakes revealed nothing on the drivers side but the heavy traffic on the passenger side meant he couldn't safely investigate on the road side.
We called the recovery company and after a few hours got the Fiero home on a transporter.
Yesterday morning was the first opportunity my husband had to pull the wheel off and see what was going on. We both got a real shock that we still haven't got over.
We have no idea what caused this.

I would like to add that it was only 10 months ago we replaced all the pads, discs, pad pins and the slider pins were removed, cleaned and regreased.

Now the next question is - what do I replace them with? Do I just go for remanufactured or consider an upgrade? She's now off the road for however long this takes - I have bought another little runaround to get me to and from work on a daily basis - boy I'm gonna miss driving my GT!!!!

[Cunning Plan]

Woaa!

Good you and the car are OK.

Did you have no brakes at all? You should have had at least the stopping power of the opposite circuit?

[Incursus]

[Roadkill]

It's shocking to see how shite the quality of metal used in such critical parts of an automobile is !

That sixth picture is tells it.

It could've simply been a flaw in the casting - looking at how clean the break is it looks to be a sudden failure and not a gradual loss of integrity.

Difficult to say much more from the pictures, though.

[HardRockCamaro]

Are they original or ching chong pattern?

[a91_formula]

HardRock- They are original calipers ;)

Cunning Plan, I didnt have any brakes at all. From what has been said on other forums this is normal in this circumstance because "when the caliper housing broke, there was no resistance on the caliper piston as the part of the caliper with the piston broke away from the main caliper body which was still attached to the knuckle.

Each time the brake pedal was pushed the fluid takes the path of least resistance- in this case it was easier to push the piston out on the broken caliper than to push out the pistons which were squeezing the rotors. The dual circuit system was designed to maintain pressure in the event of a (minor) fluid leak and doesn't have a chance against this kind of catastrophic failure."