Hi all,

Can I have your thoughts on this please?

Just, hypothetically, suppose you take your '98 Fiat Marea Weekend TD100 into the garage for a few jobs - followed by MOT - and it has new front brakes (pads and discs) fitted and rear suspension coils and a couple of new front tyres... and everything is fine, MOT no problem. Driving home, you think the brakes feel a little 'soft', but you take care to brake gently knowing new pads can take a while to bed in and after a few (20) miles all seems well.
Next day you go out (with partner driving) and suddenly, 60+ miles since the MOT, the brakes fail. First at a roundabout the car takes forever to stop then subsequently the brakes feel very spongy and the car pulls heavily to the left. Pumping the brake pedal helps a little but not much.

SO... do you think the garage has been incompetent, or the garage has been careless, or that sometimes these things happen or.....?

Take it back to the garage. Sounds like its either got air or water in the fluid.
Get back to us if they are no help. It usually concentrates their mind if you mention the forum and bad publicity.

Turned out to be a split in the rear brake pipe - unconnected to the work carried out last week on the front brakes - but obviously something that shouldn't have got through the MOT (which is carried out by a different garage). They replaced both sides pipes at the back free of charge.

I sincerely hope that's the last time I have to see a garage for a while anyway

Well at least no one was hurt, could of been serious.

I wonder if this is a common problem - I had a front pipe split on my Marea a couple of weeks ago. 60k miles & 8 years old, but I've run older cars to higher mileages & never had one fail before.

Ian

Had a rusty one last year. Changed on MOT.