WARNING!!!! A friend of mine is a MOT tester and owns a 59 plate 40k mile 500 1.2, a couple of weeks ago he jumped in his car to go to work, put his foot on the brake (stationary!) and felt the pedal go to the floor! Upon investigation his front right flexible brake hose had snapped where the steel ferrule connects to the rubber hose! The problem is in the design and positioning of the hose, there is a rubber sleeve that covers the bottom of the metal union and the top of the rubber hose, this sits nearly against the bracket that attaches to the rigid brake line, this rubber sleeve then collects moisture and dirt within the wheelarch and allows it to start corroding the steel components of the hose. I have checked my car (59 Plate 1.3 Multijet)and it does have excessive corrosion on the unions (both sides). As he is a MOT tester he has advised VOSA who are sending a senior engineer to look at his removed parts with a view to issuing a recall and possibly a redesign, the rubber sleeve is circular and sits over the hexagonal union, with the obvious mismatch of shapes,moisture retention is inevitable. Hopefully the recall will happen sooner than later!

Whether or not VOSA decide to take any action, and just how long that action would take to implement, is anyone's guess. Seeing as many folk will never take a wheel off their own vehicle to check anything, then it's a good warning to put out. Probably taking the car to a very well known High Street brake and tyre place for a 'free brake check', might be worth the effort. I'm surprised however, that if this is indeed a problem, that it hasn't surfaced before, after all, 8 years is a long time for a problem such as this one, to come to the fore.

For those who have any other concerns about any other Fiat 500 recalls, then here is a link:

https://www.dft.gov.uk/vosa/apps/recalls/searches/search.asp

You do have to look for the problem, it involves cutting down the sleeve and peeling it back, but for the hose to fail as it did on my friends car is not good at all!

Might have to have a look at our 59 plate car, it's had some serious corrosion related issues with components brake drums shocks etc

www.helperformance.com
And never think about those hoses again for the life of the car...

Not to be funny but one failure does not equal a recall.

My 2009 failed on exactly this today on both front brake ferrules. No other advisories. Pleased this was picked up at an MOT and didn’t fail on the motorway! Now fixed and a clean MOT

A quick Google suggests that this is quite a common problem on older 500s, worth flagging up I think.

Muz R said:

My 2009 failed on exactly this today on both front brake ferrules. No other advisories. Pleased this was picked up at an MOT and didn’t fail on the motorway! Now fixed and a clean MOT

A quick Google suggests that this is quite a common problem on older 500s, worth flagging up I think.

Click to expand...

This is common on most cars above a certain age

The design of hoses on. A500 is little different to any other car

Wow I posted re this almost 7 years ago, it still has the original hoses on and I'd forgotten about it, I brake very gently, so the issue might not present itself until a real emergency braking event, though the mot tester gives them a really hard pump

All quite worrying guys! is there any info as to if Fiat changed/updated these parts at any point on later cars??

I found this interesting before it turned into a binfest!

Worrying that an MOT inspector would not fail a car on brakes as he can’t dismantle to check. I’m with the guy who failed them because he thought they might so went further than he was supposed to.

See posts 13 to 15