bent caliper bracket or spindle

[intro]

so... my wife took her 2008 mazda 3 to the local mechanic to get a new front driver-side tire because it had a bubble in it. presumably from hitting a pothole. during the tire installation the mechanic notices that her brakes are almost completely gone. car has roughly 75k on it. so they replace all 4 rotors and put on new pads. the front driver-side pad was non-existent. however after the fix my wife notices that car makes noise, and to her it felt like it was breaking on its own. she returns the car to the mechanic and after some "tug-of-war" the mechanic agrees to look at the car again. a day later the mechanic calls and says that things are not looking good. he says that either the caliper bracket or the spindle is bent (again front, driver-side) and only part of the pad is pushing against the rotor when breaking. what's worse the edge of the new pad is constantly rubbing against the rotor and that's where the noise is coming from.

i am now left with a dilemma: did the mechanic bend this during the install (he told my wife that the rotor shattered when they were replacing it) or was this bent before (possibly by a pothole which caused a bubble in the tire) and the my wife didn't notice it because the brake pad wore out unevenly?

any input would be welcomed.

thanks

 

[concept]

I can't imagine how anyone can bend a caliper bracket or spindle, during a simple brake job. Years ago, a mechanic cause a caliper to distort because of excessive heat from a torch to remove a bolt, but that was a rare event in my life. Still, that pothole to which you referred must have been wide and deep. It is unlikely that both the caliper bracket and spindle are damaged, so in the least, I'd ask the mechanic to determine which one needs to be replaced, vs just blindly replacing both.

 

[intro]

thanks for the response.

the mechanic is looking into it further and will call me on monday to confirm if it is the spindle or the bracket. for now, his suspicion is that it is a spindle.

i wan't to believe that they know what they are doing because the shop has been in business for a long time. however, one of the mechanics was telling my wife how difficult it was to remove the rotor and that they had to hammer it out, and it finally shattered. while this proves nothing i also wonder how can my wife hit a pothole so badly to bend the spindle and not blow out the tire?!

 

[concept]

It is often required to impact a rotor to remove it if its hub hole has excessive rust on the contact surface. Normally, when a mechanic has to do this, the calipers had already been moved out of the way, so the only thing besides the rotor that could be damaged is the spindle, but that would take very high impact forces, at least in theory. Shattering the rotor may qualify as evidence, now that I think about it.