Eye Spy: “Recent” brake job?

Clare Bartlett, co-owner of Master Mechanic in Peterborough, Ont., recently failed this Ford Escape for a safety certificate due to improper brakes.

The customer was purchasing the vehicle and was told the brakes had been done recently! There was barely 7mm left on the pads. Ball joints and control arm bushings were falling out of it.

“I can’t recall what else. I remember telling the kid that it was a rat and walk away,” he wrote. “But he had already bought it so he said he was taking it in for scrap money.”