We recently had a customer call in saying his brakes felt odd. We put the car into the rolling road brake tester to see what was happening. What we found was that only the nearside front brake and offside rear brake was working. This happens when there is a failure in the brake system which is split in two, connected diagonally. The fault was identified as shown in the photo below.
The caliper was laid on the bottom suspension arm, held in place by its hydraulic hose. The bolts that held the caliper in place had unscrewed themselves and fallen out. The caliper had somehow come away from the brake pads supported in the frame visible in the background of the photo. The brake caliper piston had been pumped out by the owner using the brakes and is laid somewhere beside the road. This allowed the fluid inside the system to escape and that half of the system to fail completely.
The car had new brake pads fitted immediately before the owner bought the car 12 months previously.