As I was arriving at work and walking into the shop, tech Justin yelled, "Grab your camera, you'll like this !" Ok.

This customer complained of hearing a grinding noise from the rear of the van while driving, and wanted us to inspect for damage. I don't know the specific details. But the interesting thing about this was that the noise was not present when the vehicle arrived, and Justin didn't hear anything unusual on his road test. A grinding noise often signals a braking concern. So Justin decided to do a brake inspection first.

The brake pads and rotors seemed normal. But what's wrong with the caliper bracket ?

Oh my ! Something ground away at the brake caliper bracket, thus explaining the noise the customer was hearing.

Whatever got caught in between the wheel and caliper bracket caused a good bit of damage to the caliper bracket. Justin was, understandably, confused by this. Then he looked at the wheel.

Am I seeing what I think I'm seeing ?

The wheel is showing visible damage at a location pretty close to the position of the lug nuts.

Like I said earlier, I don't know what actually happened. But it sure looks like this wheel was installed backwards ! When mounted backwards, the raised part of the wheel would face inward and make contact with the caliper bracket.

The only thing we can come up with is that at some point, this van encountered a flat tire and had a wheel installed backwards. The resulting horrendous noises let the driver/passengers know that something was wrong, and the tire was then flipped around to the correct orientation. The van was brought to us to see how bad the damage was.

Justin ended up replacing the caliper bracket.