This could have been worse...

I was driving along the other night and noticed that as i pressed the brakes I was getting a slight grinding noise, I assumed it was mud/stones between caliper and wheel or the pad were getting low and made a mental note to check them in the morning.

On sunday morning I pulled the wheel off and found that one of the bolts which hold the o/s caliper to its carrier was snapped and the caliper was resting on the inside of the alloy wheel! It would be funny if it wasn't so serious! I never heard a bang as it let go, so maybe its been like that since i've had the car, the sheared bolt looks rusted up enough, and when you put caliper back to correct position it does stay there due to the rubber dirt gaurd on bolt.

I dont have tools to extract snapped bolt, so i'm thinking i'll be needing a new caliper and its carrier?
I'm also confued as to why theres no bolt head on the upper caliper (best seen on second from last pic above).

Ouch, that looks nasty. If the scoring on the rim is very deep it could substantially weaken it and it may pay to get it checked out by an alloy rim repair specialist or hunt round ebay for a matching one.

i throught these had alen key bolts

The top of the caliper is just a pin that the unit rotates on, not a bolt - they are infamous for sticking. When I was looking around the scrappies to replace mine, I went to three seperate ones, and each one had the top pin stuck and wouldn't come off the carrier.

The replacement is very easy, and there are plenty of the carrier/caliper units around. I got my replacement off e-bay.

as above mines a 2.0 j reg top pin is just a slider/pivot point. if the pin is sezed in the caliper could you not try drilling a small hole in the stud putting a screw in and pulling it out

Happy days re: no damage.

Pins are expensive enough from VX, £10/15 a pair. Scrappy is best bet for a replacement.