2001 Outback H6 Brakes

[cboggess]

Ok folks - here is a long story that will help others if they run into this problem. My wife has a 2001 LL Bean Outback H6. I called up Porterfield to get some R4S pads and new front rotors. They shipped me the pads and some nice plain faced Brembo rotors. Pads were a perfect match for the stock ones. The rotors were not. While the 2001 is listed as having 10.9" rotors, and that is what Porterfield shipped me when I went to put them on the car they were too small. Upon further investigation I discovered that her 2001 Outback has 2002 brakes. This means that the front rotors are 11.6" (I confirmed this by measuring).

Normally this would not be a problem, but in this case it is. Here's why - every single parts place I visited on Saturday had the 10.9" rotors. Seems they all use the same books and databases and those books and databases list the 2001 and 2002 brakes as the same. This means that nobody locally has the 11.6" rotors. So I do some more research and find out from the EBC catalog that the 2003 WRX has 11.6" rotors. Cool, I'll just get some 03 WRX rotors and be done with this. Well, seems that the book and database problem rears its ugly head again. They list the 2003 WRX rotors as 10.9" also. I know this is not the case because I had a friend over helping on these brakes and we measured the front rotors on his 03 WRX, and they are 11.6".

Anyway, to sum up, measure your front rotors before placing your order. So far Porterfield has been very helpful in all this in that they are pulling rotors for the 03 WRX off the shelf and measuring them to check the size, but getting new rotors for this car has proven to be rather difficult.

[Crusher]

That suck when it happens. Thanks for the tip.

[evolutionmovement]

When the voltage regulator went on my 260Z I had to get three different ones before I got the right one, which all the books said I shouldn't have had. Worst part was I was walking 5 miles back and forth while they had to order the new parts, etc.

Steve