Brake PSA

[ashergrey]

I replaced the rotors and pads on my Touring Wagon tonight and found something surprising. Ever since I bought the car a year ago it has had vague, wobbly braking with really quick fade. The problem worsened in the last two months so I searched out replacement parts and went to work.

Aside from the rear rotors being all marred and covered with deposits, there was this little problem:



Can you see it?



The previous owner had the front rotors replaced with the wrong size. It's well known that Legacy Sport Sedans use larger-diameter front rotors but many parts manufacturers don't make the distinction when it comes to the Touring Wagon. I encountered this when hunting down parts online. Many websites incorrectly list the non-turbo rotors as being replacements for the Touring Wagons. I can only presume this leads ignorant shop monkeys to put non-turbo rotors parts on people's cars.

When paired with OEM-sized front pads, this is the result:



For future reference, I bought the rotors from eBay seller Dax Autoworks.
Fronts: Brembo 25370 / 26300AE071
Rears: Brembo 25581 / 26310AA151

Pads were OEM replacements from Tire Rack. As noted in the sticky here, front pads are D563 and rears are D471.

[kimokalihi]

Damn! That's crazy.

[Legacy777]

Good info!

Thanks for sharing the pics.

[mike-tracy]

Same thing goes for the rears, using solid discs in place of the vented rotors (while still using the SS or TW calipers) can lead to problems as the pistons are overextended, and brake failure could result.