L Cable Calipers on Legacy Knuckles/Rotors/Brackets ?

[discopotato03]

Hi , I did ask about this once before and couldn't find the responses given .

 

I'd like to know if anyones tried fitting the L front caliper floating section and slides into the Legacy brackets so as to keep the park brake up front on a 5 stud L series swap .

 

We want to keep the rear simple by using Legacy solid rear discs and L calipers mounted on custom backplates .

 

Thoughts ? Cheers A .

[discopotato03]

I've PM'd baccaruda as its been suggested he did something similar with XT6 front floating sections on Liberty/Legacy caliper brackets .

 

Cheers A .

[baccaruda]

PM sent!

I don't know how well this would work with "non-XT6" L-calipers...

[Numbchux]

I'm curious why you want so badly to have the front ebrake. I'm sure you can get your hands on some nissan 200/240SX rear calipers, which are almost a direct swap onto EA82t caliper brackets.

 

and then you can run the much better new-gen subaru front brakes.

 

I absolutely love my RS front brakes with 200SX rear calipers and XT6 rotors in the rear. lots of power, very well balanced, using stock EA82 FWD wagon proportioning valve.

[discopotato03]

All sorts of reasons .

 

It keeps the thing conventional (for an L Series) and cheap common locally available parts such as L/RX pads and Liberty disc rotors fall in . Anyone could service the thing provided they realised which disc rotors it had .

 

Also keeps a lightweight car light , if your into suspension and handling low unsprung mass is very important .

 

Also the conversion process is so simple , down the back merely remove the wheel/hub/disc/backplate and bolt on the new set . Drop it on the deck and pump the anchors pedal - done .

 

The front is a little more involved because you're changing everything - except the hose/caliper bridge/park brake cable . If you didn't have to seperate the hoses to get them off the original L strut bracket you could do the whole conversion in theory without having to bleed the hydraulic system . Even the std master cylinder can stay .

 

Overall there's also a challenge in achieving slightly better than XT6 brakes without using ANY XT6 parts - which are virtually unobtaenium here because they were not sold locally by Subaru .

 

As I see it the only potential problem is getting the front to rear brake bias right and from what I have discovered now there are 3 not 2 choices of proportioning valve that should fit .

Basically L 4WD sedan's is 640 psi , L 2WD sedan's 569 psi and non ABS 1st gen Liberty's are all 533 psi rated pressure limiting valves . They all appear to be Subaru's weird 4 line type valve which means externally they should all be the same and interchange easily .

 

I want to get this past an engineers beak and with 85% of the parts Subaru (only custom bits are rear caliper mounting plates and Crossbred hubs) and modified from L XT6 control arms it should pass with flying colours .

 

Cheers A .

[Numbchux]

^huh? were you responding to my question?

 

 

 

mounting nissan rear calipers isn't any harder than the RX ones you're planning on using. in fact, it'd be exactly the same except with different calipers. you'd still be using RX pads, and whatever rotors you want.

 

 

AND, by not trying to use the L front calipers, you can use EJ-series front brakes. which are WAAAAYYYYYYY more common. especially performance options.

 

 

 

 

I've been running a 5-lug setup with 200SX rear calipers, rear ebrake, and RS front brakes for about 8 months now, and more than 10k miles. replace the XT6 backing plates and rotors with custom plates and liberty rotors, and you wouldn't need any more rare and/or custom parts than you already have.

[discopotato03]

The situation in Australia is different to that in North America , here garden variety L series and 1st gen Liberty parts have very little perceived value so 2nd hand bits are cheap . Here Nissan parts off S14 and S15 200SX's (ours all got SR20DET's) are dear and not nearly as common . Also S13's are all grey imports in Australia .

 

It doesn't matter to me anyway because I don't want to re-route the cables to the back its as simple as that . I also don't want to run larger and heavier front brakes than necessary either . If I wanted to do repeated 100 mph stops then yes 11 inch rotors and twin or four piston calipers would be good . Here the national speed limit is 110 km/h or ~ 70 mph , most of the time its used at 60-80 km/h so 260 or 277 mm discs with L series calipers would be fine . Remember - it only weighs 1070 Kg or roughtly 2400 imp pounds .

 

Cheers A .

[Numbchux]

It doesn't matter to me anyway because I don't want to re-route the cables to the back its as simple as that .

 

Fair enough. it really wasn't as bad as I was anticipating. Still seems easier than trying to mount L front calipers to EJ knuckles.

 

I also don't want to run larger and heavier front brakes than necessary either . If I wanted to do repeated 100 mph stops then yes 11 inch rotors and twin or four piston calipers would be good . Here the national speed limit is 110 km/h or ~ 70 mph , most of the time its used at 60-80 km/h so 260 or 277 mm discs with L series calipers would be fine . Remember - it only weighs 1070 Kg or roughtly 2400 imp pounds

 

the RS brakes aren't much heavier than standard legacy/liberty hardware. I wish I'd weighed it all while I had it apart, but I did compare them, and didn't notice a difference. And I'm pretty sure the calipers with the ebrake mechanism are heavier. one of these days I'm going to disassemble all the different setups in my shed and compare things.

 

I definitely agree that the light car doesn't need much, and the 294mm WRX hardware is definitely overkill. but the 276mm RS stuff is very nice.

 

 

 

Also, the SX calipers I'm using actually came off an S12......so that might make things more difficult your end. BUT, as far as I can tell, B14 200SXs (aka sentra or sunny) rear calipers would work as well....

 

 

 

Anyway, up to you. but it sure seems like mounting L calipers to EJ knuckles is not the ideal solution.

 

 

 

EDIT: just looked on wikipedia. looks like the S12 is badged as the gazelle there in Australia. maybe more common then S14/15 parts?