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There aren't many features from higher trim levels that I wish my base model had, but one of them is the bigger brake package. I didn't want the torque vectoring setup that squeezes the individual brakes, so that turned me off from getting the sport trim. So I've been waiting patiently for some aftermarket support and I finally came across what I needed. www.r1concepts.com makes some drilled and slotted rotors that fit the sport trim. They also fit the Crosstrek, which happens to have the same caliper and rotor setup as the sport. So after studying parts diagrams, what I thought I needed was a set of 2nd hand Crosstrek calipers (because I'm cheap) and a set of R1concepts sport (or Crosstrek) rotors.
After comparing the calipers for the base model and the sport/Crosstrek, it turns out that the main section of the caliper is the same, just the support bracket is different. This meant I could just replace the support brackets and not have to replace and bleed calipers. This suddenly got much simpler. I even got to reuse my brake pads which have 27,xxx miles on them and a lot left before they're due for replacement.
After digging up some torque specs online, everything bolted up nicely. Just like it should.
My 16" Enkei M52 wheels still have a significant amount of clearance to the new brake setup. The stick-on balance weights have over 1/4" of clearance.
The sport-sized rotors are just slightly smaller than the base model's oversized rotor dust shields, so I didn't have to replace those. 2 of the rotors being removed (one front, one rear) were siezed tight on the hub center bore, but there are nifty little jack screw holes that can be used with some metric bolts to push the rotors free from the hubs. I don't know the exact bolt size. I had some that fint in my spare parts drawers, but I think they are either 6mm or 8mm. There also were some rubber plugs from the stock rear rotors that had to be transferred to the new rear rotors. The plugs are for access to the internal parking brake friction shoes.
Overall, I'm very pleased with the results. It's a relatively cheap upgrade and took me about 3hrs to do rotors on all of the wheels, including my cleanup time.
After comparing the calipers for the base model and the sport/Crosstrek, it turns out that the main section of the caliper is the same, just the support bracket is different. This meant I could just replace the support brackets and not have to replace and bleed calipers. This suddenly got much simpler. I even got to reuse my brake pads which have 27,xxx miles on them and a lot left before they're due for replacement.
After digging up some torque specs online, everything bolted up nicely. Just like it should.
My 16" Enkei M52 wheels still have a significant amount of clearance to the new brake setup. The stick-on balance weights have over 1/4" of clearance.
The sport-sized rotors are just slightly smaller than the base model's oversized rotor dust shields, so I didn't have to replace those. 2 of the rotors being removed (one front, one rear) were siezed tight on the hub center bore, but there are nifty little jack screw holes that can be used with some metric bolts to push the rotors free from the hubs. I don't know the exact bolt size. I had some that fint in my spare parts drawers, but I think they are either 6mm or 8mm. There also were some rubber plugs from the stock rear rotors that had to be transferred to the new rear rotors. The plugs are for access to the internal parking brake friction shoes.
Overall, I'm very pleased with the results. It's a relatively cheap upgrade and took me about 3hrs to do rotors on all of the wheels, including my cleanup time.
