I had a nice busy Sunday, installing some H6 rear brakes on the car and finishing up a left front wheel bearing replacement. I had actually started both the weekend prior, but had to wait on a new hub to finish the wheel bearing job, and was waiting on some used '02 WRX calipers to finish up the brakes.

Unfortunately, I didn't get a good "before" shot of the stock brakes behind the stock or race wheels. Here's how things look now:


The caliper brackets are just painted with Duplicolor 500* gloss black engine paint. The calipers themselves I painted with G2 silver paint. Still need to do the front calipers to match, I was too lazy to do that today.

The H6 upgrade has been covered in detail elsewhere, so just a couple of points. First, I was curious if the BD/BG calipers would work with the H6 caliper brackets. Turns out, the answer is definitely NO, which is why I had to buy some used WRX rear calipers. Here's a picture showing how different things are:

The newer H6 rears are basically set up like the front - 2 slide pins, and the caliper is held to those by 2 bolts (which are identical to the front bolts). The older BD/BG brackets have one fixed slide pin and then a through-bolt that actually screws into the bracket. Since that fixed slide pin slides in and out of the caliper, the mounting ear on the caliper is thicker and doesn't even have a hole it for a caliper locking bolt. Very different, and no way the two are compatible.

I've seen lots of talk about the H6 upgrade, and removing/modifying the dust shields to clear the larger H6 rotors. People talk about drilling out the spot welds. Well, after 147,000 miles my dust shields were so filthy I literally couldn't even see the spot welds to drill them, and I'm not gonna keep the dust shields to who cares if they come off neatly, right? I went with the BFH approach:

Probably took me all of 2min on each side to pound the things off.

As for the front wheel bearing, here you can see how bad the old one was flexing:

Yup, the inner face of the rotor was actually rubbing the caliper bracket! It also caused contact between the ABS sensor and the exciter ring, breaking the ABS sensor:


Here's the pretty new hub, ready to go for assembly. Note the black coating on the center where the wheel mounts - not sure what exactly that is, but I'm assuming it's some sort of anti-corrosion coating.


I repacked the wheel bearings with Mobil1 grease. Interestingly enough, the temperature ratings on Mobil1 grease really aren't all that great - it says -40* to 350*F on the package, and I think the conventional Valvoline stuff that was on the shelf next to it said it was good to 380* or 400*. There was another guy at the Navy Auto Hobby Shop doing the brakes/bearings on his 4Runner at the same time, and he had Redline CV2 grease, which is supposed to be good to 500*. I don't know if Mobil1 just rates their stuff conservatively, or if the conventional stuff was a bit optimistic in its ratings, or if the Mobil1 just isn't that great. It's what I used, so hopefully it doesn't suck too bad.

There's a good thread about replacing the front wheel bearings in the Brakes and Suspension Forum over on nasioc.com, that's pretty much what I used as my guide. I didn't take many pics, since it had basically all been done before. I did try to screw up the re-assembly when I went to press the hub into the bearings - really, you want to press the bearings (already pressed into the spindle) down onto the hub. I started to do the opposite - spindle on the press, pushing the hub outside-in to the spindle. If you do it that way, though, unless the bearings are supported from the inside the inner bearing is just going to pushed out of the spindle. Not sure if that makes any sense, but if you follow the assembly pictures in the thread in the Brakes and Suspension Forum you'll be good to go.

All in all, a productive weekend. Did both these projects, plus the JDM taillights, plus reassembled the rear brakes, installed new pads, and installed a new parking brake handle on my Mustang, plus installed new taillights on the Mustang. Next up is a helical front diff for the Legacy - I'll be letting the professionals handle that job! I also need to the right front wheel bearing, just as preventative maintenance - I should be able to get that done this Friday or Saturday.

Pat Olsen
'97 Legacy 2.5GT sedan

 

Nice job....

 

good job.....

 

damn, i'm lazy. i still gotta change my oil.

looks good. b

 

nice job Pat i'm starting to miss wrenching under my car now