yup. They were installed on older model sti's. You can buy a set at www.subaruwrxparts.com. They look just like the Nissan calipers on turbo 300zx's.

 

nice, i just ordered a stage 2 kit like a week ago, but i want new calipers as well, gonna go check them now, thanks.

man they are $600 $hit thats more then the stage 2 kit all together

 

I don't know of any 4-pot that are going to be cheaper. You can check Baer but I don't think the make a cheaper 4-pot, just a better 2 piston. Remeber that almost every 4-pot on the market needs the higher offset of a 17"+ wheel.

 

oh yeah i know pretty much what ever you pay for is what you get, i dont want crap on my car, but would they perform the same as the 4 piston calipers on the big brake kits?

 

I don't think they are going to perform to the same level as a Brembo set or Stoptech Brig Brake kit. You're going to get a better feel from the Baer than the stock setup. I've never used them so I really wouldn't know how much better. Unless you're going to be tracking it the Stoptech Stage 2 should give you the most noticable difference in stopping power and fade reduction. The bigger kits generally use a larger disk for more cooling surface and for placing the caliper farther awy from the hub increasing braking leverage. Install the Stoptech Stage 2 and i'm sure you're going to have all the brake performance you'll need. The only thing about the Subaru 4-pots are that they are cast iron. That equates to poor cooling ability. The pistons are actually smaller than the stock pistons. There are just more of them. From what I hear the pads that the 4-pot's use are better. My ideal setup will probably be the Stoptech Stage 2 upgrade, Subaru 4-pot's in the front, and the Legacy Turbo Rear Brake Upgrade that is sold at www.subaruwrxparts.com

 

I've heard that the Stoptech stage 2 kit with stock calipers will stop almost as well as the Stoptech BBK. However, the stage 2 kit will experience fade much sooner than the bbk. That's what i heard. I'll probably do the same setup as wrxtasy555.

 

You definitely should have gone with the Stoptechs, for several reasons. for one, you would have saved ~$500. For another, your stopping distances are actually going to be longer than stock, because your brake bias just went way too far forward. Unless you switch to the 290mm rear 2 pots, you're not going to get good results, although your fade resistance will improve. Also, cross drilled rotors are not recommended for anything approaching a high performance application. What pads are you using for the setup?

 

This is absolutely true, and is true of any BBK actually. Stopping distance is a function of grip, not brake size. As long as you have enough brake torque to lock up the front wheels, you can't improve stopping distance with brake components. What you improve (dramatically) are feel, bias, and fade resistance.

 

First off the kit i got is the Brembo gold 326x30 kit which is different then the kit i had stated..and was roughly the same price as stoptechs.. 1500
secondly at the time i had been speaking with people that were
unimpressed by the fact that stoptechs were having issues. as for distance reduction. i am aware of the fact that this setup needs the rear 2pots to function to its full potential. but that goes the same for stop techs.. the pads that come on this setup are a brembo "high performance street Pad" which is similar to the axis pads on the stoptechs. so basicly the difference in these two setups is the stop tchs are slightly have a slightly larger rotar (2mm) and its two piece.. which does improve on the heat disapation.. but as i said before i went with this kit because i had been hearing problems with the stoptechs.. the problems were fitment issues and and issues that were with a faulty washer that was resulting in complete failure..

 

Stoptechs are specifically engineered to work with stock rear brakes. They do not require rear brakes upgrades of any kind beyond pads/rotors. And you posted up that you spent $2200 on the Brembos. What all did that include? That's also the first I've heard of any reliability issues with Stoptechs. Do you have links to people who have had issues/failures?

 

in retrospect i think i got cold feet on the stoptechs because of what i had heard.. but wish that i would have not gotten so caught up in that hype.. because i have had stoptechs on my last VW and was very impressed..i was just led to beleive that stoptechs r&d on the wrx was not as intence as it was with the vw's because of the mass demand of tuners to our beloved subies.. but the kit i got is very similar and i have been rather pleased with it.. but i am thinking of going with a grippier pad as i dont have the funds to upgrade the rear right now..

 

.. 2200 was with tax/ship and install an i forgot to mention that the rear pads and rotors were included in that price.. i went with oem pads on brembo oem sized drilled rotors.. i was told that using a high pro pad would over heat the small rotor.. and cause warpage..

 

That's not a bad price for those then. I personally wouldn't use the Brembo drilled rotors, but that's me. And you can get pretty aggressive on the rear pads, they won't be doing much work anyway. Anything to get the bias back to the rear a bit is good for your setup at this point.

 

at the time this setup seemed to be the best deal .. stop techs were definitely more expensive and the benifits did not seem to be there.. from what i was told.. the info i received is from a dealer called race tech, ( http://www.racetechnologies.com ) who i had been informed of through my vw friends who all are pro brembo.. yeah i definitely want do some resaerch on how to improve my setup.. via better pads frnt and possibly rear..

 

Everything BAN SUVS has said on this thread has been right on the money.

The first thing that I would like to clear up is that Race Technologies is the sole US distributor of Brembo aftermarket brake kits.

nathanellis, the best advice I can give you in regards to RaceTech is to take their words with a large grain of salt. They will not hesitate to tell you that their product is far superior to ours, and due to the fact that they lack any scientific facts or real world evidence to back up their claims, they will not hesitate to use deceptive and immoral marketing tactics to sell their product.

We have repeatedly caught people with commercial interests in RaceTech posting flat out lies about our products, and we constantly are being told that RaceTech employees are spreading untrue information about StopTech products.

Whether or not you heard it from a RaceTech employee, it sounds like you heard allegations that StopTech has had fitment issues and that we have a lack of R&D in our BBK for the WRX.

The only claim I can imagine that would lend any truth to the statement that we have had fitment issues with our BBK for the WRX is that not all wheels for the WRX fit over our BBK. My response to that is that our 328mm BBK offers more wheel clearance than the STi Brembo front calipers do on the WRX. As such, this is an “issue” that every company including Brembo faces when producing a BBK, rather than a specific fault with the fitment of the StopTech WRX BBK. Furthermore, nearly every reseller and end user who has installed a StopTech BBK on ANY car, not just the WRX, has nothing but good things to say about the fit and finish of our kits.

The second claim is the one that really baffles me. The allegation that StopTech did not do a sufficient amount of R&D on our BBK for the WRX could not possibly be further from the truth.

Where to start… The first thing I would like to explain is that by varying the piston bores of our calipers, we are able to adjust the amount of brake torque that our BBKs produce. We are therefore able to achieve a front to rear brake torque balance that allows us to maximize brake performance, vehicle stability, and safety.

The next question is usually, “How do you know what the correct piston sizes are?” If you care, keep reading. If not, skip down to the dotted line.

Well, there is a formula for brake torque that involves only three factors: coefficient of friction of the pad/rotor interface, clamping force of the caliper (directly proportional to piston sizing, but also affected by caliper stiffness), and effective radius of the rotor. Unfortunately, there are a seemingly infinite amount of variables involved, some of which are both difficult to account for and significant to the overall torque output.

It’s for this very reason that we spend the resources required to go out and do scientific, tedious real world testing on the brake kits we release. Through this testing we are able to not only try out the calipers with the piston sizes that we calculate to provide the correct torque reaction, but we also try the piston sizes that are one step larger and one step smaller to make sure that we are not able to braking increase performance by adjusting piston sizing in either direction.

If you’d like to read more about our testing procedures, feel free to follow this link:
http://www.zeckhausen.com/testing_brakes.htm
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In addition to the results we gained through testing, we were able to tap into the valuable data that Gary Sheehan acquired during the years in which he used our front wheel big brake kit on the WRX race car he campaigned in the US Touring Car Championship.

If you still believe that we haven’t done enough R&D on our BBK for the WRX, you can always order a back issue of the September 2002 issue of Car and Driver. There, you will notice a four page article devoted to the comparison of StopTech, Prodrive, and two Brembo big brake kits. In these tests, the StopTech kit performed favorably to the competition for a little more than half the price of the Brembo F50 kit.

More specifically, in the testing that they did with the ABS off, you’ll see that out correct piston sizing pays off with a 6 foot shorter stopping distance from 70-0mph. The reason that I mention testing with the ABS off is because that is when the correct piston sizing will show its advantage most clearly, due to the fact that the ABS is not able to prevent the front wheels from locking up far before the rears do (which is what happens on the Brembo F50 kit with its excess of front brake torque).

Now that we’ve shown that StopTech has done a damn near excessive amount of R&D on our BBK for the WRX, I would like to raise the following question: What kind of R&D does Brembo do for their aftermarket big brake kits?

How much R&D can a company do if they cannot vary the piston sizing in their calipers? Although Brembo’s much larger race division is known worldwide for the amount of R&D and engineering that goes into their admittedly excellent products, RaceTech does not have access to these race parts. To my knowledge, they only have three calipers to use on every application that they make a BBK for, and the piston sizing is NOT variable on any of those calipers.

Furthermore, RaceTech receives the brackets, hats, rotors, and calipers from their supplier (remember, they are a distributor not a manufacturer), and does almost no R&D whatsoever. In other words, they just hope that the piston sizing in the caliper (or both different calipers) that they happen to have adapted to fit on your car will create the correct amount of brake torque to achieve ideal braking performance.

Wait a second, it’s impossible for two different calipers with vastly different piston bores to create the same brake torque reaction with only a 2mm difference in effective rotor diameter and the same coefficient of friction.

The obvious downside to having fixed piston bores is that while the calipers will create the correct amount of brake torque for some select platforms, they will have the incorrect piston sizing for the majority of the platforms that they are adapted to. Just more proof that RaceTech is severely limited in the amount of R&D they do.

If you’re interested in learning more about the science of braking performance (rather than having somebody tell you how great their brake system is with meaningless adjectives), feel free to check out our white papers at www.stoptech.com/technical.

I am also happy to give unbiased advice on brake related matters, so if you have any questions whatsoever feel free to contact me at work at tim at stoptech dot com.

Thanks,
Tim Kelsch
StopTech LLC