Here are the rear brakes with the braided steel Powerstop brake lines. You can see the fresh STI stock anti-rattle hardware pretty easily here.
Although we used brand new OEM STI calipers for our conversion, there are plenty of nice used STI calipers on the used market for a great price. We see many of them on eBay for instance. For your GD WRX you want parts from a 2004-2006 STI. Just remember the rear brakes won’t bolt up easily unless you get the DBA conversion rotor. The only other way to do the conversion is to get the entire knuckle and hub from a wrecked STI so you can use the 190mm parking brake drum directly. The DBA rotor just makes the conversion so much easier and cheaper!
So upgrade your brakes on your WRX, now cost won’t be stopping you!
Sources
DBA
Powerstop
Project Mu
Motul
8 comments
aren’t DBA rotors super expensive? like BBK rotor price kinda expensive?
Not the one-piece ones.
For the fronts you have plenty of options like from Centric and it’s child subsidiaries. It’s a standard STi fitment part. DBA is an “OEM plus,” level upgrade.
The rears are of course more tricky. Another option for that is the Kartboy rear brackets (San Diego company, makes all things in-house) , to get to a two pot rear caliper and still keep the dust shield I believe? Going that route nets you not having to buy a special rotor over time.
I’m in the process of piecing together a super budget brake upgrade myself for my VA WRX. I looked at going with OEM STi calipers front and rear but came across a set of brand new Cadillac CTS-V front calipers from a local Chevy dealership for $200 and found a company from that makes brackets to mount them. All in, it should be less than $2,500 front and rear even factoring the rear STi setup. Excited to see how this works out in comparison.
One of my friends has gone this route and he likes how it worked out.
Although not in the same league as the STi brakes, the 2006-2007 WRX had 4-piston front/2-piston rear fixed calipers. The 2002-2005 had the sliding calipers, and the 06-07 package is a popular swap for the earlier years as a mild upgrade.
Love the content and will probably look into getting some used calipers to do this on my 05 Saab 92x Aero! Awesome write up with great details!
Hey I’m driving an Australian delivery 2001 WRX will I have any issues with this upgrade?