In our last segment, we talked about the lack of rear brake upgrades for the GD and why it was difficult to design one. We started out with a Stoptech big brake upgrade for a VA STI and BD Engineering designed a bracket to adapt the STR22 caliper used on the VA kit to the odd OEM GD dust cover caliper mount.
The Stoptech Aerorotor for the VA STI is 355mm by 28mm. This matches our 355mm x 32mm Stoptech front rotor and is much bigger than the stock rotor.
The Stoptech rotor’s friction ring floats on the hat with about 0.015″ free float. This free float helps prevent cone distortion with heat that the stock one-piece rotors suffer from. The float also helps reduce piston knockback caused by the bearing system and knuckle flex.
The hard anodized rotor hat also contains the parking brake drum. The hard anodizing gives wear resistance which allows the brake shoes to grab the aluminum drum without damaging it. However, you probably should not be using the e-brake like a drift brake! The mounting bolts use conical inconel washers to prevent the floating rotors from rattling around when driving by preloading them.
The Aerorotor uses CFD-designed vanes to help control braking-generated heat. You can see the inlet of the vanes here.
3 comments
Not being familiar with the factory GD STI rear caliper mounting, are there any concerns with the dust shield being strong enough to support the Stoptech caliper?
Not anymore than the stock caliper that bolts there!
Nice! I hope I can stop by and nerd out with you. I’m volunteering at Subiefest and I think my car will be on display somewhere TBD.