STi brakes, the brute force way!

[b3lha]

Nice work. Very impressive.

[Cam]

This is the reason I love this forum. Sperry, you do very good work and we are lucky to have you as part of our community. In your opinion (which is most likely a little biased as you did this mod your self) is this upgrade worth the work and money? It seems my SVX was always braking adequately, but I never heated them up with sudden stops at high speeds, so I did not realize that would most likely be a problem.

The reason I ask is because it would be close to 2000 bucks to do this if you were not fortunate enough to have the proper axles sitting around. It seems that there are big brake upgrades for about 3000 bucks IIRC that are designed for the SVX. It would definately be an easier mod with less fabrication required.

Then again, I love making stuff from flat stock.

One thing to keep in mind down the road, rifling inside the holes you drilled could be considered stress risers if severe enough. I would recommend cleaning the holes with a reamer to get a better surface finish inside the hole if you think it to be a problem.

Stress risers are a problem in areas with vibration as the frequency of the vibrations gather and amplify in sharp corners, leading to cracks. This goes for any sharp corner on the parts (edges, corners, etc.). If you take a die grinder along the edge of the part to knock the edge off (very little bevel required, just enough to "break" the edge), this will keep the part from cracking as vibrations transfer through the part.

I only bring this up because you worked very hard, and it would be a pity to go back to the machine shop with cracked BJ adapters.

Once again, great work! Hope those brakes hold up for ya

[sperry]

You're right about the quality of the adapters. There are definitely some things that would have to be done better for this to be "production quality". I had planned on beveling all the holes, but when it came time to do them, my bit went missing.

Either way, if I end up getting a batch of these made, it will be done on a waterjet with all the corners rounded. Really, the only machining needed is for the ball joint taper.

In addition, if I make a batch of these I'll have them powdercoated. Rattle can paint doesn't exactly hold up to life under a car.

I just have to figure out what sort of demand there is for a batch of these adapters. I'd hate to spend a few thousand bucks building kits to sell one.

As far as the "worth" of this mod. Well that's a hard sell. If you're like me, your bearings are shot and you take the car to the track occasionally, and your car is in pretty good condition otherwise... it's probably worth it. If your car's brakes are already adequate for your driving and in decent condition, or your car is only worth a few hundred bucks because it's in bad shape elsewhere, then I wouldn't drop $2000 on brakes. Spend that money elsewhere on the car where you'd get better value on the dollars spent.

[Cam]

Well I plan on taking my car to the track once my tranny and engine will take it. This is a pleasure I have not had yet. I would hate to find that my brakes are not gonna cut it and take the fun out of an otherwise perfect day for the track. And I am not worried about what my car is worth, because I will never sell it.

[Pegdrgr]

You are right, I have no 4.44 R180 rear ends, I have one 3.9, and one 3.54. Can't say I recall seeing a 4.44 come through ever. I do have a fair number of axles, so I might be able to help you sort out which axle would be the best one to try your weirdo reverse axles with

[Johnybeas]

Originally Posted by sperry

You're right about the quality of the adapters. There are definitely some things that would have to be done better for this to be "production quality". I had planned on beveling all the holes, but when it came time to do them, my bit went missing.

Either way, if I end up getting a batch of these made, it will be done on a waterjet with all the corners rounded. Really, the only machining needed is for the ball joint taper.

In addition, if I make a batch of these I'll have them powdercoated. Rattle can paint doesn't exactly hold up to life under a car.

I just have to figure out what sort of demand there is for a batch of these adapters. I'd hate to spend a few thousand bucks building kits to sell one.

As far as the "worth" of this mod. Well that's a hard sell. If you're like me, your bearings are shot and you take the car to the track occasionally, and your car is in pretty good condition otherwise... it's probably worth it. If your car's brakes are already adequate for your driving and in decent condition, or your car is only worth a few hundred bucks because it's in bad shape elsewhere, then I wouldn't drop $2000 on brakes. Spend that money elsewhere on the car where you'd get better value on the dollars spent.

What is the time frame on getting the adapters done and able to be purchased??? would you take some sort of compensation for your cad design so that we can replicate them ourselves??? So you don't have to do all the work????

[sperry]

One quick update: I came up on a pair of STi Hotchkis adjustable endlinks and decided to toss together some extensions to make them fit the SVX.

It's certainly not the prettiest job, but it did get rid of the mild front-end clunk I've had since the day I got the car.

[sperry]

Originally Posted by Johnybeas

What is the time frame on getting the adapters done and able to be purchased??? would you take some sort of compensation for your cad design so that we can replicate them ourselves??? So you don't have to do all the work????

I should be able to get a quote this week at the waterjet shop as long as my actual job doesn't get in the way.

Right now it's looking like 4 people that are interested?

Johnnybeas, Pegdrgr, sicksubie, Cam... ? Perhaps a "production" version for myself? Get a quote for 5 pairs?

[sperry]

Finally got the car aligned this morning. It was surprisingly well aligned right from the start.

Before we changed anything, the car had -1.9 deg camber on both sides, 4.4 deg caster, and 0.11 deg toe out.

Unfortunately, I had already set the camber to max positive. So with the BJ adapters on there, the car's effective camber range is -1.9 to -3.0 or so. I knew from the measurements I had done that I was erring on the side of lots of negative camber because I was afraid if I shortened the LCA too much to keep the camber stock-like, I'd end up with too little adjustment in the tie-rods to be able to dial out the toe.

But the good news is that there seems to be plenty of toe adjustment available, so I think I can revise the BJ adapter one last time to get a little closer to the stock camber. -2 deg camber is fine if you drive the car hard all the time, but it's pushing it for a daily driven street car... you get all sorts of tramlining issues on worn roads and will eventually wear the inside edges of the front tires a little quicker than you should.

After the alignment, I ended up at -1.9 deg camber, 4.4 deg caster, and 0.03 deg toe-in. My friend doing the alignment told me it's time to get some new outer tie-rod ends... the ones on the car had enough rust in the threads to make setting the toe difficult. So that's just one more thing I'll have to get around to doing. Such is SVX ownership.

In other news, the ABS is turning out to be a little touchy. I'm not getting an ABS light, but at low speeds (think driving around in a parking lot, or stop and go traffic) the ABS will tend to trigger for a second just as I'm coming to a stop. It's not really hurting anything, but it does result in some jerking stops when the brakes engage a split second before you intended to stop. I bet it something that could be corrected by shimming the sensors up or down, but without a 'scope to see the waveform, I have no idea which way to shim things. I may just live with it, or try splicing in some WRX ABS sensors.

[SilverSpear]

Originally Posted by sperry

One quick update: I came up on a pair of STi Hotchkis adjustable endlinks and decided to toss together some extensions to make them fit the SVX.

It's certainly not the prettiest job, but it did get rid of the mild front-end clunk I've had since the day I got the car.

Well, not everything shiny is always effective. As long as these are "hidden", who really cares?

Again thumbs up for you for a great custom work.

[Pegdrgr]

Quick back track thought, did the bolt fall out or shear off?

[sperry]

Originally Posted by Pegdrgr

Quick back track thought, did the bolt fall out or shear off?

Well, I never found it, but since it wasn't torqued properly I'm betting it just fell out. The direction of the load through the bolt wouldn't tend to shear the bolt without shearing all of them, nor would it tend to strip the nut off the threads. So it's most likely that the vibration of driving around for a few miles just loosened it until one good rebound event popped it out.

[Cam]

The force it would have taken to shear that bolt would most likely have damaged the hole. And being that it was a loose locknut I wouldsay very likely it just loosened itself till the fell out

[oab_au]

Originally Posted by sperry

In other news, the ABS is turning out to be a little touchy. I'm not getting an ABS light, but at low speeds (think driving around in a parking lot, or stop and go traffic) the ABS will tend to trigger for a second just as I'm coming to a stop. It's not really hurting anything, but it does result in some jerking stops when the brakes engage a split second before you intended to stop. I bet it something that could be corrected by shimming the sensors up or down, but without a 'scope to see the waveform, I have no idea which way to shim things. I may just live with it, or try splicing in some WRX ABS sensors.

Sperry as you know the sensor is an inductive pick-up. The signal from it depends on the speed and strength of the magnetic field. I would say that the sensor is too far away from the rota, so the magnetic field is a bit weak, ok when the rotation speed is high, but when you slow down the speed of change is too slow to develop a good signal. It should be 0.7mm to 1mm from the rota.

Short answer, move them in closer.

Harvey.

[sicksubie]

ditch the ABS...