Subaru rear disc brake conversion - How To - Dirtcheapdaily : Ep.17

In this episode of Dirtcheapdaily, I share some tips for converting your subaru's rear drum brakes to disc!
CLARIFICATION: in the video, Ben put new axles in too, but they are not required for the swap.
You can use the rear disc brake knuckles and related brake parts from any of the following:
Legacy '93-'99 USDM (2nd gen)
Impreza '93-'01 USDM (1st gen)
Forester '98-'02 USDM (1st Gen)
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Music Cred: Doctor Vox - Level Up
Welcome to another episode of dirt cheap daily. A big thanks to Ben from how my car got like this for filming his conversion of drum brakes to disc brakes!. If you're driving a 90s Subaru, there's a good chance you have rear drum brakes too, but Luckily Subarus are extremely modular and you can pick up rear disc brake knuckles from any 90's legacy, Impreza or forester and just bolt them on in place of your drum brake knuckles!
The best way in my opinion to do this is to go to your local junkyard and find a parts car that has rear disc brakes. You can pick up the rear knuckle, hub, caliper, brake lines and all the hardware you'll need all on one place and for cheap! Ben spend about $65 on all this including CV axles rotors and brake pads. The rotors and pads on the car he pulled them from looked extremely new, so we ended up just using those. If you do need new rotors and pads, I would recommend looking online on Amazon.com or rock auto.com and buying good quality rotors and ceramic brake pads are. If you can, choose a brand you've heard of. I have had a lot of success using Bendix and Raybestos.
This isn't the first mod I would do if you have rear drums, but it's one that does increase braking performance and stiffens up your pedal nicely.
It's also great for future maintinence. drum brakes can be really tough to work with when they're old and rusty. Disc brakes are more efficient and easier to service.rear brakes are under less load, and there's a good chance that if you replace the pads with quality ceramics, you won't ever need to change them again!
The hardest part of this conversion is actually just removing the original bolts that holt the knuckle to the trailing arm and lateral links. the long lateral link bolt often rusts and fuses to the knuckle, making it impossible to remove. The reason its so important to get all the hardware is in these instances where you just need to cut the bolt head off to get it apart. the bolt that holds the knuckle to the trailing arm can be hard to get to as well since the backing plate gets in the way of any normal sized socket. I’d definitely recommend just cutting the backing plate, or bending it to gain access to that bolt. You’re never going to switch back to drums, and you probably won’t be able to sell the drum brake parts.
With all the drum parts off, bolt in your disc knuckle, assemble the emergency brake shoes if you haven’t already, and attach your ebrake cable. You can replace the whole cable, or even just the back half with a disc brake cable, but ben used the drum cable and hasn’t had any issues.
The next step is swapping the brake lines so you can connect up your calipers. If you look at the brake line, theres a hardline and a rubber line. you just unscrew the rubberline from the hardline and replace it with the rubberline made for disc brakes.
Slide on your rotor, bolt on the caliper, install your pads, bleed the brakes and button it all back up!
It really is a simple swap on a subaru. The most trouble you’ll have will be because of corrosion.
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In the next few weeks I’ll be posting DIY’s of making your own mesh or badge less grill, restoring your headlights for less than $10, and in the not so distant future, how to swap a manual transmission into your automatic, how to turbo your 90’s subaru for under $500, and how to rwd swap your subaru!
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