January 10, 200620 yr Hi, I have a 2.2l 99 Legacy with 14 inch alloy wheels. I bought 16 inch rims from an 03 Imprezza WRX. I have seem pics on the board here where people have put these exact rims on my generation of Legacy. I'm pretty sure the rim will physically fit, but my questions is about rotors. I need new rotors and an not sure which application to get. Looks like OEM and Brembo has a different part # for 14 inch wheels or 15 inch wheels. Would I get the rotors for the 15 inch? Lastly, if the total size of the tire is larger, will my speedometer be effected? Any advice would be greatly appriciated.
January 10, 200620 yr Hi, I have a 2.2l 99 Legacy with 14 inch alloy wheels. I bought 16 inch rims from an 03 Imprezza WRX. I have seem pics on the board here where people have put these exact rims on my generation of Legacy. I'm pretty sure the rim will physically fit, but my questions is about rotors. I need new rotors and an not sure which application to get. Looks like OEM and Brembo has a different part # for 14 inch wheels or 15 inch wheels. Would I get the rotors for the 15 inch? Lastly, if the total size of the tire is larger, will my speedometer be effected? Any advice would be greatly appriciated. If the car originally came with 14" wheels you should get the rotors for the 14" wheels. If the tire size diameter changes it will affect your speedometer/odometer, larger diameter will make the speedometer/odometer read lower, if the diamter is smaller, your speedometer/odometer will read higher. But the change should be very negligible unless your making a radical tire size change.
January 10, 200620 yr If the car originally came with 14" wheels you should get the rotors for the 14" wheels. If the tire size diameter changes it will affect your speedometer/odometer, larger diameter will make the speedometer/odometer read lower, if the diamter is smaller, your speedometer/odometer will read higher. But the change should be very negligible unless your making a radical tire size change. unless you upgrade the rest of the brake system and honestly, the speedo won't be affected that much. i bumped up my tires by 5, count em' 5 sizes, and my speedo is 11% off. that's no big deal.
January 10, 200620 yr You can upgrade to WRX rotors if you also use the WRX calipers. Everything just bolts on. Only downside is with the WRX stuff you have to run 16" or larger wheels.
January 11, 200620 yr You can upgrade to WRX rotors if you also use the WRX calipers. Everything just bolts on. Only downside is with the WRX stuff you have to run 16" or larger wheels. i am in concurrence
January 12, 200620 yr 99 legacy GT's had 16" rims and they used 205-55-16 for the tires from factory which is what wrx's have from factory so if you have tires on the rims already the difference is very tiny (I think it is .5%). Enjoy the better handling!
January 12, 200620 yr Author Ok, If the 99 GT had 16 inch wheels + tires the same as the WRX's I'll be using, can I get the rotors for the 99 GT(16 in rims) instead of the 99 L (14 in rims) and still have my calipers fit? I'm looking to get maximum braking without upgrading to slotted/drilled rotors that eat pads. Thank you ???????????????????????????????????????
January 12, 200620 yr Take a closer look at the brakes. The caliper is attached to the caliper bracket, which is attached to the spindle. The bracket holds the pads in place and basically acts as a spacer for the caliper. If you were to just buy bigger rotors, they wouldn't fit in the calipers and brackets. What you can do is find some WRX calipers and brackets (you might just need the brackets), which will place the caliper farther away from the center of the wheel, and allow for a bigger rotor. Here is a comparison of my stock 93L bracket with a 02 WRX bracket. You can see how the wrx bracket is taller: Doing this will provide more heat capacity in the front, but will also provide more braking torque in the front. The brakes are already pretty forward biased, so adding to that could actually increase braking distance, because the rear brakes will be doing less than their share of the work. The more important question is: Do you really need to upgrade the brakes? The only reason to upgrade brakes is if you have problems with fade. When the brakes fade, two things can happen: The pad will start to out-gas and fall apart and glaze over and not be as sticky; and/or the fluid can boil. Brakes have to get pretty hot for this to happen. Start with good pads and fluid. It's fairly inexpensive and a pad rated for higher temperatures will continue to work at higher temperatures. The trade-off is that a really-high performance (i.e.: track) pad doesn't work well when cold. They'll also tend to be noisier and give off more dust and not last as long. If you're still overheating brakes (which you shouldn't be), then maybe bigger rotors are a good idea. I ran into fade road rallying and there aren't many pad options for my car, so I shopped around and found some WRX brakes, SS lines, and good pads on the cheap. Of course I'm upgrading the rears to keep the bias. It still is going to end up being around $500 for the swap, and I'm buying mostly used parts and doing the work myself. man, I could go on forever. Check out some of the articles here at stoptech. They know their stuff when it comes to brakes.
January 15, 200620 yr Author Thanks for the info. I installed Brembo rotors for the 14 inch wheel. braking is much smoother. One things i'm dissapointed about is the rust specs forming on the rotor after just 2 days. This tells me the entire rotor will rust as the OEM one did. I thought newer rotors had a rust protectant coating. Anyway, the 16 inch wheels will be installed in 2 days with toyo proxis tires. Thanks for the info.
January 15, 200620 yr Regarding tire size affecting your speedometer, you can calculate the error using this: http://www.miata.net/garage/tirecalc.html
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