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I am curious to find out how other owners/drivers past and present feel/felt about their L series RX and GLTA's braking performance given they all had four wheel disc brakes. My 87 GLTA sort felt a bit sluggish, no front dive/bite - until i installed a different non turbo disc/drum master cylinder. Despite its feel it had a very good result with a just calibrated auto test brake meter. Next opportunity I will test this newly installed one. My factory manual indicates all master cylnders were the same , at least the early RX GLTA had a grub screw in the side towards the radiator end.

have you tried some decent pads in them?

i never had a problem in my rx ified touring wagon and that just had bendix ultimates in it

i have disks all round in the brumby aswell with 30" tyres and they bite well enough to lock the wheels up if you try hard enough, but do suffer from fade when you give them a hard time (unknown pads tho)

Mine work very well and takes a fair bit of hard pushing to make em fade. Ask Lightning Silver RX about stopping in my car.

my first set in a turbo sedan stopped Great. the set in my touring wagon i haven't noticed much difference between discs and drums.I like the pad theory the sedan had good pads the wags have some i've never heard of.

I have 4 wheel L series discs in a brumby and thought they were at best average until i installed a liberty power booster and now they are ok but still not comparable to impreza brakes

Although SWK indicates above that the brakes on his RX are very good, there was a period when I owned that car that the brake performance was average, at best. Ended up being the near side rear calliper siezed up and not working at all. Once this was rectified, brakes were good again!

My current RX converted wagon has average brakes, also. I have pulled down both rear callipers, lightly honed the bores, lubricated the pistons and ensured ports and hoses were clear and allowing good flow. Only marginal gain to brake performance, though. Steve at Rising Sun has the car at present and indicates brakes are what he expects from a L series with larger diameter wheels.

Maybe I'm just used to the XT Forester's and XR8's exceptional braking performance!

same thing happened to me when i first installed the discs. Performance was woeful and pedal felt really stodgy. Then I see the master cylinder is leaking bad. So i swapped it for the one off my l turbo, and also the valve thingy? (name has evaded me!!) under the rear of the car. Brakes feel waaay better now, will put me through the windscreen if I want

timmo

timmo wrote:same thing happened to me when i first installed the discs. Performance was woeful and pedal felt really stodgy. Then I see the master cylinder is leaking bad. So i swapped it for the one off my l turbo, and also the valve thingy? (name has evaded me!!) under the rear of the car. Brakes feel waaay better now, will put me through the windscreen if I want

timmo

Is that "valve thingy" towards the rear the proportioning valve? Some vehicles have these as seperate units, where others incorporate them into the master cylinder.

If it is a proportioning valve, I believe (correct me if I'm wrong) that with 4 wheel discs, this is not required. Only needed for when rear drums are employed. If this is the case, then this needs to be changed when converting to rear discs. I might try this to see if there is any improvement.

(I believe above, as when I replaced a master cylinder in a HZ Statesman yeras ago, the proportioning valve in the cylinder had to be removed for rear disc application, or left in for rear drums. Surley same must apply to all vehicles???????)

OK . Thanks, mixed reports. I ran another brake test last night and got a good pass mark, but not as good as the leaky original, yet they bite. Must be a bit like seat of the pants versus dyno sometimes revealing seat of the pants deceptive. You would think that after market would not list two kits for these if there was no need.The GLTA has a proportioning valve at the rear.