ST205 Front Brakes

etantshi

Moderator
I was seriously considering it. Because that way the rotor would sit more 'square' on the hub and keep me from having to use a ring around the center bore.
 

darthripley

Moderator
i may try to use the 205 hub up front if it can be done - i haven't looked & compared enough to see what is & isn't possible.
can the 205 hub be used or not?

i can imagine it's a pain trying to do the caliper brackets :(
 

etantshi

Moderator
darthripley":1z6m4od6 said:
i may try to use the 205 hub up front if it can be done - i haven't looked & compared enough to see what is & isn't possible.
can the 205 hub be used or not?

i can imagine it's a pain trying to do the caliper brackets :(

I'm pretty sure the hub is the same, minus the centerbore. Seriously considering milling the rotor down 7.5mm
 

darthripley

Moderator
etantshi":3cqpvxw8 said:
I'm pretty sure the hub is the same, minus the centerbore. Seriously considering milling the rotor down 7.5mm

so making a caliper bracket is that much of a pain, that its looking better to just mill down the rotor?
 

etantshi

Moderator
darthripley":35073byb said:
etantshi":35073byb said:
I'm pretty sure the hub is the same, minus the centerbore. Seriously considering milling the rotor down 7.5mm

so making a caliper bracket is that much of a pain, that its looking better to just mill down the rotor?

The ears on the caliper are so close to the stock mounting points it's ridiculous. When you move the caliper to either side the ears on the caliper/mounting spots on the spindle foul each other's hole. Making a bolt through bracket very difficult as you would need to be able to run a bolt through each of the 4 hose independently. The only location where all 4 holes are open is a location that puts the caliper super close to the lower ball joint.
 

etantshi

Moderator
Let me first start off by saying that the st205 set up is lighter than the stock single pot setup. Up front on the stock st185 the caliper is a cast iron type setup with a rather large cast iron bracket. The st205 caliper is aluminum which cuts down on the weight quite a bit. The only thing that is heavier than stock is the rotor.

On to what I have done.... The bracket with the stock dimension rotor and caliper is pretty much impossible. You run into a few problems. The main one is the fact that the mounting tabs on the 205 spindle and the 185 spindle are almost entirely identical. The only difference is that the st185 points are slightly shorter.

Here's a pic of all stock components from the st185 and st205:

100_1224.jpg


100_1226.jpg


To utilize the stock rotor size the caliper must be moved, widening the stock hole on the either the caliper or the spindle would, in my opinion, make the mounting point too weak.

Moving the caliper toward the top of the spindle you run into interference with the strut mount. And you only gain 15mm of room or so, but the mounting tabs would still run interference with any fasteners used for the bracket.

100_1227.jpg


Moving the caliper toward the bottom results more feasible room for a bracket, but you still have clearance issues. Mainly coming from the lower mounting tab hitting the inner brake pad. Not only that, but I don't like the idea of having the caliper right on the lower ball joint. Just not a big fan of that. And lastly, the caliper just looks dumb sitting at the bottom of the wheel. People wouldn't be able to read the word 'celica' without doing a hand stand.

100_1228.jpg


100_1229.jpg


The only real way to get the caliper to work with the stock size rotor would be to either widen the holes on caliper/mounting tabs. Or cut the ears off the caliper and re drill holes and use a bracket. Neither of which I really wanna do. On the flip side a different sized rotor makes the world of difference. Using a larger rotor, would space the caliper away from the stock mounting tabs and would allow you to make a bracket that fits. That has been done a few times. Or milling the rotor down to fit. And that has been done a few times. To my knowledge, NO ONE, has done this using all stock components with no modification whatsoever. On a side note, looking at the wear pattern on the st205 disc the pad doesn't fully use the whole rotor face, so milling the rotor down does not create problems with the pad not contacting rotor. And the final side not. All these parts bolt on using the stock st185 sized rotor, but part of the pad does hang off the rotor face as a 277mm rotor is too small to support that sized pad.

So all in all, I will be milling down the rotor. That way I can keep this project under 400 dollars.
 

bozo-merlin

New member
You're right, fitting is a pitty but don't forget, rotors are serviceable parts

if you need to mill down the rotors every time you change it the $400- will be an utopia

take an sti MY'02-'04 rotors (very cheap here as there is a lot of)
made a simple 12+mm braket with 4 hole and a spacer, for each side of course

If i haven't buy some dba rotors i would have done it that way

my next set up will be with unmodded 205 calipers and sti'04 rotors, or perhaps looks for audi RS4 B7 brembo setup and 18" to clear the rotor :lol:
 

darthripley

Moderator
thanks for all the pics Andre.
now i see how hard it would be to make brackets.

how much are you having the rotors milled down - how many mm was it again?
what size spacer are you going to use so the rotor will clear the lower ball joint?
 

Nitro_Alltrac

New member
It's good to see some pictures. This is something I've been thinking about but wasn't entirely sure how bad it was going to be. I'm going to wait and see how you do it Andre.
 

etantshi

Moderator
darthripley":ot1jrm1j said:
thanks for all the pics Andre.
now i see how hard it would be to make brackets.

how much are you having the rotors milled down - how many mm was it again?
what size spacer are you going to use so the rotor will clear the lower ball joint?

Probably going to mill down between 6-8mm. Anything more than that I think would be too much.
 

phattyduck

New member
Do you think moving up to a Stoptech 332mmx32mm disk would give you sufficient extra room for a bracket? That would move the caliper another 8.5mm away from the hub. I figure you would still need to rotate the caliper up or down to avoid interferance with the 'ears' still.

I'm hoping to get the ST205 calipers front and rear that I got with my ST205 clip installed on my Alltrac Camry (the brakes bolt on in the same way as the Alltrac Celica).

-Charlie
 

etantshi

Moderator
phattyduck":3e8oeg0k said:
Do you think moving up to a Stoptech 332mmx32mm disk would give you sufficient extra room for a bracket? That would move the caliper another 8.5mm away from the hub. I figure you would still need to rotate the caliper up or down to avoid interferance with the 'ears' still.

I'm hoping to get the ST205 calipers front and rear that I got with my ST205 clip installed on my Alltrac Camry (the brakes bolt on in the same way as the Alltrac Celica).

-Charlie

I think you do do it with a 324mm disc. This is an option if you wanna use rex rotors. That should give you enough room to run some fasteners through a bracket without hitting the ear of the caliper. In essence, something similar to what 'john the revelator' did with his setup. A 332 disc would more than likely allow you to run the calipers 'straight up' in the stock location with a bracket.
 

phattyduck

New member
etantshi":s5bzkcfu said:
phattyduck":s5bzkcfu said:
Do you think moving up to a Stoptech 332mmx32mm disk would give you sufficient extra room for a bracket? That would move the caliper another 8.5mm away from the hub. I figure you would still need to rotate the caliper up or down to avoid interferance with the 'ears' still.

I'm hoping to get the ST205 calipers front and rear that I got with my ST205 clip installed on my Alltrac Camry (the brakes bolt on in the same way as the Alltrac Celica).

-Charlie

I think you do do it with a 324mm disc. This is an option if you wanna use rex rotors. That should give you enough room to run some fasteners through a bracket without hitting the ear of the caliper. In essence, something similar to what 'john the revelator' did with his setup. A 332 disc would more than likely allow you to run the calipers 'straight up' in the stock location with a bracket.
'04 STi disks are pretty tempting, though the hub center is 57mm instead of 54.1 (or 55mm in the case of the ST205), which would require some sort of centering ring. I am reasonably sure Stoptech (and others) have a 54.1mm center bore, 5x100 hat for a large disk (like the Stoptech 332mmx32mm). Overall brake balance could be fixed by just running slightly more aggressive pad in the rear. The only downside is initial cost, as replacement disks should be cheaper than full stock STi or ST205 disks.

-Charlie
 

CMS-GT4

Active member
So since I have the sti disc I was looking at the possible idea of milling them down like what is done with the st205 rotors. The sti discs are more shallow than the 205 discs but I am afraid they might be too shallow to mill them down.

I was doing the math, and I compared the rotor on the hub to the caliper and it looks like the the face of the sti disc would be .7 or so mm further out than the st205 rotor after being milled and fit with a 4.8mm spacer. Since the disc is thinner, a 1mm spacer could be put on the inside brake pad to make up the centering different but the outside pad might be too close to the face. I do not have new pads in hand, so I can not get a true reading other than the numbers I crunch. It seems easier to add a spacer to a rotor than trying to move a it the other way since it is fixed.

I wonder if you had a sti rotor hat, if a 1mm ring spacer could be put between the hat and the disc to make the rotor perfectly centered on the caliper.

I am sure I could have the ear of the caliper taken down 1mm, but I am not sure if that would cause an issue with material strength.

EDIT: It looks like they make spacers for the hats. I only need a 1-2mm one though if I get sti rotor hats.
http://www.hrpworld.com/index.cfm?tpc=R ... on=product
 

CMS-GT4

Active member
I have been looking at my brake options. I listed my sti rotors on ebay again. If they sell I will look into a 2 piece solution for the 205 calipers.

There is a vendor who sells stoptech hats separately. So I might be able to score some sti hats and just use a hat spacer to move the disc outward to be centered in the caliper. I still may try and sell the 205 calipers and if I sell both I might look into an off the shelf kit.

EDIT:
Here is a 2-piece rotor designed for the sti that is smaller than stock for weight savings. Depending on offset, this may be the perfect solution for 205 calipers.

http://www.iwsti.com/forums/brakes-susp ... lease.html

http://www.amsperformance.com/cart/AMS/ ... e.com.html
 
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