I have a 96 LX sedan, so I am hauling my big *** car down to a stop with drums out back and little discs up front. The Legend brake upgrade sounds appealing, but is a bit out of my dirt-poor price range. It seems like the V6 and the Wagon have bigger brakes (as well as rear discs), but are the caliper pistons actually bigger? Or do they just have bigger rotors? Also, am I right in assuming that upgrading to rear discs would require a larger master cylinder? (or smaller? I don't remember if drums require more or less fluid displacement) Any information would be helpful, ESPECIALLY specs on LX brakes compared to the ones on the V6 and Wagon. Lastly, how difficult would the conversion to be for an amateur mechanic who has the know-how (and a Chilton's Manual) but not necessarily the experience?

 

I know for sure you need 15" rims to do that........ it's not that hard as I have changed parts out quite easily on the suspention. make sure you have all of the right tools and you are all set

 

does anyone know the specs of the brakes on the LX and/or the V6 and wagon?

 

11" vs 12" i believe may be 13" but i doubt it since stock rims are 15"

 

Yes, you can upgrade to either Legend dual piston calipers or AV6/Wagon calipers. With the Legend calipers you obviously get dual pistons and with the AV6/Wagon calipers the piston inside is actually larger. It was covered before but I can't remember or find the thread that discussed the actual sizes.

To swap your rear drums to discs you can either use the rear brakes from the AV6 or an EX, they are both the same. Just get the rear trailing arms and everything thats mounted to them and swap it in. You'll also want to get the e-brakes cables.

The front rotors on the AV6/Wagon are (I think) 11.2" and the front rotors on the EX/DX/LX are (I think) 10.2" These sizes were also discussed in a thread but I can't find it now, but I'm almost possitive those are the diameters of the rotors.

For the master cylinder, I don't believe it's required but deffinately recommended as well as the proportioning valve.

If this were me doing all this work, I would really consider doing a rotor-over-hub conversion at the same time to make changing rotors much easier in the future. You can read up more on this here.

It's not a hard job to do. It can be a real PITA though. The front brakes are probably going to give you the most headaces. I would suggest doing a search through both the archives and recent threads to read up on what problems people have had and what they to over come them while changing the front rotors. There are many threads to read through. I know I've posted in a few threads like that recently. You should get a good idea of how hard it is to do the front brakes and whats needed in terms of tools to do the job. If you can complete the front brakes, you can handle swapping the rear disc brakes in as well.