Now entering my second childhood and I have bought an '83 in fairly great
shape. Truth be known she has weathered the last 25 years much better than
I have. My first was a 1979 GS. This is a GSL. Mazda used 4 lugbolts that
screwed into the brake rotors. The rotors were held to the axles by the
bearings not just dropped on over the lug studs as most vehicles do today.
The rims were all 13" and the lug pattern is 110mm. Not standard at all as
today's is 114 or 100mm in the 4 bolt patterns. The 84 GSL SE went to a
standard 4 bolt pattern. From what I can see the front inner bearings are
the same for both rotors. The outers are different part numbers so I assume
are different in some way. The bearing seals are also the same part number.
The rear set will have to be investigated more to be sure a simple swap will
work there.
Now you are all up to date...I would like to move to a 14" rim to have a
better choice of tires and something other than the original rims that Mazda
produced. They were/are nice but there are a lot nicer ones out there
today. From what I have read the commonly thought of way to accomplish this
is to change the front suspension struts to the SE model. The SE means
special edition and at 25 yrs old are getting hard to find. Especially if
all I need to do is change the rotors to the SE rotors and use the correct
outer bearings. Did I mention I need a brake job so that is why I'd like to
find this out while she is waiting for spring inside the garage?
Another way would be for the replacement rotor maker to drill the lug
pattern at the 114mm size. Not sure how many people are of my thinking but
that would be a real easy modification...heck they could even go oversize on
the rotors a bit and sell a set of bigger calipers too. They do it for all
the other models. So I am looking for someone to point me in the right
direction. I know this is beyond the usual scope of this forum but it is
already January 1 and I gotta get going.
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