I spent a good part of today working on my Miata’s rear brakes. I had acquired a set of used brackets from a ’94 Miata from Mike’s Place, downtown Phoenix. Mike, the owner, obviously, has a shop that specializes in the maintenance/repair of Miatas and at the same time, he sells used parts taken off salvaged vehicles or the like. I was able to get used brackets for $100 for all 4 wheels.

The next thing I needed to do was sandblast them, clean them, then painted them with aluminum color Dupli-Color Brake Caliper paint. That makes the brackets match the color/paint of my existing calipers.

History in a nutshell: The 90-93 Miatas have 8.5 inch rear rotors (roughly) and the 94-97 Miatas have 9.87 inch rear rotors. Usually an upgrade to solid rotor (not cross drilled/slotted) rotors will handle the extra weight of the 302 and the beating of driving fast and quickly. To prove my point, look below (left is ’93 and right is ’94):

Ok, onto the job…

First, of course, remove the wheel…

You get presented with an apparatus that looks like the following:

You would remove the bolt at the bottom of the caliper (has a plastic cap on it).

Then remove the caliper by sliding it out by the remaining slide bolt (the top one). Go ahead and remove the clips, pads, squealer, and then the bracket by its two bolts, as shown:

You will be presented with this apparatus:

For the rear, you will definitely need to cut the sheet metal splash guard back about 1/2″ or a bit more all around. You’ll also need to cut off about 1″ of metal at the top end to clear way for the new bracket. Apparently you will need to have the rotor installed first before putting the bracket on.

The new bracket was supplied with Napa’s UP83159A rear bracket kit that includes all the metal guides and clips.

Reverse the disassembly as you did above with the new rotor, pads, and clips.

This is what you get:

With wheel on:

Cost of front brake project:
Rear brackets $25 a piece ($100 for all 4's divided by 4)...$50
UP83159A Hardware Kit from Napa.............................$14
OEM Rear Rotors from Mazda $18 a piece......................$36
Wagner Ceramic Premium (kit for 2 wheels)...................$40
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Total.......................................................$140