"Big brake upgrades when nothing else will do..."

Stage 2: Big Brake Upgrade

Because of the forward weight transfer under braking the front brakes do most of the work, almost twice as much as the rears under heavy braking. Although the standard front brakes are bigger than the rears, the fronts are still the limiting factor. Various 'Big Brake' conversions are available, which are essentially spacers to mount the original front calipers further out so that bigger disks can be fitted. The rear brakes are left as standard. The Big Brake upgrade Tower View fitted for me increased the front disk diameter from 240mm to 280mm. This increased the cooling area by roughly 50%, and it seemed the brakes wouldn't overheat however hard I pushed them. Moving the calipers out also increases the amount of braking at the front wheels, which makes the rears less likely to lock up under heavy braking. It was only after I drove the car with these brakes fitted that I noticed that the car had been slightly tail happy under heavy braking, with the original brakes. The effect was barely noticeable, but I'd certainly learned to keep the car absolutely straight under braking. With the modified set-up the car had a slight tendency to straighten up under braking, which meant the car was positively stable even under heavy braking. With care, trail braking into corners was now possible. I felt this improved the handling of the car, but I wouldn't want to move the brake balance any further forward because the car will tend to lock the front brakes. So I wouldn't upgrade the front brakes further than this without taking steps to correct the brake balance.

If you're driving a 4.0 or 4.5 litre car this is probably the most extreme upgrade you'll ever need. It increased the braking capacity substantially. Costs vary depending where you buy from and how much of the work you do yourself, but as a very rough guide you might expect to pay up to around £500 for an upgrade like this. Remember, this is for the front brakes only.

Stage 3: Monster Brake Upgrade

The Big Brake upgrade was great. But various tweaks which followed increased the power of the car, culminating in the installation of a mildly tuned 4.6 liter V8 from V8 Developments. With worked heads and an ACT induction system, this puts out nearly 40% more power than the original engine. Obviously with the extra power (yahoo!) I was using the brakes much more, and now I found that on some circuits the brakes would overheat when I started pushing it.

Once again Tower View had the answer: a 'Monster Brake' conversion. This involves replacing the disks and calipers all round. When I was talking through the options with Dave at Tower View I explained that I wanted the biggest brakes I could get - there was no way I was going to buy a whole new set of brakes and then find they were still marginal. Dave took me at my word. The rear disks and calipers are bigger than the front brakes were after the 'Big Brake' conversion. They are huge! The front brakes are even bigger, they completely fill the 15" wheels and the new four-pot calipers barely clear the wheel. We even had to move the balance weights to make room for them. Despite this extra size, the new brake components actually weigh less than the originals, keeping the all-important un-sprung weight to a minimum.

The first chance I had to try the monster brakes in anger was at a MaxTrack track day at Bedford. This was an excellent track day with plenty of track time and very little traffic, so I could concentrate on testing the new brakes. (If you were following me round and wandering why I was braking in strange places, this was why!) I came to the conclusion that on the limit the bias was a little too far forward. After another brief trip to Tower View to fit an adjustable hydraulic brake regulator, I guessed at a rough balance and then headed off to the TVRCC track day at Cadwell Park for more testing. The rough setting was about right, but I found I could move the bias rearwards a fraction without destabilizing the car. It was interesting to see how far I could move the adjuster before the effects were really noticeable, it seems you can have the brakes a long way out of balance and the effects will only be noticeable if you brake hard when the car is unbalanced. I suspect there are quite a few cars out there with uprated brakes which are out of balance, waiting to catch somebody out on a wet motorway.

A few weeks later I entered a sprint at Goodwood, which gave me a chance to test the new brakes on a track I knew fairly well. There are a couple of corners at Goodwood which are approached absolutely flat out at speeds approaching 150 MPH, with braking left to the last possible moment. At places like this you tend to note your braking points very carefully indeed; hit the brakes a couple of yards too late and you can be in real trouble. It is also vitally important to be able to brake near the limit of grip without locking a wheel â a locked wheel has much less grip than a rotating one and can mean you don't slow down in time for the corner. Obviously, at these speeds we all leave a safety margin, but the more controllable, balanced and predictable the brakes are, the less margin you need and the harder and later you can brake. This translates directly to quicker lap times and a happy driver!

The new brakes behaved impeccably. The pedal pressure is slightly lighter than before, but the balance is spot on and they're so progressive that I could confidently brake hard enough to squeal all four tyres from 140 + down to about 70, without locking a wheel. This was the first time I ever broke the 100 second barrier for a lap from a standing start. This isn't the first time the barrier has been broken by a roadgoing TVR â Sean Hayes achieved this some months ago in his 420 SEAC âÄì but it was a first for me, and for a change I came back without having scared myself silly. Although I said at the beginning that the standard brakes are OK, the uprated ones are distinctly better. This must be just about the ultimate brake upgrade for a roadgoing car. But be warned, it doesn't come cheap.