Help me to spend £500 on a brake upgrade

[tacoma]

Her indoors wont let me touch them myself, so all offers of advice on where to go (steady) gratefully received.

No track days, but would like them to enhance the look of my P&J.

mike

[zippee]

tacoma said:

Her indoors wont let me touch them myself, so all offers of advice on where to go (steady) gratefully received. No track days, but would like them to enhance the look of my P&J. mike

For that sort of price it'll be a change to grooved discs and fast road pads, possibly with a little change left over for braided hoses (Not a fan myself but others recommend).
The bulk of your £500 will be eaten up in labour charges if your not up to doing the work yourself.
If you look at my cost breakdown in my profile it'll give you an idea as to what the parts will cost (possibly more if you have them supplied by the garage as well), then you'll need to add in however many hours labour you think may be required to fit.

I doubt your budget will stretch to larger discs and the associated caliper work, though for fast road use the std size Chim discs are more than adequate.

[V8 Archie]

When I was looking I reckoned it would be about £500 plus fitting for green stuff (EBC is the company). That includes discs and hoses all round too.

I've heard that these brakes can seriously eat discs when they get hot (to the tune of a set per trackday). I decided that I'd rather have my brakes fade and give them a rest than double the cost of the day.

[GreenV8S]

What do you want to achieve? If it's just looks, there are probably better ways to improve the looks of your car but you could get the calipers cleaned and painted and fit some shiny discs with lots of holes an stuff in them. But this will do nothing for the performance, which is normally why people upgrade the brakes.

[tacoma]

What can i say, GreenV8S, I want to achieve both better performance and looks. My 'quest' started because i had the car checked by a TVR engineer who pointed out that the front breakes were not working as they should. The wear on the disks indicated that the pads were not making contact with the full area as they should.

I am not about to fit neon lights under the car, but many modern types of caliper can aethetically enhance the car; and i see no problem with that. But being a relative newcomer to the TVR world i have asked for advice rather than hear that horrible 'oh, if you had asked you could have done x for half the cost'.

with me?

mike

[GarryM]

Mike - you ran a thread on this a couple of weeks ago and got quite a few responses. Has the situation changed or did you not like the previous replies?

[tacoma]

Hi Garry,

thanks again for your interest. Yest the situation did change, I increased the available budget and was really hoping for a trade contat that i could drive to and have the work done. I have decided NOW, to go down the line that zippee suggested in the previous thread and have my local mamas and papas garage do the work at £50 per hour. I am fairly capable and could probably do this myself but Sandra refuses to let me touch the brake system.

Thanks everyone, consider this thread closed, from my persepective anyway.

mike

[mgaut]

tacoma said:

Thanks everyone, consider this thread closed

... but

having recently nearly ended up with a pheasant in the front of my Chim, I had my brakes looked at, and it turned out the front hoses were heat-perished, so for circa £100 I've got new braided hoses all 'round (including fitting). The car now stops !!

Having cut open both ends of the original hoses, one end was fine but the end in the engine bay was about the size os a pin head.

Money well spent, and a bit cheaper than new pads/disks etc.

Mike

[Nuggs]

Slightly O/T, but Trinitycall has just had his front stoppers upgraded to Brembo jobbies with grooved discs.

Obviously they bust the £500 budget (probably quite considerably), but they look the mutt's nuts and according to Nicholas stop the thing on its nose.

Now he's got me thinking (and saving)...

[tacoma]

Mike,

thanks for the suggestion about the braided hoses, I have ordered a set from Tim at ACT, should be here tomorrow and hopefully the whole lot going on the car on Saturday.

Appreciate the advice

mike

[trinitycall]

Nuggs said:

Slightly O/T, but Trinitycall has just had his front stoppers upgraded to Brembo jobbies with grooved discs. Obviously they bust the £500 budget (probably quite considerably), but they look the mutt's nuts and according to Nicholas stop the thing on its nose. Now he's got me thinking (and saving)...

Hi Mark,

I posted a pic on another brake thread on this forum. I'll let you know the total cost when the bill comes through.

Although, if you work an extra couple of hours today that should pretty much cover it

Regards,

N