The Volkswagen Racing Big Brake Conversion gives a real supercar look and feel in the braking department.  A much bigger disc and pad area gives greater heat capacity, thus reducing the effect of fade, whilst the stiffer calipers and stainless steel brake lines reduce the complicance in the braking system.

We need a front brake kit that can stand up to the demands of circuit racing, yet is affordable and reliable.  Surprisingly, none of the established brake companies could offer us what we wanted, so we commissioned our own exclusive development programme with our partners Caparo AP Braking.  This VWR Big Brake Kit is the result.

Available now for Golf 5/6 platform cars, to include Scirocco, TT, A3, S3, Octavia, Leon.  In development is a version of the kit for Golf 4 platform cars, including Beetle, first generation TT, A3, S3, Leon and Octavia.

The front calipers are lightweight aluminium forged large-pad units, finished in red with the Volkswagen Racing script in white.  Calipers are also available in gloss black (for Golf/Scirocco R owners), blue for R32, silver and green (for Octavia). Special colours can also be arranged.  These clamp large 352mm ventilated and grooved 2-piece discs.  This set up reduces the unsprung weight of the standard brakes, and unsurprisingly provides dramatically better braking, both in terms of pedal response and resistance to fade in hard use.

We use exactly this brake set up for road, track or race - for full race we simply use different dust seals due to the high operating temperatures.  Either road or race can be specified.

The forged calliper body also provides intrinsic compressive stresses to help combat the negative effects of calliper flex, allowing improved force distribution and reduced vibration.

A great deal of development has gone into establishing the best piston diameters to suit the Golf 5/6 platform-car's braking system and servo assistance.  We are very pleased that we have found the optimum sizes to give maximum braking response without being too over-servoed, or 'grabby' - a common problem on brake hardware that has been developed generically, rather than for a specific application such as this one.

Built specifically for the Golf 5/6 platform cars, the front brakes require a minimum wheel diameter of 18" because of the disc and caliper size - the kit fits all the standard and aftermarket 18" wheels that we have tested.  The kit fits straight onto any of these cars without modification, and includes everything you need to fit:

  ►2x calipers

  ►uprated pads (Ferodo DS2500 are supplied)

  ►2x 352mm discs

  ►2x aluminium bells

  ►2x caliper mounting brackets

  ►Goodridge braided steel flexible brake lines

  ►new, longer wheel bolts for front wheels, including 2 locking wheel bolts

Please note that as high performance brakes, pad and disc life tends to be shorter when used hard than the standard brakes.