New brakes for Jonny's Maserati?

Now that the wheels are sorted on the Ghibli, it's time to start looking for new brakes! After doing some initial research, I'm not suprised to find that there appears to be no off-the-shelf upgrade kit for the MY92 Ghibli, although there are kits for the MY94 and later cars. So again, this is going to mean having something custom made, or at least having an adapter made so that an MY94 Ghibli kit (or maybe even the 3200 GT kit since I now have 18" wheels) can be fitted to my car.


The brakes that I'm after are these Tarox 10 pots. The ones pictured here have a 330mm diamter disc, but I might be able to install 350mm discs behind my new wheels. This would transform the braking capability of the car enormously!

If you do any research on the Ghibli (Enrico's pages are a good start) then it soon becomes apparent that Maserati recognised that the brakes were a weak point in the design of the car. Every time they bought out a new version of the car then they upgraded the brakes. Fitting larger wheels to the later cars was probably driven as much by the desire for increased braking performance as it was the ground clearance problem. Also, if you look at pictures of the Ghibli Cup racing cars, you'll notice that lots of ducting hose was installed on the cars to improve cooling of the brakes... on the Ghibli Cup Evoluzione cars they brought out a new front bumber/spoiler to facilitate routing more air to the larger brakes.

So the idea is to fit larger, more efficient brakes. If the brakes are more efficient, then for daily use they shouldn't run as hot and therefore should be more effective and not fade under heavy breaking. An alternative of course would be to fit some carbon breakes, which actually work better the hotter they run! But they're a bit expensive and I think a bit wasted off the track? But I should be honest and say that the upgrade is also for aesthetics, since the original brakes look terribly inadequate behind the new wheels.

So... where to get an adapter made? Modena Performance along to the rescue! This German company that specialises in tuning Maserati cars has accepted the challenge to design and manufacture an adapter for my car so as to enable their Tarox brake kit to be installed. Initially, they wanted to keep my car for a few days in order to get the dimensions off it and check clearances, but this is not practical since it's a 5 hour drive to their workshop. However, they've agreed that they may be able to carry out the work if I send them one of my front wheels.

So, assuming the price is right, I'll plan on sending them a wheel in the winter when I've taken the car off the road to avoid the salt. With the car off the road, I might get round to fitting that Aquamist kit too!