all4it standard brakes are MORE than adequate for a standard car they really are VERY good on the XR4x4 especially considering the speed+acceleration of the thing. theyre very over-engineered you'd be surprised at how well these things stop as standard! i can lock the front wheels on mine at 100mph quite easily, and the tyres aint cheap naffy ones either

as for point 2 whilst i do agree with you... it's be a bit silly to fit 8 pot watercooled WRC brakes with 355mm discs toa 1.1 pop plus fiesta :P

as for the grinding of the TRE i'll say again i havent done this nor am i reccomending it, i'm just giving you all the facts that it is possible and many people have done it before with success... the actual ammount of metal that needs removing is TINY, were taking about 1mm worth, if that (as it only rubs a TINY ammount... after the disks have about 100miles worth of wear on them it wont catch anymore its that much of a tiny ammount. now whilst i'm not a structural engineer i personally dont see it being a problem as the thing's got more than enuf meat on it and it not under extreme stress... but like i said i cant back that up with techy physics stuff

as for spacing out the calipers to use the 280mm discs, ive heard that this actually provides % more braking power than moving to the 4x4 cos calipers... but thats just word of mouth n i cant back that up with any proof etc.