How to Repaint your Brake Calipers
04-05-2005, 10:10 PM
#1
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How to Repaint your Brake Calipers
Okay,
Painted my calipers for looks. Yes, painted calipers are happy calipers and happy calipers make you stop faster.
Not hard to do:
1. Jack up car safely. See http://p-car.com/diy/jack/ for details
2. I replaced my rotors too so took the calipers off without bleeding brakes but you can paint them in place (painted the rotor hubs too - of course).
3. Wipe off brake dust with cloth.
4. Sand calipers with 320 grit sandpaper.
5. Use compressed air to remove dust, etc.
6. Cover carefully and spray down with brake fluid to de-grease (don't get it on brake pads).
7. Mask bleed nipple etc.
8. Paint. I used Dupli-Color high-temperature caliper brush-on paint. Came in a kit with a cleaner but brake cleaner worked better.
9. I put on 6 coats, 5 minutes apart then waited 7 days and put on 4 more coats, 5 minutes apart. I changed my brush every 20 minutes as it got "gunky"
10. Left to dry for 5 days and applied high heat resistant vinyl decals from http://www.xenonmods.com/newporschedecal.htm
Enjoy!
p.s. You can see them peeking out from behind the D90's below with before and after pictures with wheels off (no, my suspension is not THAT high - the car is still up on the jack stand!!).
Painted my calipers for looks. Yes, painted calipers are happy calipers and happy calipers make you stop faster.
Not hard to do:
1. Jack up car safely. See http://p-car.com/diy/jack/ for details
2. I replaced my rotors too so took the calipers off without bleeding brakes but you can paint them in place (painted the rotor hubs too - of course).
3. Wipe off brake dust with cloth.
4. Sand calipers with 320 grit sandpaper.
5. Use compressed air to remove dust, etc.
6. Cover carefully and spray down with brake fluid to de-grease (don't get it on brake pads).
7. Mask bleed nipple etc.
8. Paint. I used Dupli-Color high-temperature caliper brush-on paint. Came in a kit with a cleaner but brake cleaner worked better.
9. I put on 6 coats, 5 minutes apart then waited 7 days and put on 4 more coats, 5 minutes apart. I changed my brush every 20 minutes as it got "gunky"
10. Left to dry for 5 days and applied high heat resistant vinyl decals from http://www.xenonmods.com/newporschedecal.htm
Enjoy!
p.s. You can see them peeking out from behind the D90's below with before and after pictures with wheels off (no, my suspension is not THAT high - the car is still up on the jack stand!!).
Last edited by Marc Shaw; 07-05-2005 at 07:29 PM.
04-06-2005, 10:45 AM
#2
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Thanks all - I think it turned out great.
James - I did just the outer half as I figured properly cleaning and preping the inner half without removing the calipers completely would be too hard (see picture below).
Jaime - 1 kit had plenty to do all 4 calipers (only used half the can).
Rick - while 10 coats sounds like alot, it is not very thick. Instructions said do 2 -3 medium coats but I was worried about runs etc. so I did very thin coats. After the first 6, I was worried about lifting all previous coats so left it for a week (can said 5 days) so I would not lift the other coats when I put on more. I did not want to have to mask half the car to protect from over-spray so I used brush on - spray would likely also work well too.
Marc
p.s. Note the new Ferodo's too!
James - I did just the outer half as I figured properly cleaning and preping the inner half without removing the calipers completely would be too hard (see picture below).
Jaime - 1 kit had plenty to do all 4 calipers (only used half the can).
Rick - while 10 coats sounds like alot, it is not very thick. Instructions said do 2 -3 medium coats but I was worried about runs etc. so I did very thin coats. After the first 6, I was worried about lifting all previous coats so left it for a week (can said 5 days) so I would not lift the other coats when I put on more. I did not want to have to mask half the car to protect from over-spray so I used brush on - spray would likely also work well too.
Marc
p.s. Note the new Ferodo's too!
Last edited by bhensarl; 04-15-2005 at 03:48 PM.
04-07-2005, 04:07 AM
#3
I took different approach, I ordered a stencil kit here: http://www.europdr.com/caliperstencil.htm
and followed the instructions found here : http://p-car.com/caliper/
and followed the instructions found here : http://p-car.com/caliper/
