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Author: Jerry Holmolka
Edited by: John Forshaw
June 9, 2002:
I've finally painted the calipers and rotors on the car.
The results are very nice. This is a totally cosmetic
mod that takes anywhere from 3 to 24 hours of work depending
on how much time you want to spend. I did not spend
a lot of time doing everything perfectly, therefore this job
took me about 5 hours to do. Here is the process:
Place the car on jack-stands on all four corners
Pop off the rims
Remove the calipers, caliper brackets and
the rotors
Here's the car without the above parts
Clean off the caliper using Simple Green,
a brush and brake cleaner
then tape off the area around the calipers and apply 5
thin coats of high-temp paint (let dry 15-30 min between coats)
Same process for the rear calipers
As the calipers are drying, time to remove
the rust from the rotors
The left one is cleaned, the right isn't.
See the vast difference?
I used a cordless drill and rust remover pad and some scotch
pads
to get to the tighter places. Do NOT use a wire pad
as
it will damage the rotors!
Here you can better see the left one that
has the rust removed
After they're all cleaned, I painted them
over using flat black
high-temp paint. You could use silver, yellow or pink,
but I
decided on a more subtle look. Note that I also shot
the pads.
This helps augment that clean look after its completed.
The flat
dried fast, so I used 4 coats on what you see below.
Ok, time to clean the caliper brackets.
Make sure that all
loose rust is removed and that there are NO oily patches,
as this will not let the paint coat properly.
5 coats on the now well cleaned front and
rear caliper brackets,
but not on both sides, its not needed.
Back at the car, time to remove the paper
and taped off areas.
Slide on the rotor, bolt on the brackets,
but do NOT tighten yet.
Clip in the 2 metal clips that hold the pads in place THEN
tighten
those bolts. Slide the newly painted caliper over the pads,
tighten the bolts.
Same process for the rear brake.
Put your rims back on and torque to spec.
Enjoy the view!
This is the front wheel.
This is the rear wheel.
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