PAINTING BRAKES

11/02/01

Well this is something that I have wanted to do for a fair while, and finally I get the opportunity to complete the project. my main problem is of course, time constraints, I had kind of figured from a bit of research on the net and also thanks to G2IC.com that painting each pair of calipers would take about 2 hours and then I would have to let them dry at least overnight, and for me to find this much free time was a pain for a couple of weeks, finally I managed to do it……..

The first step was of course to remove the wheel and clean the calipers. I forgot to take photos but it really isn't that exciting anyway, the cleaning was probably the most difficult and time consuming part and unfortunately on the front pair alone I managed to completely destroy Dad's wire brush! To clean I liberally coated the brake with brake cleaner then got to work scrubbing this was hard work but the calipers looked great afterwards- really shiny silver colour they were cool and I nearly left them like this but figured nah they are only gonna get dirty again.

After masking off a fair portion of the car it was time to paint, I couldn't completely mask the rotor due to small gaps in each caliper so I suggest if you are a perfectionist then make sure to remove the caliper, this is a much more time consuming process and I figure my results were good enough for me. I used VHT high temp. brake paint in blue and gave it about 5 coats, you only have to wait about 5 minutes between each coat 'cos it dries to touch really quick, it can be difficult getting the paint into some spots on the caliper so I used a small paint brush to cover some small areas, be sure to use a good primer before applying paint too.

So here is a photo of the finished thing- looks good! The front calipers finished up taking me nearly 4 hours to complete due to the fact that I could only do one at a time and also the cleaning was a pain in the ass! This meant that I had to finish the project a week later by doing the rear, this was much easier and was done in about 2 and a half hours. Now I want to finish off the brakes by painting the hubs of the rotors either silver or gold, but we may have to wait a while for that one.

Go to my next mods page- EXHAUST/STEERING WHEEL/INDUCTION!