Painting your brake Calipers, a How-To

[Melt]

At one time or another, we all get tired of our boring looking calipers. We see painted calipers, but we dont really want to risk fucking anything on our cars up. We also dont really want to take everything off when we paint it. Well in this article, I will show you an easy way to do up your calipers using tools you already have

Items needed:
- Jack stands (or for the ghetto folk, cinder blocks)
- Jack
- Tire Iron
- Newspaper, and plastic bags
- Degreaser or other cleaning solvent (make sure its non flammable)
- Bristle brush of some sort
- High Heat Paint

Ok, so I decided to paint my cailpers. I wanted them to match my yellow 'H' Emblems, so I picked up some Dupli-Color Engine Enamel Ceramic 500 degree Daytona Yellow DE164s Paint at my local autozone. High heat paint is important because your brakes get hot. You can get paint rated higher heat than this, but I couldnt find any that was yellow so I went with this.

Project car: 1991 Honda Civic LX Sedan

Step 1: Jack up car, remove tires, put on jackstand, and repeat with other side of car (for those of you who have 4 wheel disk brakes, do em in whatever order suits you)



My car only has front disks so I just jacked up the front


Step 2: Clean your calipers as good as you can. I chose to use some degreser we had, which probably didnt do the best job, but I could not think of anything harsher than this that wasnt flammable


This looks good, doesent it?


Step 3: Cover all the shit you do not want to paint, do not just spray away because the end product will look like crap and you will hate it. Dont worry if a little paint gets on the rotor, it will come off once you brake.




Step 4: Do a couple of nice LIGHT coats, using an hour between applications (what I did). Dont try to do it all at one time, because you will have runs and it will look like crap.


I did about 4 Coats in the end, once you are satisfied and the paint is DRY remove all the bags and newspaper and shit and admire your work




Since it was predited to rain the next day, I wanted to go have some fun so I threw on my almost bald steelies


It ended up not raining, so time to throw the VX rims back on


And there you have it folks, one quality job.

Final note: Do not paint your drum brakes as it looks pretty ricey, and usually flakes off (if you like it do it, but I wouldnt)

[sp3cial_bl3nd]

thanks for the post, i've been wantin to do that for a while... guess i should just go for it huh...

[BullShifter]

I think painting the calipers is a shitload easier if you remove it completely. Then you must bleed the brakes after re-installing.

Remove the 2 caliper bolts & pads
Squeeze piston back into caliper
Hang from coil spring with bungee cord
Mask off all areas & paint
This way you dont have to disconnect the brake line & no bleeding is needed. Try not to get paint on any seals, you dont want these to crack under hard braking.

[CivicLeader]

Aren't there brake calipar paint kits that allow you to brush on the paint instead of having to spray paint the calipar. I have a buddy of mine with a 2003 WRX (blue) who painted his calipars (blue) and the kit he got was just like this. He cleaned his calipars and all other areas that would be painted, mixed the paint/resin togethere, and brushed the final product on the calipar. It came out really nice and there was no threat of the paint getting on anything it wasn't supposed to and also there was no need to mechanically alter anything/bleed the brake system.
I think this would be a much easier way of doing things...perhaps more expensive but if you're goin to go through all of the work to make your ride look better...

[BullShifter]

There is paint for calipers applied by brushing. This stuff works great, I cant think of the brand I have used before.

[CivicLeader]

Yeah...I still can't think of what it is...I'll e-mail my buddy and let ya'll know what it is...Now that I think of it...I think he mail-ordered the paint kit....
I'll keep you updated....

[darkaccord]

I used VHT caliper and drum paint, it worked great.

Heres some tips:
-Read the directions!!
-The mosy important part is masking every thing off
-I slid a plastic grocery bag under the brake pad
-Put 3 coats on
-Believe it or not, this, and all spray paint looks much better when you accually shake the can for a minute like they say!!!

[BullShifter]

Expoxy caliper paint(brush-on) Thats stuff I used

[SilverY2KCivic]

Looks good Melt. And a great how-to using pics also, very helpful! I'm looking at painting my calipers soon too. My rear drums came a high gloss black from the factory, and so I thought I'd match my calipers to the same. I don't need anything flashy for mine. I have the paint already, just need to find the time to do it.

[Melt]

coo ... just did my drums black the other day ... im actually thinking of maybe repainting the calipers silver or black ... but i personally like em yellow so im gonna keep em that way ... even if other people call it ricey ... because what isnt rice anymore ... cant do shit to the exterior of your car now ... im getting real tired of all these "stock with a lip" fags that try to talk people out of buying kits.

[eckoman_pdx]

I company called G2 makes brake caliper and drum painting kits you brush on, like you guys were talking about
www.g2usa.com

[self-tuning]

I painted my purple, thanks for the great DIY, Melt. By the way, i saw on Vandam Domain website (dont remember the URL), he use aluminum foil to make a cup and spray paint in it, then use brush to paint the caliper. Yeah im usin Dupli-Color High Temp Resistent up to 500 F from Auto Zone. They also have caliper paint at Auto Zone too.