How To: Paint Brake Calipers

Melt

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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 f**king 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 s**t 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 s**t and admire your work




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)
 

knockoff

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i wanna paint mine a nice flat black.. thanks Melt..

** rubbing hands together awaiting weekend project **
 


Melt

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be sure to get some high heat paint! Regular paint will work fine for the drums, but them calipers get hot!
 

VTECSOHC02

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Nice Work and love the pics!!! Diffenently a weekend project!!!
 


HondaJunkie

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read this same post on another forum. did it a couple weekends ago turned out good. again, nice pics and easy directions.
 

Dan1220

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they turned out great. Good directions, easy to follow. Good Job!!:D
 

SiGuy

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i did it also, only the back has been painted, i messed up and paited too much of the brakes...EEK



 

Mr. Lin

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Mine look better :P Just playin'
 

SiGuy

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i hope the stuff i painted that i wasnt meant to wont messa nything up, i dont think it should though.
 

dinko

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damn...you should atleast unscrew and pull taht sucker up or something and take the brake pads out before you start spraying away...i mean if youre gonna do something like that take your time and do a good job!

mine are rusty and kind of go good with my bronze rims hahaha
 

SiGuy

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well on my front calipers im gonna do it right this time.
 

Dr.Anus

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ya, I'm gonna go with dinko on this one, shouldn't you at least swing the calipers up before painting them?
 

IGotASlowCivic

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Wow i totally forgot i painted mine. I painted mine black.. i dont even remember what color it was before...
 

lj17

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dinko said:
damn...you should atleast unscrew and pull taht sucker up or something and take the brake pads out before you start spraying away...i mean if youre gonna do something like that take your time and do a good job!

mine are rusty and kind of go good with my bronze rims hahaha

:werd:
take them off, remove the pads, clean them up and then paint them. it is a lot cleaner job. also, pull your rotors and paint them too. thats what i did. everything will look real nice when its done, not some sloppy paint job
 

Melt

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ok mine lasted the rest of the time i owned my civic from when i took those pictures ... so like a year ... and it still looked like i just painted it so dont try to diss the way i did it. Im sure a lot of people dont know how to take that s**t off (i didnt at the time, but can change my pads now)
 

true

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hehe. melt.. i actually do my pads the same way.. cept instead of a plastic bag i jus wrap a towel around my rotor.. comes out fine too.. but mine isn't as strong.. i jus paint it flat black with high-temp.. =)

great post =)
 

lj17

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Melt said:
ok mine lasted the rest of the time i owned my civic from when i took those pictures ... so like a year ... and it still looked like i just painted it so dont try to diss the way i did it. Im sure a lot of people dont know how to take that s**t off (i didnt at the time, but can change my pads now)
sorry man, i wasn't hating on your paint job, but if you have larger, more open rims, it would really pay to take them off. i have 5 spoke, 17s, so you see pretty much all of the brakes. i guess thats why i'm biased toward my "method". with the rims in your pics, it dosen't look that bad. mainly, i guess i'm trying to encourage people who are thinking of doing it. if you don't mind taking your calipers and disks/drums off, it will really produce a good final product. and if you do take the calipers off, take the rotors off too, because it will be a snap. paint them as well. that way the hat on the rotor is painted and not all rusty. you can paint the whole thing, and paint on the face of the rotor will just wear off due to friction, won't take that long either
 


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