Painting brake calipers

[Kieran Hockings]

Thinking of painting the brake calipers front and back on my t sport.   Are there any special paints and primers I should be using, or will standard rattle cans do the job?    Cheers

[oldcodger]

Just give them a clean and degrease and use one of the colours from the Hammerite range, smooth or crinkle, no primer needed, worked for me, but assuming you are going for a bright colour you will end up having to clean them regularly as the muck / brake dust soon covers them.

[OfficialiAmNaz]

There is two ways of going around it that I have seen.

1) I've seen people use newspaper and cover the wheel arch and brake discs completely and only leaving the break caliper and then spray paint 3 or 4 layers with a high temperature paint.

I've attached an example of this. If you look closely you can see the brake pad painted as well. You can do this but it's just to look good but won't reduce rust inside where the pads sit.

OR

2) What I did was which I'll also recommend. Take of the caliper but leave the bottom half caliper with the brake line still on it. Make sure you don't leaving it hanging, use a hook to hold the caliper on to the springs.

Then use brake cleaner and really get them cleaned from brake dust. Sit the bottom half of the caliper with the brake line on a little stall and paint it like that. 

To get a good finish, use sand paper and a wire brush to really get the rust and dirt out and then use brake cleaner again.

Then start painting. Take your time and make sure you don't over spray. You can also use a primer but I didn't have much time to get mine and all I wanted was for them to look good. If you use 2 coats of primer the paint will stick better.

Im glad I painted mine, it looks good and on top of that it reduced rust etc. Make sure you cover your wheel arch, the doors and wing. Using spray paint the paint who'll somehow or another get on to the panels because its aerosol cans.

Here's a picture of mine. It's been a while so it's not looking that good. I haven't looked after mine.

Good Luck.

[Cookeh]

Take them off, best way to ensure you can clean and de-rust and prep them properly. Take your pads and pins out when you do it too. Then use tape to mask the piston boots and degrease/sand-down/smooth any edges or burrs. Then its as easy as grabbing some high temp (for obvious reasons) primer and colour. Double up on the primer, on top and bottom faces. Then with colour, three coats and two clears on top (again on each of the faces).

Take the time and effort to do it properly, it will look better and last longer. If you really want you could actually use a DA and polish the calipers post paint too.

[RazzerRazor]

Good example guys. Very detailed! 

I just used emery cloth, break cleaner and Halfords engine heat paint. 

[Kieran Hockings]

Thanks for all the tips!