Caliper painting

[1bad83ta]

Hey guys,

I am going to be flushing my brake system and I thought while I was at it I am going to paint the calipers and brackets.

Does anybody have a good method with materials to do this? I don't want to just half-ass spray bomb them.

Should I be using primer after I clean them up? Every write up I see on the internet just uses paint without primer and I know from experience that the paint just doesn't hold up without primer first.

[JoeliusZ28]

you would be surprised how well a proper spray-bomb job holds up. I spray painted mine with duplicolor no less than 6 years ago and they still look great! If i wanted to do anything better than that i would just have them powdercoated.

[94_LT1_Z28]

you would be surprised how well a proper spray-bomb job holds up. I spray painted mine with duplicolor no less than 6 years ago and they still look great! If i wanted to do anything better than that i would just have them powdercoated.

on the powdercoating

[1bad83ta]

you would be surprised how well a proper spray-bomb job holds up. I spray painted mine with duplicolor no less than 6 years ago and they still look great! If i wanted to do anything better than that i would just have them powdercoated.

did you use any primer joel?

[OVRKILL]

First choice would be powder coat.

If don't want to go that route and want a "powder like" appearance this is what I did:

1. Sand them (hand, dremel or air tool) smooth enough to remove casting marks.
2. Prime and sand between coats (I did 3, but I'm a little "picky"). I just used a standard body panel type primer...never worried about temp specific (hi-temp, caliper paint, etc).
3. Top coat...again, sanding in between coats (2-3x) with a standard top-coat/body color match paint.
4. Clear (2x).

Shot of rear cali's for reference...

[sman]

I did.... remove pistons, stuff and tape piston holes. Sandblast. DTM primer. Color (3 coats). Clear (3 coats). Still lookin good 4 1/2 years later.

[JoeliusZ28]

did you use any primer joel?

I think i used high-heat silver as my basecoat, and then followed up with anodized red and clear on top of that.

I just did the calipers on my colorado this way and it worked well.

[Boost Addict]

I used Dupli Color I believe. All I did was spray them with brake clean, scotch brite them, some fine sand paper, scotch brite again, hit them with brake clean and paint them. That process has held up well on my Camaro so far and it did on my Firebird also.

[WMCCjames]

I spray bombed mine 5 years ago...no primer. I used VHT.

[astroracer]

I used rustoleum industrial red from a gallon can on the Formula... Brushed it on after wire brushing and cleaning. Granted it isn't perfect but how anal do you need to get for a driver?
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[wyat5357]

Anyone know of a good place near Royal Oak that does caliper powdercoating and approx how much they charge?

[Virtue]

duplicolor has a caliper kit that works real good its a brush on, ive done a few sets of calipers with that kit and sprayed them with caliper spray paint, the brush on seems to hold up nicer imo

[mcalus]

I can powdercoat them if you blast them and tear them down.

[98blackbeauty]

I have used the brush on kit on several cars and the extra time and trouble for having them powder coated is not worth it.

[masterfab]

With a brush on kit it is hard to hide the brush stokes. even if you heat them up alittle it wont lay flat. iv seen alot of people doing this and to me its a deal breaker, kinda like a 100 foot paint job. and there are very few paints that dont chip. powder coating all the way with some POR-15 sprayable clear over the powdercoating and they will look nice for a while.

alittle note: if you intend to spray the POR-15 you have to buy the reducer/thinner and dont mix any richer than 50/50

sorry larry not trying to step on any toes here just have alot of exsperiance in this.