Painting Brake Calipers – How To

When I can, I like to write up a few ideas that if they don’t exactly add value to a used car, they certainly help to sell one.

This guy has an excellent YouTube channel – Chris Fix.

I’ve used his videos for years to remind myself of a few tips when fixing – or for that matter assessing cars to buy.

I find his videos short as they can be, with good close up filming and an easy step-by-step process to follow for most jobs.

In coming weeks, I might write up and advise of a few of his videos that have saved me a lot of money – and helped to sell a few cars along the way.

This one is a pretty simple one.

Good looking components really help when selling a car.

And it also helps when you see through the wheels, the back end is nice and today as well.

What I mean by the back end, is the braking unit you can generally see through most alloy wheels.

The specific components I am referring to are the rotors (the discs) and the calipers which house the brake pads.

High end car manufacturers pay a lot of attention to these details.

Next time you are walking past a BMW, a Porsche or a Mercedes Benz, have a look through the wheels, and notice how nice all of this equipment is generally presented.

And usually with some branding and contrasting colour.

When I say branding, you may often see customised braking systems. One such iconic brand is “Brembo”.

A Brembo system can often cost in the thousands of dollars to install, and is a premium brand used on many motorcycles, as well as SS Commodores and other performance vehicles.

But you don’t have to spend thousands to get the quality looks.

Follow the instructions in the video.

Remember to use high temperature caliper paint. You can get this from any auto store like SuperCheap, Repco or Autobarn.

Rotors and calipers get very hot at operating conditions, and normal paint will simply peel off in short time.

And prepare your surface well.

This can be a bit tedious, but it is well worth it.

Again, if the surface has a lot of rust and brake dust on it, the paint will bond with this and not the steel and will therefore flake.

A great tool t use for this job is a rotary steel brush disc.

I use compressed air to run mine, but if you run down to Bunnings, you can cheaply buy extensions that will attach to any drill.

This will do a good job in getting most of the contaminants off.

Then simple wipe your surfaces down with a good wax, grease and dirt remover, then apply coats of paint as necessary.

The more coats, the better the result so take your time doing this.

Usually you can get away with holding a piece of paper behind your target to stop overspray.

The good thing about painting calipers is you don’t need to be ultra careful.

It usually doesn’t matter if you get a bit of black overspray either on the face or behind the rotors.

If you get overspray on the rotors, the brake pads will take this off in the first few applications of braking.

But take it easy in the first 20 kms or so of driving al the same.

Whilst you have your wheels off, it is an easy job to clean up the inside of the whole wheel arch and paint this black too.

You can use any old matt black spray paint to make the wheel area really look the goods.

Whether your car has pretty painted calipers or not, you can call me on 0411 362 229 to see how much your car is worth in Brisbane today.