Painting brake calipers is a cheap way to boost the appearance of your vehicle. Not only does it make your ride pop, it accentuates your sweet wheels too. The guide below will walk you through the steps on how you can paint your brake calipers to make them last and attain the best results.
Materials Needed
– Caliper paint (colour of your choice- I prefer spray can vs paint can versions)
– Black caliper paint (for your rotors – not needed, but makes a big difference)
– Clear coat caliper paint (for protection of your paint and to add shine)
– Rubbing alcohol / brake cleaner as well as a cloth to apply it
– Soap and water
– Wire wheel
– Drill
– Newspaper
– Painters tape
– Jack
– Jack stands
– Wheel Chocks (if only doing 2 wheels at a time)
– Breaker bar plus sockets to get your rims off
– N95 mask to protect you from brake dust
– safety glasses
Remove Wheels & Prep
I did this with the calipers on the vehicle, if you wish to paint them off the vehicle, you can still follow the below guide. Make sure if you fully remove your calipers from the vehicle, you note that you’ll have to bleed your brakes (this is why I painted mine on the car). Pick a nice sunny day if you’ll be doing this outside- you don’t want to do this in the rain as you want the paint to have time to dry.
Jack your car up, secure it and remove your wheels. Be sure to have your wheels chocked before getting under any vehicle on jack stands. Here is what my brakes looked like before I started
Remove Calipers
Remove your calipers from the spindle (you don’t have to unhook them from the brake lines). This will allow you to remove your rotors so you do not get over spray on them. Once you take your rotors off you will bolt your calipers back onto the spindle. This gives you some room to work. Insure when you remove your calipers that you do not dangle them by the brake hose. I usually use a wire tire, or bring over a paint can so that they can rest on top without applying tension to the brake line.
Remove the brake pads from the caliper and keep them out of the way in a safe spot. Take a picture or write down which way you take the pads out, as most cars have a pad that is dedicated to the front of the caliper and one that is for the rear. This will help insure you do not reinstall them upside down.
Wire Wheel The Brake Calipers
Make sure you wear your N95 mask and safety glasses. Brake dust contains asbestos. Take your wire wheel attached to your drill and run the wire wheel across your caliper touching all of the outside surfaces of it.
This part gets pretty dusty. Be careful not to run your wire wheel across the seal on the caliper piston. You will damage the seal with the sharp wire. Here is a picture of what the caliper will look like after you are done using a wire wheel on it. Take note that the rotor is back on the car in this picture as I wanted to see what it looked like. You want to run the wire wheel to clean up every area that you will paint.
Wash Calipers & Cover Surrounding Areas
Preparation when painting is extremely important for your results to have the perfect outcome. Take some time to clean up the caliper you’ll be painting. Soap and water will do a pretty good job. Dry that off and take the rubbing alcohol (or brake cleaner) to clean off the caliper and insure there is no grease on the surface. A poorly prepped surface is what typically leads to paint flaking off of calipers.
Everything you don’t want painted needs to be covered. Tape up your car with newspaper. Especially if you are using a spray can for the caliper paint you will end up with overspray on your shocks, suspension pieces or the body of your car if you do not.
In addition to covering the items behind / beside your brake calipers, make sure you also take this time to tape the sliders, piston and seal on the inside of the caliper. I don’t like painting the moving parts for fear it may help seize the caliper up later. I used a shopping bag over my wheel bearing and a large towel to cover everything I didn’t want painted.
Painting Brake Calipers
With everything covered now come the fun part of painting your brake calipers. Use smooth sweeping strokes to get an even coat of paint on the caliper. I painted both my caliper and slider bracket (bracket that holds my brake pads in it). Do light coats on the caliper and allow approximately 5 minutes or so between coats for the paint to dry.
I always target the hard to get spots on the caliper first -the back, crevices and all the nooks and crannies. This is what my calipers started to look like after 2-3 coats and then again after 10 coats with clear coat added. The final picture is another set of brake calipers I did with a different theme.
Paint brake calipers until you are happy with the colour being shown, and then add 2-3 more coats on top of that just to give it it’s thickness. The time interval for adding clear coat to the paint in my case was the same as applying another coat of paint. So there was no wait time for me.
Preparing Brake Rotors For Paint
Rotors always develop a rusty hub. It looks terrible and takes away from the hard work you just did to spice up your brake calipers. Here is the fix. Grab some painters tape and tear off several tiny squares. Using the flat edge straight side of the tape, go all the way around the edge of your disc brakes. When I say edge here, I am referring to the last part of the shiny edge that your brake pads don’t touch where the discs tend to rust up. See the picture below for reference on how I want you to tape the disc. Make sure you tape over the entire stopping surface.
Painting Brake Rotors
I chose black caliper paint to apply to my disc brakes. I thought that it would look clean and be subtle so that the attention stayed on my calipers and rims.
To apply paint to your brake rotors you will use the same method you did on your calipers. Utilize a smooth sweeping motion. 3-4 coats of paint should be enough, but you can add more if you feel it is necessary.
When you remove the tape your rotor should look like the photos below. Big difference right?
Reinstall Brakes
After you have waited a few hours for the paint to dry, you will need to re-install the brakes back on the car. Put your pads back into the calipers and install the rotors back onto the wheel bearings the same way you took them off.
Once you put your wheels back on you can sit back and drool at the outcome. Below are shots of the completed brakes as well as what they looked like on my Camaro – Excuse the dirty Corvette rims!
Quick side note – don’t wash your rims / brakes for about 1 week in order to give them a chance to fully cure. Make sure you double check your torque specs for your own safety. Any Miami car accident lawyer will tell you that having defective brakes can cause a serious accident. Preventing a car accident is just one more reason to keep your brakes in optimal working condition
If you found this useful and you know someone else trying to paint their brakes, share this with them! Facebook, tumblr, pintrest, car forums etc. You can also give our Instagram a follow @highperformancejunkies. As always, if you have a question or concern, please use our contact us page and shoot us a message.