Hey Guys,

Just thought I'd add pics of my calipers/rotors paintwork to the forum collection.

To all those people on here who have said to use hammerite smooth........I could not AGREE with you more!!!

1. The stuff is like, much cheaper than normal caliper paint.

2. I only needed to do 2 coats on the calipers (red), and one coat on the rotors (black) and its fine.

3. Leaves a nice, smooth, professional, glossy finish.

4. Its quite durable in itself when dry, so I didn't need to add any layers of laquer on top.

I bought two 250ml cans, one red one black, for about £12 in Halfrauds...whereas a single 250ml can of their own brand caliper paint is £10!

Plus, the cans are still very very full of paint, after use on just my car. Could probably get another 10 cars done easily!

Go HAMMERITE SMOOTH!!!!

looking gooooooooood, Im thinking of doing this but with only having a drive way and the english weather not being wonderful Im worried the rain would come and ruin it for me How long did it take? including painting and drying?

looking good there mate. Did you take off the caliper to paint it or did you just mask up the area? same with the rear drums. But looks really professional.

Thanks for the comments guys.

In effect, it doesn't actually take THAT long to do, and its a straightforward process. Its just waiting to dry between coats etc that takes time.

I jacked the car up using 2 jacks, so that I could do the front and rear wheels on the drivers side one day, and then the front and rear wheels on the passengers side the next day. (I started late the first day so had to do the other side next day!)

I'd say I spent about 3-4 hours outside each day I reckon, roughly speaking. Physically painting a coat on doesn't take that long, as you can imagine - about half hour per caliper maybe...even less for a rear hub. But its all the extras which take time:

To be safe, I left around an hour for the paint to dry on the calipers, before applying the second coat. You could maybe get away with waiting only half an hour maybe, but I wanted to be safe.

Also, the preliminary preparation is what takes a bit of time too. I had to thoroughly clean the caliper/hub to ensure that the paint would stick to the surface properly. I thought my caliper was already clean cuz it was all a very dark colour, but in fact that was all the brake dust that had caked over it after all these years...guess they'd never been cleaned before!
So I really spent a bit of time cleaning them up to a high standard!

Like I said, I used 2 jacks. This is good because whilst you are waiting for one rotor/caliper to dry, you can start working on the other one aswell; saves you doing nothing in the meantime!

Screamjosh: the cleaning + preparation of each caliper took about 45 mins. Each coat on the caliper took about 30mins to paint - i did 2 coats.

Roughly similar time for the rear drums, but probably shorter, cuz they're much easier to clean/paint.

Couple those tasks with the waiting for paint to dry etc, it only took a few hours to do each side of the car.

maxdaccent: No, I didn't take the calipers off, just masked up the area as you said. For the rear drums I just masked the bolts too. Also for the calipers, I used a thicker brush for bigger solid areas, and a thin brush to paint the smaller, more detailed parts. That helped a lot!!!


I know there's already loads of instructions on the forums of how to do this, and I basically formed my approach from these. But if you want me to post instructions on here of how I did mine start to finish, I'll be more than happy to.

i did mine in jan and it was the worst idea EVER! i had on 6layers of clothes while doing it and it didnt help that i had one jack and 4 calipers!! still tho its by far the best mod! throw up some pics with the wheels on so we can get a proper lamp!

after two years nonw of mine started peeling. only bit bit is missing but i got spares so its an easy fix. and it doesn tlook like a HY N AI!!!


not the best pic but i had it handy!

nice one! Looks good!

def get them they are the biz.if u want the link to where i bought them drop me a PM. well worth getting.wish i got the Tuscani ones now but wasnt in the Tuscani mood at the time cos i wanted to keep the Hyundai Coupe badges

heres my efforts
might change to red in summer!!!

Looks good mate, ive wanted to do it for a while but never got round to it. saw this before and i just though, may aswell do it to mine while im off too.


Iv just spent the afternoon doing my new ones, decided to paint them in a blue to match the car. nipped off to Halfrauds and one of the lads there recommended that rather than going for the brake caliper kit (£26) to just go for the brake caliper paint and a brush as the paint will not need any laquer and the pack only consists of paint, laquer and a brush. So i paid £8.90 instead.

Spent around an hour cleaning the calipers up (they are off my car so was alot easier to do), then decided to not just paint the outsides of the caliper but the whole unit, so masked the pistons off and went for the whole hog.

Ill post afew pics up too in abit

are you realy supose to paint the surface that connects with the wheels? thought that would be as clean as possible so the wheels have a tighter fit...

nice job with the calipers...

As far as I know mate, it should be fine.

I know others have painted that part too, in silver if not black, and there's been no problems.
Plus, I've done a fair bit of driving since and no problems.
The rear drums were also originally painted black too, cuz I had to scrape off all the remains of old, peeling paint before I could put on a fresh coat!

In fact, when I took the wheels off to do them, I could see the outlined marks where the wheel was actually touching the rear drum/front rotor, and it was only the areas near the metal studs, so the whole area didn't actually come in contact with the wheel.

To be fair though, that round part on the front rotor with the calipers, you can barely even see it once the wheel is put back on...its just that before, if I looked close up I could see its rusty colour, which made the whole area look brownish and dull, so I just painted it black to polish it up again!

as requested
the car is still jacked up on the other side in this pic,thats why it looks odd
enjoy

I just realised that stevefromwath has actually set a good example of what I was saying above:

On his first picture of his calipers you can see the areas around each of the 4 bolts where the wheel was touching.

And on his second picture showing the calipers, you can see that once the wheel is put back on, you can barely even see the central round bit at all...I just repainted it for the sake of it really.

Steve that already does look really sleek and stylish, nice one!

I won't deny though, that changing to red would also look really hot in my opinion! I think it'll compliment the colour of your car perfectly!

Thanks for this.

So what grade wet and dry sandpaper did you use?

120, 240, 400, 600, 800 or 1200?

Did you just use the paper on the drums? Could imagine it being hard/tricky doing the calipers!