BEST RESULT!! How To Paint Brake Calipers

Hello everyone, welcome back to another Diode Too Fast video. In today's video I will show you how to paint your brake caliper. Check out these newly painted brake caliper. These definitely look a lot better than the original unpainted ones. Stay tuned and I'll show you step by step on how to do this. So let's go over the materials we'll need for this project. Starting on the left side I have brake cleaner. You'll use this to clean and degrease the brake caliper. Next to it is isopropyl alcohol. I'll use this for the final cleaning. Here I have some plastic drop cloth and garbage bag. Because we're using spray paint, this will help cover any area that you don't want paint to get on. Painter's tape. Use this to mask off any area that you don't want to be painted. Now this is optional. I also picked up some vinyl stickers that I'll be installing on the brake caliper. You can get these pretty inexpensive on ebay. Some towels and wire brushes to help with the cleaning. Now for the paint I'll be using the VHT engine enamel that you see right here. I have the primer, the base coat and the clear coat. Now VHT does make spray paints for brake caliper but the color choices are very limited and for this project I wanted this burnt copper that you see right here. It's a really nice color and it is a high temperature paint so it will work for the brake caliper. This spray paint is chemical resistant and is good up to 650 degrees Fahrenheit. First thing you need to do is jack up the vehicle and put it on jack stands. Remove the wheel. Use a brake cleaner and a wire brush to clean the surface of the caliper and the bracket that's right here. Also make sure you wear safety glasses because a brake cleaner can splash into your eye. Next use a grinder or sandpaper to smooth out this edge where the cast was made on this caliper. As you can see it's nice and smooth now. By doing this the finish is going to look a lot better. Next I'll remove the two bolts holding the caliper in. Remove the brake pad. Remove the hardware. Now at this point you can do further cleaning. Next we'll remove this bracket. There are two bolts holding it in. There's one up top. There's another one at the bottom here. With the parts removed you can do additional cleaning in areas that you weren't able to get to earlier. Next take a garbage bag and open it up. Take the plastic drop cloth and cover all the body panels. And then wrap the bottom edge of the plastic around. Cover everything. On the caliper mask off any area that you don't want paint to get on. And here's the look with everything taped up. Also mask off the area that you don't want to get painted on the bracket. Parts of final wipe down with rubbing alcohol. Here's a look at the rear brake. Go ahead and start cleaning. Again we smooth out this line right here. Now for the rear brake I'm going to leave the caliper on and mask off any area that doesn't need to get painted. And here's a look after the masking is done. Cut open the garbage bag. And in the middle cut a small hole. Next pull this bag around the caliper. At this time it's ready for paint. There's the rear. And there's the front. We'll start off with a primer. Now follow the direction on the back carefully. We're going to do two thin coats followed by a thicker coat. And wait 10 minutes in between coats. After applying the last coat of primer I waited 30 minutes. Now I'm ready to apply the base coat. I'll spray two thin coats followed by one thicker coat and wait 10 minutes in between coats. It's been 10 minutes. This is coat number two. And here's coat number two for the front caliper. It's been 10 minutes. This is the third coat. And lay it down a little thicker. This is the third coat for the front caliper. It's been 30 minutes. Now I'm going to apply the deco onto the front of the caliper. This is just regular vinyl sticker. This is for the rear caliper. Now I'll apply three coats of clear and you want to wait 10 minutes between coats. Clear coat number two. This is the third and final coat. You can lay it down a little thicker but make sure you don't spray too much and have runs. I've gone ahead and removed the masking tape and the plastic and here's what the rear caliper looked like. Now remember with this one I did not remove the caliper, I only did the masking. As you can see if you spend some time masking all the areas the result will also look very good. Here's a look at the front caliper fully assembled. Since we took out the caliper to paint this you can see there's no overspray on any of the other parts here so it has a nice clean look to it. Here's a look with the wheel installed. Just have a look at the back one. The only thing left is to repeat the same procedure on the other side. Here's a look on the driver's side. This is the back. This is the front. It's ready to paint. Here's a look at the driver's side rear brake. Here's the front driver's side done. As you can see these painted brake calipers turned out very nice. It definitely improved the overall look of this vehicle giving it a nice sporty look. Now there are a couple of things I want to go over before ending this video which may help you if you want to do this yourself. First thing is make sure you clean the brake caliper surface very well. This will ensure the primer has good bond to the surface and the paint won't flake off after a couple of months. You'll also want to tape the plastic drop cloth in the wheel well and over the fender. This will ensure you don't get any overspray on those surfaces. If you do get overspray on your fender you'll have to use a clay bar to clean the paint surface. Now drying time of the paint can vary depending on the temperature and humidity in your area. I live in Georgia and it's quite humid here. I noticed with the high humidity the paint took a lot longer to cure and harden. This is something you'll want to pay attention to if you plan on applying the vinyl sticker on the caliper. On one of my brake caliper when I tried to remove the backing liner on the vinyl sticker the paint began lifting because it was still soft. I ended up having to repaint it and apply a new sticker on it. As for the time needed for this project, if you're planning to do what I did here which is paint one side first then paint the other side, plan on setting aside a full day to complete. The main reason is the dry time you have to wait between coats of paints for the primer, base coat and clear coat and this is why it takes several hours to paint. Lastly there is a lot of debate on whether you should remove the brake caliper when painting. Well in this video I showed you both methods, the front brake caliper was removed and masked before painting. This way I was able to remove all the hardware clips and the brake pads. You do spend more time masking off places that you don't want paint to get on but you end up with a better result since you are able to paint all around the entire caliper. For the rear brake I did not remove the caliper, with this method you can still achieve a very good result but you need to take the time to properly mask off all the areas including those small areas around the brake pad and clips where you don't want paint to get on. However this method is still faster when compared to removing the caliper. Now there are some people out there that will argue you should completely remove the brake caliper and disconnect the brake hose. If you do this, yes you will have a very clean paint job, but you need to consider this method requires a person to have the mechanical know-how to properly bleed the brake system when reinstalling the caliper. Failing to do so can result in a major car accident that can hurt yourself or someone else. Regardless which method you use, you should enjoy and have fun with a project like this. I'll list the materials I used in this video in the description below. Thank you for watching and remember to click on the thumbs up and subscribe to my channel. Also remember to click on the notification bell so you get notified of new videos. Thank you for watching.