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Painting Brake Calipers?

8K views 37 replies 23 participants last post by  kvandenh1 
#1 ·
My emerald green GXP would look good with red brake calipers. However my car nut neighbor said that unless its real Brembos (at $1K), its a "novice jerk" move to paint stock calipers red. But he said painting them emerald to match the car would look good! Your thoughts? (Tomato can skip the reply)
 
#7 · (Edited)
My car has red accents calipers ,springs, swaybars,and a red stripe around the rim I get a lot of compliments on the look bottom line is it's your car who cares what your neighbor thinks.If you wanted to try and match the cars paint the only logical way to do it would be to have them powder coated and try to get a close match to the paint my guess is you would be looking at around 100 bucks to do it this way as opposed to 15 bucks for the paint, a can of brake cleaner or lacquer thinner and a day of your time . If you click on my avatar and go to my profile page then click on my album you can get an idea of what it will look like
 
#8 ·
my car nut neighbor said that unless its real Brembos (at $1K)


I think that's a conservative estimate.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
#10 ·
My lovely wife of 48 years has been telling me for years, "if you do one more thing to that car it will be TOO much!"

But of course I ignore her and proceed with the latest mod.

When the appraiser went over my car he said "that is the most highly modified car I have seen in my 15 years doing this job"

I told him it was not done yet!

Don't listen to your neighbor. If he is driving a Toyota don't have anything to do with him LOLOL

I painted the calipers on both cars in 07. Red on Punisher - of course that was BP (before Punisherization) and gold on the wifes Sky. Went well with the green paint.

Once my car became punisherized painted calipers were of course no longer cool enough so I went to custom painted caliper covers. I went to CARID and tried to order a set but they came with fake engraving and with BREMBO engraved on them. Ughhh. So I did my research and found the company in San Diego that makes the covers for resale. After a couple of emails and a phone call or two I prevailed upon them to make me a set of natural metal finished covers ready for custom painting.

The thread below shows the result. Since I added the LED wheel lights that illuminate the inside of the wheels and the caliper covers its even better!

I ordered another set for the Green Dragon and received them last week. I dropped them off at Chipmagic for custom painting to match her bright GREEN wheels. Hopefully they will be ready for pickup this week. I am going to cut my own GREEN DRAGON stickers to apply to them and then get her car on the lift so I can install them. Pictures to come.

In my humble opinion caliper covers are a MUST and if done well can add a lot of bling to a car and make it look much more finished.

Don't listen to your neighbor any more! He obviously is lacking in good taste.

http://www.solsticeforum.com/forum/f62/punisher-65168/index45.html#post1106994
 
#12 ·
rob the elder; In my humble opinion caliper covers are a MUST and if done well can add a lot of bling to a car and make it look much more finished. Don't listen to your neighbor any more! He obviously is lacking in good taste. [url said:
http://www.solsticeforum.com/forum/f62/punisher-65168/index45.html#post1106994[/url]
:agree::agree::agree: The guy probably wishes he had a Kappa ! by the way what does he drive ?
 
#15 ·
The G2 in red or gold would look great and don't pay any attention to your neighbor. :grin:
 
#18 ·
It is just my opinion but I think the brake calipers on your Solstice look their best in the natural finish but if you want more "flash" you could have them polished and clear coated. I polished the calipers on my Fiero years ago and it was a lot of work. It was when you could buy calipers from Pep Boys cheaply and I used files, sand paper of different grades and several polishes to make them shine. It was a lot work and I had a couple of blisters on my fingers but it was worth the effort. I took all of the casting marks and rough surfaces off on the front sides but still being very careful not to be too aggressive and sacrificing the integrity of the caliper.
 
#20 ·
The problem with covers is that they look like covers...
Buy some paint! :jm2c:
 
#22 ·
Yeah use the G2. Did mine originally with Duplicolor but was constantly touching them up. Re-did with G2 about 6 years ago and they still look like the day I did them. Dave at DDM thought they were powdercoated! >:)
 
#27 ·
I bought the G-2 paint and GXP decals off eBay a couple months ago, just waiting for the warmer weather of spring time to paint.

I read reviews off Amazon when I was doing research that several people suggested to buy a higher quality brush, because the one it comes with is cheap and didn't work that well (I don't know what that means TBH, does the original brush leave bristle streaking? I don't know, I'll just need heed the advise).

I'm planning on using several metal brushes on my drill to prep the metal surface, and then of course wipe everything down well with alcohol.

I watched a video on YouTube of a guy using the G-2 paint and he spent a lot of time taping everything off prior to painting. Lesson was that he spent more time taping things off than it really took to do the job. The paint is apparently thick and you'd have to be pretty careless to get it everywhere.

I bought silver paint for my silver car. I bought a 4 pack of white GXP stickers off eBay but totally meant to buy black. I'll probably rebuy in black.
 
#31 ·
Hello,

I sprayed my calipers red (black car) and painted the caliper brackets black with Duplicolor caliper paint. I like having the caliper brackets black. I think it makes the red calipers stand out more than if the brackets and calipers are the same color, or the brackets are left natural. Taking the calipers (and brackets if you paint them too) off of the car is the best choice.

Having the calipers powdercoated is also a good choice. That will require that the calipers be rebuilt since the heat used to cure the powder will damage the seals. That's mostly just replacing the seals, which you can do yourself.
 
#35 ·
Hello,

I sprayed my calipers red (black car) and painted the caliper brackets black with Duplicolor caliper paint. I like having the caliper brackets black. I think it makes the red calipers stand out more than if the brackets and calipers are the same color, or the brackets are left natural...
.Pictures?
 
#36 ·
When I bought my Sol the calipers and brackets were painted blue, the car is Sly. Not to my taste at all. The first thing I did was clean them up. I thought I would have to repaint them but I found that while prepping for paint the blue chipped off easily, poor prep I guess. So with a scraper, wire brush, wire wheel and some sand paper I was able to get them back to original finish. My original thought was to do them in black but they looked so good cleaned up that I left them that way.
 
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