Painted the calipers

[Jngrbrdman]

Man, this should have been the first thing I did. I've never really been happy with how crusty and ugly the stock calipers are on my Legacy. So tonight I decided to bust out the paint and take care of the problem.

I made the mistake of thinking I could mask off the car and protect it from overspray in the past. Now I just spray the paint into half a Mountain Dew bottle and brush it on. I use high temp engine paint instead of fancy caliper paint. I figure since I am just painting them black, it really won't matter much. I did this to my Integra and the paint job lasted for years.

Here is the before and after. I took advantage of having my wheels off and I cleaned them up and put a coat of UPP on em. We'll see how that does against the brake dust issue.

Before:

After:

 

[C. Charles Hahn]

Looks really nice! So half a pop bottle really works, eh? I've tried plastic cups and such but they always melt before I even get to use any paint.

 

[audiboy]

looks pretty clean.

 

[pt91]

Looks good. Much cleaner.
I just spent all weekend doing mine. I had to remove the old paint first. I just finished painting the letters back on tonight.

 

[Nickc0844]

Looks nice and Anthony....it's cool that you are documenting the transformation of the car with the pictures.

 

[Jngrbrdman]

Looks really nice! So half a pop bottle really works, eh? I've tried plastic cups and such but they always melt before I even get to use any paint.

Yup. I've always used a Pepsi can in the past, but my can opener has seen better days and I really didn't want to spend all night trying to cut the top off. So I figured I'd give the bottle a shot. It never did leak, so I would say it is a fairly safe paint jar. It was a lot easier to open than a pop can too. lol

 

[G35stilez]

Very nice!


The calipers match the tires perfect.


Care sharing what type of paint brush you decided to use? Did you prep the calipers with Scotchbrite or sandpaper first? How many coats total?

 

[Anthony A]

Why not just use paint in a can instead of a spray paint? No need to tansfer to a pop can or bottle.

 

[Bob]

You scared me man! I thought for sure I was going to see some bright red or yellow caliper. :lol Good job on not doing that!!!

Looks good too.

 

[Jngrbrdman]

Why not just use paint in a can instead of a spray paint? No need to tansfer to a pop can or bottle.

Because I don't know where to find high temp engine paint that isn't in a spray can. I don't want this stuff to chip off in a week. It wasn't that big of an issue to spray it into a cup.

I used a scratch pad to prep the brakes. I used brake cleaner on the pad and that seemed to work pretty well. I sprayed the pad outside of my garage to avoid getting that overspray on the car too. The last thing I need is brake cleaner on my paint. They came clean very quickly. I was actually surprised they weren't dirtier.

I used 3 coats of paint on the project. Hopefully that will do the trick. I didn't see any missing paint when I got to work this morning, so it must be doing ok. I could smell paint when I got out of my car though. lol Maybe it will 'bake' the paint. The paint is 10-12 hours dry now, so I don't imagine there will be any problems.

I've never seen the point in painting stock calipers any color other than black. If they are stock, then there is no point in drawing attention to them. Now, if I had a set of Baer brakes on there or a nice set of Brembos then I wouldn't mind them being red. Personally I would still go for black ones, but I wouldn't mind nice aftermarket brakes standing out.

 

[pt91]

You scared me man! I thought for sure I was going to see some bright red or yellow caliper. :lol Good job on not doing that!!!

Looks good too.

You mean like this? :naughty

 

[Hawaiianelement]

nice job!! Its the little things that make a really tight car..

 

[Jngrbrdman]

You mean like this? :naughty

Some cars need red. The Legacy isn't a race car like the NSX is. The NSX needs red calipers. Black would probably look good too, but if I painted mine red then people would think that I'm trying to look like an NSX.

 

[Bob]

See, I even think the NSX would look better with black calipers, especially on a black car. But, that is just me and if I had a NSX I sure would not complain about red calipers.

 

[Jngrbrdman]

Some cars just match better I guess. I'd like to have painted them the same blue as the car, but I don't think that color is available for a high temp application.

Different colored calipers certianly have their place on an NSX.