Brake calipers

[Macca]

I looked at my wheel hubs and callipers over the weekend and they are looking a bit rusty. I want to clean them up and paint them. My questions are: what do I use to clean them up, what paint do you recommend, and what colour would suit a primed car ( oppss, I mean silver) :-^

 

[r37]

Cant beat warm soapy water and elbow grease for cleaning them. If you have a steam cleaner they work a treat but arnt needed. Make sure you get in all the knooks and crannies and use a brillo pad for the front and side and then a scouring pad inside the little bits. If you want to paint them you can either completely remove the caliper and paint the whole thing or get busy witht he maskign tape and paint them whilst still on the car. I'd reccomend taking them off completely so you can get a full cover of paint on it and eliminate the edge that will eventually peel due to high speed air/water that resides in the arch. Halfords sell special paint for brake calipers but exhaust paint usually works too. As long as its High temperature paint you should be fine. I like the brembo orange colour on silver cars. A friend has a silver 350z and the brakes look very nice sat in the arches.

 

[badman gee]

I looked at my wheel hubs and callipers over the weekend and they are looking a bit rusty. I want to clean them up and paint them. My questions are: what do I use to clean them up, what paint do you recommend, and what colour would suit a primed car ( oppss, I mean silver) :-^

I've got blue ones, goes well with silver.

Any colour will look good Richard.

Even a glossy black.

 

[Titan]

I went for red to match the seats but yellow, black, blue, silver etc all look better than rust
It's also worth painting the hubs. I used black but silver also looks good.
High temperature paint or hammerite/smoothrite is OK.

 

[gookah]

either colour match with seats, or if the seats are not a particular colour, then red is best.
If you ask on Z4Forum,you are only allowed silver or black, unless you do an AP upgrade... x_x

 

[Macca]

I went for red to match the seats but yellow, black, blue, silver etc all look better than rust
It's also worth painting the hubs. I used black but silver also looks good.
High temperature paint or hammerite/smoothrite is OK.

Doh!!! It's so simple, 'cause it's got to be red, to match my seats. So Red it is then.
Thanks for the replies people.

 

[Mouldy]

I used E-Tech Caliper Paint on my Zed a couple of years ago. You will find it advertised on eBay. It comes in a kit complete with a can of brake cleaner which is essential to degrease the callipers before application of the paint. As you can see, it gave an excellent finish, but prepping the callipers was hard work as I stripped them off the car and wire brushed them and gave them a going over with an air powered needle gun. I also treated them to a set of new anti-rattle springs to complete the effect.

I have used Smoothrite before, but found it very difficult to get a good finish as it dries almost as soon as its applied. As far as colour is concerned, the choice is yours. I went for black on my Boston Green Zed as I didn't want to make it look like a Max Power car, but red on silver would be okay, I think.

Good luck!!!

 

[MAURICE THE MARTIAN]

Predictably i`ve done mine hammerite Silver