Painted Brake Calipers
 

I was thinking about painting my brake calipers but was wondering if you had to take the wheels of to do it. Is it a diy or is it best left to professionals?

Shouldnt be hard if you can do brakes you can do this
I think Duplicolor has a specific brake caliper paint in many colors
I dont think this job has to look 100% professional because they get coverd with brake dust quickly anyway. I have the hugely expensive carbon brakes on my porsche with Yellow calipers and they get dirty quick.
This would be a 3 on the DIY scale of one to ten-10 being the hardest.

I agree...I painted mine red...very easy to do using the high temp caliper paint...you could search for some pictures in another thread.

Yes you should remove the wheels. I did my 330 it is an entire day project but worth it imo. Im getting ready to do the X soon with silver caliper paint.

Here's a question....With mine being white color would you guys use? I would rather not use white but everything else might look odd. Maybe silver.....

Black.

Red

:iagree: Black or Red

I am thinking about doing this to.

What color on mine? Prob Red huh?

:iagree:

I vote for silver. Unless you can do red with a glossy finish I don't think it looks that good. The OEM calipers are such a rough texture that colors just look so dull and the brake dust tends to fill in the rough spots so they do look dirty easily. Granted, today I was :drool: over some Brembos on oazn4er's X5. Nothing even comes close to the real thing.

Go with silver and also paint the clips silver. :thumbup:

:iagree: then get a stencil kit a put the word BREMBO on it :rofl:

unless its the real deal brembo brakes, paint them black or silver.

Black with your X.

i say black.:iagree:

make sure you take them off of the car before you paint them.... :thumbup:

Thanks guys and gals for the feedback.........

If your hubs looks rusty like mine you may want to paint them as well I would go with silver for the calipers and hubs:
http://www.afterthoughtsauto.com/vhthigtembra.html

Black, dust blends in....:rofl:

clear

Hi, my name is Adam. My favorite color is bright clear! :nanana:

irregardless...

I have a white x5 too... It took me two days to get the job done. with all the wheels off and the calipers off and the pads out, i painted my brakes with three coats. I needed two caliper paint kits to complete the job. I painted them gold and they look just like the brembo's on a g35 coupe. They look sick!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1

Regardless can't hear!

:worthless:

Red calipers are gr8 ;)

Here's mine in silver, very easy to do... http://www.xoutpost.com/x5-e53-forum/...highlight=pics

You definately need to clean the calipers really well before paint. Personally I find insignificant looking dirt or even nicks show up horribly even under a few coats of paint. I hit them with brake cleaner, a soft brush and then wet sand them with 1500 grit sandpater, follwed by 2000.

If you have big nicks or fouling then you sand down with a more aggressive grit, and work back up to 2000 using the next closest grit of paper wetsanding. Change direction of sanding 90* between grits. You can also get rid of the rough finish of the casted peices and also any casting marks by doing this same process.

Conveniently, this is the method you use for polishing aluminum anything.
I have polished calipers on my other car like this. The only difference is that if you are going to leave them polished, you would hit them with a buffer and some compound instead of a spraycan of your color of choice.

Here is a shot of one of my calipers about 1/3 way through completion:
http://www.fquick.com/images/vehicle...jpg?1166407681

Either way, you want to hit them with a few coats of hi temp clear in the end.