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700 Posts
Hi guys.
After doing two sets I just wanted to share my experiences with Brembo refurbing.
First, the inner side of the calipers is a huge pain to rub down when you are trying to get rid of old paint and laquer, as there is hard access, lot of bits sticking out. Also I found out that the paint at the back is always look nice, and the paint and laquer is MUCH thicker, also more resistant to fade or peel (because it does not get that much shlt and sunshine)
The front face of the calipers where the stickers are has the thinnest paint, and the frontside corners are the places where the laquer starts to peel.
I tried different methods cleaning them (always calipers off the car):
First is first, a good wash in a bucket of soapy hot water with a toothbrush does the job, than the wirebrush and special cleaner product. Just make sure telling the missus not to come in when you are using the shower for the cleaning or she will get a heart attack and you will sleep in the car for sure that day
I tried my small die grinder first time and it was SLOW.
Sandpaper is also slow but makes is more painful to do.
Last time I used my bench grinder with the softer type wiredisc, worked very good, BUT there are places which you can't access with it of course, also where the paint was hard it leaves scratches but not removing the paint completely so some sandpaper needed to finish the job.
Watch out for the mounting points, around there there is usually heavy alloy "rusting", rub it down as much as you can or it will get worse, and some months after finishing it is not a good thing to happen.
When cleaning make sure you cover the place of the brake line. I used a big bolt with the banjo to hold in place, quick and safe way to keep stuff away from getting to the caliper.
Mechanical stuff
My calipers always had this following problem:
The dust boots was not sitting in place properly. I only can think what causes it, and it should be deformation of the metal ring inside the seal. I spent 5 hours trying to straighten it and putting it back but even when I made it perfectly circle it simply pushed out itself after a minute no matter how hard I tried or how precise I bended it to shape. The end was always destroying it with anger and ordering new seals, 11GBP from ebay, can be bought separately luckily.
To get them out I used a very simple trick. I used a bike pump tightly held into the brake line hole and pumped hard which moved the pistons out a bit, the rest is obvious.
Preparation
When I got everything done, on the first set I washed it again and after masking, I sprayed the paint straight on.
This time I went a bit different, washing, rubbing with coarse and fine sandpaper, than to masking and priming.
Paint and laquer.
The big deal. First time I used Hycote VHT RED, available everywhere. That particular paint made my calipers matt and stupid light red when applied. When I put the laquer on it went a bit darker, and of course shiny, but I think it is too bright red, avoid it if you want something closer to OEM colour.
Now I am just about to start painting, but I got into a big dilemma.
I need the proper paint for the job.
Obvious place to look is halfords. The guy there told me to use hammerite red, very bright red, as the Hycote. I also checked the halfords VHT red, which is also stupid bright. There is a halfords VHT metal red which has a much better colour but also metal so it definetly not good idea on caliper I think. I don't know how it would look but with laquer the finished product might be weird. Then I looked on the halfords red caliper paint, they told it has a gloss finish, it is a proper red but still a bit too bright compared to original and putting laquer on wont make any difference to it.
These were the only paints I have been told are heat resistant, but they could not tell about the rest of the paints. I found a lot of good red colours at the big wall where you can buy spray for the body, but those need priming (did not find any heat resistant primer there) and not heat resistant paints I THINK, but NOT SURE. Our calipers might get definetly more than 100 degree celsius just on the street, up to maybe 250 degree which is the max where the racing fluids starts to boil. So I really needed something that is OK at least until 200 degree, but on those stupid cans there is no info about that.
So at the moment I'm still looking for the suitable paint.
The paint closest to the oem colouras I heard is the RAL3003 "Ruby red", but have seen paint on fleebay called "ruby red" and that was literally purple so watch out. I was thinking priming the calipers with hammerite black VHT paint which protects and is a primer indeed, and than spraying it with any VHT red, hoping it will end up darker because of the black base. But I usually do 3 coats, and after that I think there will be no visible effect of the black primer, so dead end again.
Applying the laquer is easy, just make sure you use VHT clear stuff, shake often!!!, and apply very very gently, only thin layers. If you rush will end up too much laquer which never dries and will be sticky getting ugly also dissolves paint under it, and you can start all again, definetly if you try to wipe it off or even touch it when you accidently spray too much laquer.
Baking or not
I think it is not necessary if you can leave the calipers to dry properly between coats, and after finishing a complete day inside in a warm place will do the job, and voila, new calipers.
Overall, if anyone have a good hint which paint I shoud buy I am full of ears, feel free to share your experiences. Or if there is a paint guru who can tell me if those body paint are resistant or not, that will make my life very easy. My car is white, did not want the calipers yellow, defo not blue or black or white, so I want to keep them red, possibly something close to OEM colour.
After doing two sets I just wanted to share my experiences with Brembo refurbing.
First, the inner side of the calipers is a huge pain to rub down when you are trying to get rid of old paint and laquer, as there is hard access, lot of bits sticking out. Also I found out that the paint at the back is always look nice, and the paint and laquer is MUCH thicker, also more resistant to fade or peel (because it does not get that much shlt and sunshine)
The front face of the calipers where the stickers are has the thinnest paint, and the frontside corners are the places where the laquer starts to peel.
I tried different methods cleaning them (always calipers off the car):
First is first, a good wash in a bucket of soapy hot water with a toothbrush does the job, than the wirebrush and special cleaner product. Just make sure telling the missus not to come in when you are using the shower for the cleaning or she will get a heart attack and you will sleep in the car for sure that day
I tried my small die grinder first time and it was SLOW.
Sandpaper is also slow but makes is more painful to do.
Last time I used my bench grinder with the softer type wiredisc, worked very good, BUT there are places which you can't access with it of course, also where the paint was hard it leaves scratches but not removing the paint completely so some sandpaper needed to finish the job.
Watch out for the mounting points, around there there is usually heavy alloy "rusting", rub it down as much as you can or it will get worse, and some months after finishing it is not a good thing to happen.
When cleaning make sure you cover the place of the brake line. I used a big bolt with the banjo to hold in place, quick and safe way to keep stuff away from getting to the caliper.
Mechanical stuff
My calipers always had this following problem:
The dust boots was not sitting in place properly. I only can think what causes it, and it should be deformation of the metal ring inside the seal. I spent 5 hours trying to straighten it and putting it back but even when I made it perfectly circle it simply pushed out itself after a minute no matter how hard I tried or how precise I bended it to shape. The end was always destroying it with anger and ordering new seals, 11GBP from ebay, can be bought separately luckily.
To get them out I used a very simple trick. I used a bike pump tightly held into the brake line hole and pumped hard which moved the pistons out a bit, the rest is obvious.
Preparation
When I got everything done, on the first set I washed it again and after masking, I sprayed the paint straight on.
This time I went a bit different, washing, rubbing with coarse and fine sandpaper, than to masking and priming.
Paint and laquer.
The big deal. First time I used Hycote VHT RED, available everywhere. That particular paint made my calipers matt and stupid light red when applied. When I put the laquer on it went a bit darker, and of course shiny, but I think it is too bright red, avoid it if you want something closer to OEM colour.
Now I am just about to start painting, but I got into a big dilemma.
I need the proper paint for the job.
Obvious place to look is halfords. The guy there told me to use hammerite red, very bright red, as the Hycote. I also checked the halfords VHT red, which is also stupid bright. There is a halfords VHT metal red which has a much better colour but also metal so it definetly not good idea on caliper I think. I don't know how it would look but with laquer the finished product might be weird. Then I looked on the halfords red caliper paint, they told it has a gloss finish, it is a proper red but still a bit too bright compared to original and putting laquer on wont make any difference to it.
These were the only paints I have been told are heat resistant, but they could not tell about the rest of the paints. I found a lot of good red colours at the big wall where you can buy spray for the body, but those need priming (did not find any heat resistant primer there) and not heat resistant paints I THINK, but NOT SURE. Our calipers might get definetly more than 100 degree celsius just on the street, up to maybe 250 degree which is the max where the racing fluids starts to boil. So I really needed something that is OK at least until 200 degree, but on those stupid cans there is no info about that.
So at the moment I'm still looking for the suitable paint.
The paint closest to the oem colouras I heard is the RAL3003 "Ruby red", but have seen paint on fleebay called "ruby red" and that was literally purple so watch out. I was thinking priming the calipers with hammerite black VHT paint which protects and is a primer indeed, and than spraying it with any VHT red, hoping it will end up darker because of the black base. But I usually do 3 coats, and after that I think there will be no visible effect of the black primer, so dead end again.
Applying the laquer is easy, just make sure you use VHT clear stuff, shake often!!!, and apply very very gently, only thin layers. If you rush will end up too much laquer which never dries and will be sticky getting ugly also dissolves paint under it, and you can start all again, definetly if you try to wipe it off or even touch it when you accidently spray too much laquer.
Baking or not
I think it is not necessary if you can leave the calipers to dry properly between coats, and after finishing a complete day inside in a warm place will do the job, and voila, new calipers.
Overall, if anyone have a good hint which paint I shoud buy I am full of ears, feel free to share your experiences. Or if there is a paint guru who can tell me if those body paint are resistant or not, that will make my life very easy. My car is white, did not want the calipers yellow, defo not blue or black or white, so I want to keep them red, possibly something close to OEM colour.
