Re-painting brake calipers

Hi guys, My Brembo brake calipers have faded out due to the top clear coat coming off. The car is now 14 years old so this is unsurprising. What's the consensus on the best route forward to get them looking good again? Option 1 - get a professional job. Option 2 - DIY using either rattle cans or a paint on set. I've used a foliatec paint on set recently with some Brembo calipers for an old M3. The calipers were pretty rough but the 'self levelling' effect of the paint on kit left me with a really good outcome. The 996 calipers are in pretty good shape except for the top coat. Has anyone had a successful DIY or should such things not be considered on a 911? Thanks, Matt

I know that some people have had success lightly sanding the areas where the clear coat is peeling, and then applying new clear coat. Another option is to buy a kit to repaint the caliper. Those seem to work pretty well. You can always have the professionally refinished, but I believe that will be quite expensive.

If you have access to a good shop that offers powder-coating, I would go that route, might cost more than doing it yourself, but in the long run the paint should hold up better. If you are going to tackle this yourself, take care your time! I have painted many calipers on previous cars and they have turned out very well. Remove from the car, clean them with degreaser, let them properly dry. Sand them down, tape them off and start spray bombing them. I used high heat VHT caliper paint and did many coats before I was happy with the coverage. Additionally, also purchase new Porsche decals and high heat clear coat and you should be good to go! Here are a couple pictures of my calipers I did on my GTR. They were Porsche inspired Once I was happy with the yellow coverage, I used a black paint pen and traced out the raised Nissan lettering, then hit the calipers with several coats of high heat clear. Hope this gives you an idea on which way to go. Doing it yourself really isn't difficult if you are even slightly mechanically inclined and not afraid to get your hands dirty.

If you are looking for a way to simply put on a top coat, what I have done several times is a light spray of Rustoleum Crystal Clear Enamel and a re-coat of the rotor top hats as shown in the pic. It holds up very well.

Scott's excellent write up and pics mirror my experience. Yes, powder coating is the best, but this is one of those times where you can get great results with a rattle can. And I'll bet no one can tell the difference once they're on your car. Haven't done my P car ones yet, but it's on my list.

I used this kit: Amazon.com: G2 High Temperature Brake Caliper Paint System Set RED G2160: Automotive Amazon.com: G2 High Temperature Brake Caliper Paint System Set RED G2160: Automotive You brush it on which turned out very good. Has been on for 3 years now. I didn't want to take anything apart and am happy with the results.

Hi guys, I think I'm going to do this myself. I have to change the front discs and pads so might as well do this at the same time. I'll take a weekend to do it to give plenty of time for the coats to dry. I'd rather not take them off the car so I'll just make sure everything is taped off to. Just need to decide whether to go with the paint on kit or spray cans. Had pretty good results with the paint on kit last time but didn't actually fit them to the car so can't comment on their longevity. The one thing I was always concerned about using the paint on kit was that the stickers were simply stuck on top of the paint with no final clear coat. With the heat of the caliper I was concerned the sticker would peel off.

I did my Boxster calipers using the red caliper paint set from Autozone, and it turned out very nicely. 1) Scrub like you have never scrubbed before. 2) Use far too much brake cleaner. Then, when you're done, use that much again. Every tiny speck of brake dust you miss will leave a streak in the finished paint. 3) Remove the rubber bleeding caps and cover the bleeders with masking tape; replace once the paint is completely dry. That little detail can really help make the paint job look good. 4) If you apply Porsche decals after painting, do this when the paint is just the slightest bit still tacky. The combination of tacky paint and the decal adhesive resulted in years of perfect decals. 5) Clean your brush between calipers. Start in the front - the most visible part of the caliper - and paint toward the sides and back. This way your brush will be cleanest while you're painting the most visible parts of the caliper. 6) everyone paints the rotor hats silver. If you paint the rotor hats and the outside rim of the rotors flat black, they will never look dirty or rusty again. I did not clear-coat after the red - many of the clears will yellow with heat and age, and this looks especially bad if you use white decals.

"6) everyone paints the rotor hats silver. If you paint the rotor hats and the outside rim of the rotors flat black, they will never look dirty or rusty again." IMO, ^That's^ fine if you've got black wheels...Silver "hats" look better with silver wheels...For that matter, I suppose you could paint the hats to match any color wheel, otherwise it looks crappy between the wheel and the nice shiny rotor...

I think it looks much better to NOT have silver hats, even with my silver wheels. The hats are nearly impossible to keep clean - a nice contrast from silver to black looks better than silver-to-nasty-***-dirty-silver. Either way, paint the damn hats. Rusty rotor hats are ghetto. Powder coating may not hold up as well as high-temp paint depending on what the powder-coater uses. I had my Boxster's exhaust tip powder-coated by a place that used "high-temp" materials, and the inside burned off in less than a year.

I painted my calipers with a brush on kit (from Duplicolor). Came out great. I used caliper decals I got on ebay, and clearcoated over the decals with a high-temp engine spray paint clear from the auto parts store. No bubbling, but after a DE event, the front decals have yellowed a bit from the heat. No change to the rear decals. I'm not sure if it's the decal or the clear coat that has yellowed, but I don't think I'd use the clearcoat again. Even if the decal has yellowed, It would be easier to replace the decal if there were no clearcoat. more info in this thread and this thread and this thread .

I refinish several sets of Brembos every year. Powdercoating is the most durable single coat process but it's a bit more complicated. I use VHT caliper paint, high temp. vinyl PORSCHE stencils and finish with automotive clear coat which tolerates brake fluid a bit better than uncured VHT clear. There is a little time involved and if you have a parts washer and access to a media blaster you're way ahead of the game. Getting the caliper clean is important. I remove them from them from the car, remove pads, spring retainers, plug the inlet and bleeder holes, clean them up a bit in my parts washer and dry them off. I use cut duct tape circles to protect the pistons then off they go to the the media blaster. They clean up very nice with a mild abrasive media. Blow them off, wipe them down and they are ready for paint. The base VHT is sprayed on next, it needs 7 days to cure, stencils are applied and then they get clear coated. Pins, spring retainers and bleeders are replated and they look like this:

If I have them powdercoated and apply the stick-on decals, would I need to spray clear to protect the decals? Not sure how the powdercoat and clear would mix.

By stencils, do you mean decals? Or are they really a stencil (i.e. the knockouts of the letters)? Looked again - those are definitely decals. Also, why do people paint the hard lines that connect the two sides of the caliper? Leaving those unpainted makes them look less obviously repainted...