Dunno if it's been done here before, but here's my step-by-step process for how to paint your calipers...it's even 56K friendly with the optional links for pics

**DISCLAIMER**

If you **** up yourself and/or your car while following this walkthrough, tough cookies. I accept no responsibility for such stupidity. You're just painting your damn calipers


1. First thing you want to do is get the necessary supplies. I went to Wal-Mart and bought the following

Supplies you'll need
-Brake Cleaner
-A hard-thistle brush
-500-degree engine paint (I went w/ Red, pick w/e tickles your fancy)
-Plastic garbage bags
-A roll of blue painters tape

All of this cost me about $15

2. For this mod, I left my calipers mounted on the car, so the next step for me was to protect the areas near the car from rogue spray. I split the garbage bags along the seam and used the painter's tape to stick it to my car
Protecting the car

3. Now that that's done, follow the standard procedure for removing your tires, and lift the car up. Now we're ready to paint, right? WRONG!! My car had 62k miles of brake dust and dirt built up on the caliper, so I used the *gasp* brake cleaner and the brush to clean those suckers off
before
After

3.5. this step is optional, but i didn't want every piece of my caliper to be red. I used the blue painter's tape to tape off the back of the brake pad
optional taping

4. Next, I rolled up a piece of paper towel and shimmied it underneith the bracket to protect the rotor from the paint
like this

5. Now I took a plastic wal-mart bag and put it around the rotor and tucked as much of it underneith the bracket as i could. Then, I taped it around the axle to hold it in place
like so

6. Now this is very important...when applying the paint, use LIGHT layers. It's better to have 80 light coats than 3 heavy ones, so don't worry if there's still part of the old caliper peeking thru the paint cuz you're gonna hit it a bunch more before the process is done. A watched pot never boils, and the same applies to painted calipers. While waiting for the paint to dry, you could clean your wheels to pass the time. After a few coats dry, you can remove all the protective stuff...chances are, some of the paint got on the rotor, so what you want to do is rotate the rotor and hit it with some more brake cleaner.

Finished product
**Now, as you can see in this pic, I didn't press the painters tape down hard enough to keep the paint from creeping in. You can go back over w/ a paint-brush and some high temp paint and touch it up if you want. I didn't...It was 1:28AM and 28 degrees out by the time I took this pic**

all put back together

For the time you put in and what you get out, this is an excellent appearance mod.

 

thumbs up lol

 

Nice write up, I just took mine off because I am picky like that. I used some clear coat on mine, did I miss that in your write up or did you not use it?

 

^didn't use it

 

good write up.

best results remove the caliper imho

 

^my front ones look exactly like that, except both the caliper and bracket are red

 

Looks decent...but the overspray on the LCA would drive me nuts

 

it's a blue moon when i actually see those...and that's easily fixed w/ a can of black paint

 

Would wipe off easily.

 

good write up....

here, i edited step 5 according to ls1techs sponsor policy

 

thats funny!

 

the only thing i would change is cover more of the surrounding areas, to make sure no over spray anywhere including the brakepad area and add camaro decals then hit with a couple layers of clear...

 

I am going to do mine soon and want to do a gloss black with the brushed "fomula" decals on them!

 

lol seems like a lot of work.. I just got a old t rag and slid it in between the pad and the caliper and painted it. I painted the pads before I put them in. Then I hit the fender wells with some 3M ruberized undercoating. Kinda quick and lazy but o well the results werent that bad.

 

looks good. I just picked up the dupli-color caliper paint kit for ~$16 bucks and results came out great. You brush it on but the paint levels nicely. I did take off the wheels since the 16's give me no damn room to work with. I painted mine black since I had no need to show off the horrendous LT1 stock brakes.

-Brian

 

Nice write-up............

 

Good right-up, I think I'll get a buddy to powdercoat mine. I hear that the clear coat is essential for a show-quality gloss.

 

Use clear coat. It leaves a much shinier finish and makes it easier to clean for future use.

 

Better results by taking the caliper off(I have done both ways) and I always clear the ones I do. For the reasons Brian mentioned

 

Common...do it right! Blow it ALL APART! I'm in the process of doing mine. I started out to just paint the caliper but the spindle was ugly so I blew it all apart and started painting. I still have to paint the actual caliper and put my decals on and put it back together.