Deleted.

 

I am ready to do the project this weekend. I have a question on methodology. This thread has focused on painting the calipers while leaving them on the car. It involves a large amount of taping and covering of the car, especially surrounding spraying of the clear coat. My question is, and it was touched on lightly earlier in the thread, would it be easier to remove the calipers? What's involved with that? I've never done it before on any car.

 

I didn't emove my calipers because I didn't want to have to bleed the brake lines (I have never done that on any car). That is the only reason I didn't remove them. The taping is not bad, especally if you use a brush versus spray for the caliper paint. I used a plastic bag to cover the rotors when I sprayed the clear coat. It took only about two minutes per wheel to wrap the bags around the rotors.

 

Tim-

You may be tired of hearing this...but AWESOME JOB. So since the original post...how many miles on the brakes and any noticible wear?

Thanks!

 

Thank you for the compliment. I really appreciate it.

I have put about 22,000 miles on the car in the last 20 months since I painted tha calipers and I would say that the calipers look about 95% as good as the day I painted them. I have one small chip on the edge of one caliper, which I chipped off when I was removing a wheel. Since that time I have been using the tire hanger bar to support the wheels when I remove them and replace them. Live and learn, I guess.

 

If you guys owned a red Carrera, what color would you paint the calipers? They are the stock brakes, so they are black right now.

I was thinking that red might be TOO much red, so would yellow look good? Should I just keep them black?

 

Paint them Red.

 

Tim, did you spray or brush your top hats? What paint did you use if you brushed them?

 

I used the Dupli-Color kit I got at Autozone for $15.00. It comes with an aerosol can of caliper cleaner. The paint is a brush on paint.

I used a brass wire brush with the caliper cleaner to help roughen up the OEM paint. Hopefully this will enable the new paint to adhere better. I bought a cheap 1" bristle brush at Sears and used that rather than the small brush that was included. It took 3 - 4 coats. The first coat will not cover well and will be spotty at best. Just follow the directions. Take your time taping the parts you don't want painted. That will really help with the final outcome.

I got the stickers/decals at Xenonmods.com. I bought the 3.25" decal which is actually .25 too big compared to OEM lettering. They do carry the 3.0" lettering also. Your can either dry or wet transfer them. I chose to do the dry transfer.

I bought some clear Dulpi-color Engine Enamel spray to help seal the PORSCHE lettering. The instructions said to spray within 1 hour of painting or wait 7 days.

Hope this helps!

 

OOPS, you said "top hats" not calipers. My bad! PM sent.

 

Did it this weekend. They turned out nice, but it was harder than expected. Might have had something to do with it being of the 40's when painting! I'll post pics soon. Thanks to Tim for his advice on this project.

 

You are welcome! What part was harder thatn expected?

 

I was having issues with paint lifting. I thought I scuffed and cleaned the calipers well before painting. It took 5-6 coats to complete the job. Also, I may not have waited long enough for the paint to set up before applying the decal on the first caliper. The paint seems to have raised around the lettering. I may have to redo that one. The overall job doesn't look as good as I'd like, but probably nobody else would notice the imperfections.

 

OK, because I answered "caliper" instead of "top hat" when replying to your initial question, I was still thinking "top hats." At first you had me TOTALLY confused because I thought you were talking about painting the "top hats."

The calipers probably do not look as bad as you think they do, because as you said probably no one else will even notice that anything is wrong.

BTW painting the top hats is MUCH easier to do. While it does require a little more masking on the rotor, using a plastic bag to cover the calipers is quick and easy.

If you decide to paint the top hats, when you are masking off the rotors, don't worry about trying to get the tape real close to the top hats. In fact you want to leave a 1/4" or more of the rotor exposed so you you get some paint on the rotor. Once the paint is completely dry just take the car for a short drive and the brake pads will remove all of the over spray from the rotor and you will have a nice clean edge to your paint job.

 

Sorry fot the confusion Tim. I have been mixing my posts here on those two subjects. I was planning on doing the top hats after I finished the calipers but was worn out. I'll save that for sometime in the near future.