Well...

My brother-in-law did not get as much done this weekend as we had hoped. We wanted to paint the calipers on both of our cars, install grille screens all around on both cars and install hood seals on both cars.

We started with his '98 coupe on Saturday morning at 9AM local time, and began painting at around 7PM that night. We spent the entire morning prepping (taping off/cleaning the HELL out of the calipers..you could have eaten off of them). We put 3 coats on each piece, dropped a bracket and had to repaint that one, and the letters on one of the front brackets got messed up due to over-usage of chap stick. His car ended up getting re-assembled at about 11am on Sunday.

My '01 coupe went better. We had it completely up on jack stands, disassembled, taped off, and cleaned within 2-2.5 hours. Painting took another few hours, and by this morning (Monday) it was ready to be re-assembled. All said and done, both vehicles turned out beautifully, and there is a distinctly different look between the calipers behind his wagon wheels and my thin 5-spoke polished wheels.

Between coats we were able to install the hood seals on both cars (5 minute job on each), and we were able to get the front brake vent screens installed on his car. We attempted to cut the template/install a screen in the fog-light area, but couldn't seem to make it fit/sit right. We had a lot of printed off instructions on how to do it, but none were specific on the install of the screen in this area/how it was supposed to look. I was curious, for those who have done this particular screen, does it sit at an angle where the fascia meets the black plastic area, or does it rest on the paint on the fascia?

In any case, it definitely was a productive weekend. Lots of beer was consumed, and our soreness is evidence of our hard work. We were very **** about how prepared the calipers were, and how covered the car was. We learned a lot in the process of doing the calipers that we hadn't seen in previous instructions. Here are some highlights:

- Removing the calipers from the rotor allows better access to all parts of the caliper
- Garbage bags are very handy for protecting the paint/undercarriage
- Buy A LOT of brake cleaner. We went through 8 cans on his calipers, and 5 cans on mine
- Buy enough paint. We used Duplicolor DH 1608. The ONLY place in town that sold it was Napa. All other automotive stores sold Duplicolor, but not the 1608. We used roughly 3-4 cans per car @ 3 coats per caliper/caliper bracket.
- Buy high heat clear coat. The clear coat REALLY makes the calipers look sharp. We used 1 can of clear per car.
- A breaker bar may be necessary to loosen some of the caliper bolts
- Paint dust will get EVERYWHERE. Make sure that you're not spraying near anything you don't want to get painted (we sprayed the caliper brackets outside, and my Subaru Outback parked 20 yards away had a nice coat of red powder on the hood that I found later that evening.)
- TAKE YOUR TIME! I've seen lots of posts on the forum indicating that their caliper jobs took 1-1.5 hours. We definitely took our time, and our calipers turned out beautiful as a result.
- My advice, don't use chapstick to "mask off" the Corvette letters on the front calipers. Paint over the entire caliper, and after it's dry scrape off the excess paint with a razorblade (we used a small model razor blade) or fine grit sand paper. We had a horrible experience with chapstick, but your mileage may vary.

We took lots of pictures, and should have them up as soon as we're done with the rest of our grille screens. Thanks for everyone's advice and helpful information in this forum, it definitely came in handy this weekend!

 

I hate to bump my own post, but was curious again if anyone had any more info on installing the foglight grille. Any additional help would be helpful. See the above post for exactly what I'm looking for.

Thanks again!

 

Congrats on getting the calipers painted and you make some very good points. Taking your time is definitely a key.