My First Vet

I have a Mil Yel and had the same question about painting them yellow. As I am new to the corvette scene, would this be a corvette fopah?

jschindler

This comes up frequently (on the C5 forum in the past). Everyone just assumes you need to buy some high dollar "high temp" paint.

I have painted two sets now with the standard Rustoleum you buy at Home Depot. On my last car I had it on for two years before selling the car, and it still looked as good as it did the day I painted them. I have friends who have also used it with excellent results.

Another upside is that you have more color choices.

To the guy with the yellow car - both of my C5's were millenium yellow. I painted the caliper black, then painted the letters yellow (sunburst yellow). They looked great.

CaptainMike

Extreme Motorsports has the Red powdercoated ones for $389.00.....unless you just like working on your car.....

jschindler

Hmmm, Rustoleum - <$4.00 vs $389.00. I guess that's one reason I like working on my car!

CaptainMike

I can assure you that if I tried to paint them the brakes would never work the same again and i would end up spending a couple of thousand to have what I screwed up fixed.......I envy you "mechanically inclined" guys

jschindler

Yeah, and I envy "financially inclined" guys

I admit that there is a line we usually cross in our lives where we go from having more time and energy than money, to having enough money to overcome lack of time and energy. I just have a hard time finding that line even though I'm "50 something".

CaptainMike

I finally crossed that line about a year ago.....I sold my lawn equipment....

docrings1

For the fronts, I decided it would actually be easier to remove the caliper brackets and be a cleaner job with less overspray cleanup on the pads, and it was. Here are the pics of the front caliper paint procedure, total time about 3 hours including paint dry for one hour and reinstall.

Starting point:


Wire up the calipers:


Remove the caliper brackets, pads and metal clips. Then mask the rubber seal and retaining fixture:


Ready for paint:


(also can hang the calipers from a wire to paint)


First light coat, separate light coats by at least 5 minutes:


Newspaper masking to prevent overspray onto the car:


Finished paint and removed all masking, reinstalled caliper bracket, pads, clips:


Everthing re-installed, LOC-TITEd and torqued down:


After removing the paint over the "CORVETTE" lettering... SWEET!!!!


Make sure you use LOC-TITE when you replace the caliper bolts (both large and both the smalls).

Details:
It took a little prying to get the caliper to "unstick" from the pads, which have some very sticky coating to prevent brake squeal... pry gently between the pad and the caliper to get it to rotate away after removing both bolts (15mm and 18mm wrenches required).
The large bolts holding on the caliper bracket may need some persuasion with a 13/16" socket with 1/2" drive handle...I need some taps with a large hammer to break the LOC-TITE on these...
Use a very thin coating of chap-stik on the CORVETTE letters, and after four coats of paint, let it dry for an hour or so and then gently use your fingernail to scrape off the paint (it just slides off from the lettering...VERY easy to do.)

While you are in there, and everything has dried, detail the undercarriage and get the dirt/sand/debris off the suspension bits, and clean out the brake cooling duct.

Have fun!!

PS: If someone has the metric wrench size for the large caliper bracket bolts, please add that to the thread...

TRAYC7

I did this with my 98 and decided after that to buy them... maybe I just dont have the patience... but they never looked good enough for me.. so I decided to buy them on the C6... this way I never had to worry about them again...

docrings1

For me, it just brings so much satisfaction to do the job right myself, and make it look great, for about $4.00 in materials. With a beautiful Florida Sunday afternoon to work on them, it was a pleasure to be outside. The calipers looks GREAT!!!

These mods are not for everyone, and for those who do like to DIY, that is the great thing about this forum.

_Nomad_

I'll be doing my calipers gloss black since any other color would just look silly on a Mag Red car. But I am going to wait and do it when I replace my pads.

TEAShea

high temp chrome aluminum paint - three coats.


TEAShea
from Nebraska

Vettman 1

I spray painted mine. Let dry a few min. then clearcoated. I used a Dremel tool with small buffing wheel and aluminum buffing compound to polish the raised letters. Spray once more with the clear to keep the letters from oxidizing

sdowney

went the wcc way. i painted the calipers on my bonneville and they just do not look as good. for my vette cheap is not the way to go. it is not a honda civic

docrings1

I will say, that not everyone can do this, or do it right... for those people it is best to have someone else install anodized/painted calipers at the shop... and not a Honda shop...

leahy

Wow, thats a lot of work. I imagine you'd have to repaint some of that on a yearly basis cause the rotors can get quite hot. Griot's is good stuff, btw.

black.z51.c6

Almost certain that it is 18mm i had to go and buy one as my Craftsman set only went to 17mm

Vette_DD

http://forums.corvetteforum.com/foru...s-or-more.html