Painting my calipers Red

[NickCornell]

Hey all, does anyone have good instructions on doing the focus's calipers? Anything I need to tape off? Also they are electric correct so what do I do to bleed them? Same as any other?

[Sponsor]

[TORQUERULES]

Just tape them off, or get the Plasticote brush on kit like I did. Works very good, and you have plenty left over.

[TboneZX3]

They're not electric and are bled like any other brake. You won't have to bleed them to paint the calipers though.

[NickCornell]

So just tape off the rotors and I'm good to go?

[Tyson]

Hey literally just did mine last night in white....I have done this for my mustang in the past too in red...

jack up car
take wheel off
use a brush and paint caliper meticulously

no matter what people say the caliper doesn't get too hot to use regular latex paint I had that in super bright red on my mustang for years nothing ever happened.

Last night I did it in white rust paint easy just takes a while...

One tip is get a flat head and pop the spring off so you don't paint it a million times and you can get behind it...I decided not to because it's kinda tight and I didn't want to scratch the new paint job putting it back on. So all in all it's looking good Ill post pics after...oh and while I was at it I popped off the center caps and painted them black

[TboneZX3]

Here's what I would do. I would pull the calipers for painting but not disconnect them from the hydraulics.

1. Jack car up and support securely on 4 stands.
2. Remove all 4 wheels
3. Remove cap on brake reservior and remove some of the fluid. A turkey baster works well for this. Cover reservoir with clean rag.
4. Retract calipers, unbolt calipers from knuckles, pull them off and hang them from convenient location (spring).
5. Remove pads
6. Follow instructions for painting in kit.
7. Reinstall pads, calipers
8. Mount wheels
9. Lower car.
10. Pump up brakes, top off reservoir w/new fluid and reinstall reservoir cap.

[NickCornell]

Can I use spray caliper paint?

[TboneZX3]

Sure, but you will have to mask off everything carefully. You don't want the paint on the pistons or dust boots.

[boardgeneration]

I used engine enamel in bright red from O'Reilly Auto. Taped off everything around the caliper and sprayed it. I know they don't get that hot but with road and break dust I figured that stuff is strong enough to handle the abuse. Looks good too.

[Tyson]

Yeah you could take all your tires off, put everything on jack stands, disassemble the caliper, hang caliper, tape everything off, spray with whatever, wait for it to all dry, reassemble

or you could just do it the easy way...

to each his own, I'm just going to go out on a limb here and bet that mine look very similar to any one else's painted calipers with 10 times less work.