I recently repainted my calipers and just came back from a track day at Laguna Seca and the paint and stickers are ruined (see pics). I used rustoleum red engine spray, clear coat and stickers from ebay and the paint turned darker and the decals turned yellowish/black since they couldn't handle the heat.

Does anyone have recommendations on what to do as a DIY project to ensure the calipers look great even if the car will be used at the track? (eg specific brands/products/retailers to get materials, etc).

After doing a search, my 2 lead ideas are:

1-Paint them yellow using G2 kit or VHT brake caliper spray and use vynil BLACK decals. Pros:yellow looks more original, black letters will not change color!

2-Piant them red using G2 kit or VHT brake caliper spray and use STENCIL to add white letters. Pros: Looks stock. Cons:will letters change color even if sprayed on? Also I am having a hard time finding brake caliper spray paint in white (only silver available from VHT).

Keep in mind that main goal is longevity assuming Track usage. I know I can have them redone at a shop for ~$500 but prefer to do it myself if I can get it 9/10 of the way. Thanks!

 

Unfortunately you are wasting both your time and money if you think that any of these DIY off the shelf aerosol paints like VHT or the G2 kit will give you a track resistant finish. These kits are decent for your cars n coffee cars or garage queens but you can forget it for a hard driven track car. In order to get a durable finish, whether paining calipers or anything else, the most important thing is SURFACE PREPARATION. You need to remove the calipers from the car and have them sandblasted down to bare metal, degreased, primed, painted and finally cleared with high quality high temperature resistant paints. If you are going to take shortcuts at any of these stages, your results will predictably suffer. As a side note, Brembo specifically prohibits powder coating of calipers as you only add to the heat problem due to the fact that a powder coated finish acts as a heat insulator. Brembo calipers come painted, not powder coated, from the factory. Have your calipers professionally refinished and make sure your brakes have adequate cooling via GT3 cup car ducts or something equivalent. This is very important and usually overlooked. I suspect that you ran with stock ducts on your car. If your brakes are not cooled properly then you will cook any finish that you put on your calipers. I had my calipers professionally refinished and have not had any issues at my local track which is notoriously demanding on brakes. Total cost was about $700 including shipping. I did the R/I myself. Good luck......

 

I did removve them, cleaned them, used sandpaper so the surface was very clean before application but definitely it was not "sandblasted clean." Do you think that if I have them sandblasted I can still refinish myself with any of the product listed above? I have the GT3 cooling ducts but run Pagid Yellows in the Advanced group so I am definitely getting the brakes pretty hot. Yours look amazing; where did you have them done?
Thanks for the advise.

 

I don't know. Every professional painter I've talked to told me to strip it to bare metal for best results. I've just never seen any of these over the counter paint products hold up to track duty. I don't know what your time is worth but I didn't feel like experimenting and wanted it done right the first time because the removal and install of the calipers (which will require a bleed and flush) is fairly time consuming and I only wanted to do it once. While at it I changed out all the dust boots which were cracked from the heat. The piston seals were fine and did not need replacement. I run advanced also and use Endless pads (used to run Pagid Yellows). Are you using the small stock GT3 ducts or the large cup car GT3 ducts that I have in my picture? I highly recommend the Cup ducts as the stockers are tiny in comparison and not much better than stock. I also run the GT2 ducts in the rear. I would use the largest cooling ducts possible because heat is your biggest enemy here. Here is a link to the guy that did my calipers. His name is Eli and he turned it around in little over a week. Good luck....

http://fastforwardwheels.com/

 

Thanks a lot for the advise. I may try one last time with new materials but and stencils but at best my odds are 50/50. To answer your question I am running the stock GT3 ducts - where did you but the large cup car gt3 ducts and the GT2 rear ducts? My rears are the ones that looked worse so any way I can get more cool air would really help. Thanks!

 

I had the same problems that you have when I first took my car to the track. I toasted the rear brakes and the calipers turned orange. Based on my experience, the ducts in the rear are a must, especially if you run with PSM ON since your rear brakes will be constantly pulsing to keep the rear end in line. At the very least, run with PSM OFF (even though it will not be fully off unless you disconnect the connector at the ABS pump) and that will help a lot as PSM will only be functional under braking but not acceleration. The rear GT2 cooling ducts are a must otherwise you have zero cooling in the rear. I've seem more rear brakes cooked on the 996tt than the fronts. I bought the Cup ducts through my local Porsche dealer that I have an account with. PM me if you need help sourcing them but a Porsche dealer should be able to get them for you. They are about $500 for all 4 corners....money well spent.

Take a look at this link (post #17) where I go a little more in depth regarding my set up...
https://www.6speedonline.com/forums/...es-ones-2.html

 

The engine paint is not enough. Try the caliper paint from Dupli-Color or VHT. They have to cure properly. You can use a vinyl overlay after but it has to be shot with caliper grade clearcoat. Honestly if you plan on doing a lot of tracking your best bet is to have them properly powedercoated and be done with it. Its not as expensive as it seems. Usually places that powdercoat motorcycle parts seem to be the least expensive.

 

+1.... If your tracking the car powder coat them. The high temps from braking won't be a issue if you powder coat them...

 

Be careful with powder coating. We tried it on exhaust tips and we reached the melting point on a short drive. Powder coating will melt at about 250 degrees F.

 

Brembo specifically recommends against powder coating especially for tracked cars due to the fact that powder coating acts as an insulator and will retain more heat over a painted finish. +1 what John@speedtech said above. I had a set of powder coated calipers where the finish failed from track use. Powdercoating will work fine for Show cars or garage queens that won't see heavy brake use.

 

It seems that powercoating may not work either...

What I find surprising is that this is not a job that can be done as a DIY with the right materials and preparation. I get that someone like the guys at fastforwardwheels will do a better job than me but, if I are they buying some "exotic" paint to get the results or is it a matter of patience and preparation?


By the way, thanks for the tip on the GT2 rear ducts! I have been searching for them online with no luck but will try my dealer next.

 

If powder coating will not do the job, What will? How are the calipers painted from the factory in that case?

On my audi s4 i powder coated my exhaust tips flat black with great luck, then again the exhaust system is much longer the Porsche and must dissipate the heat by the time it gets to the tips??

 

There are a few high temp powdercoat finishes but they are usually a flat black. You will be hard pressed to find any bright color high temp powdercoat finishes. Again, with that said, Porsche OEM Calipers are painted, NOT POWDER COATED. I have verified this by calling Brembo which makes the calipers for Porsche, Ferrari, Nissan, among others. When I was looking to have my calipers refinished I spoke with their techs for any suggestions. They told me to do it properly as the factory does it, you must strip to bare metal, clean, prime, paint, and clear with industrial quality paint. They would not tell me what paints they use as they said it is proprietary. This is the same thing that Eli told me and I get the impression that if someone has a formula that works then they hold it pretty close to their vest. Eli also bakes the calipers after painting and after the clear coat is applied. Again, as a side note, they both told me that they would not powder coat calipers due to the heat issues. My guess it that they are using a high quality two part epoxy based paints but that's just a guess. The one thing I do know is that what ever he used on my calipers works since after about 10hrs of 90 degree summer track use the Speed yellow on the calipers is as fresh as new. In addition, the guy at Brembo told me that the best finish in the world will not hold up if you're not cooling your brakes properly for track use. That's why I highly recommend using the largest possible cooling ducts for use at the track. These are the part numbers of the front and rear brake ducts that are a direct drop in fit on the 996tt:

front GT3 cup:
996-341-117-90
996-341-118-90
rear GT2:
996-331-127-90
996-331-128-90

 

A special high temp engineered caliper paint is used by the brake companies - similar to the VHT 900 degree paint, but their own formula. If you go to an automotive paint supplier, I am sure you can get a generic version of proper caliper paint.

On a front engined car, you can get away with powder coated rear tips. Not a good idea on a 911.

However, we use satin black ceramic coating on our tips and it works great.

 

This is the ultimate durable finish but only comes in a semi gloss finish and there is no way to add decals or clear coat to it. It is a ceramic 1000 degree high temp finish and totally impervious to chemicals like brake fluid. I was going to go this route initially but it was very expensive and I didn't like the idea of not being able to apply any lettering.

http://www.nicindustries.com/exotic_...bKII5j2WIDX6m5