Project IS-F is a daily driver. It is garaged and well taken care of but it is subjected to daily use and is parked outside during the day. One day the clear coat OEM Brembo calipers on the car started to peel slightly and within a few months, the paint on the calipers went from perfect, to a mess of peeling clearcoat and basecoat. We tried to touch up one of the calipers but it ended up looking worse. On a modern sports car with high-performance multi-piston brakes, the brakes themselves are part of what lends looks to the car, just like the wheels. If the brakes look bad, the car looks bad. We were resigned to putting the car up on stands, disassembling the brakes, and getting them professionally hi-temp powdercoated, when we can upon an Instagram ad for West Coast Calipers.
Looking at their web site they made the bold claim that they were simply the best in the industry and that they could turn a car around quickly. Looking at the tons of high end exotics that they had done in there gallery made things interesting and the thought of not having the car down for at least a week sealed the deal and we made arrangements to bring project IS-F in to have our calipers refinished.
Read More About Project IS-F Here!
West Coast Calipers has a mobile repair team that actually handles wheel and caliper repair for a lot of Southern California’s exotic car dealers and also refinishes calipers for dealers of expensive used cars. They also have a shop for drive in customers and some interesting methods to get your car through there quickly while maintaining excellent workmanship.
When we pulled in, the West Coast Caliper team started to immediately work on our car. We decided to check out one of the mobile service vans.
The vans are well equipped for painting and to carefully jack up expensive low cars with difficult to access lift and stand points. West Coast Calipers normally works with an expensive and demanding clientele so they will handle your car carefully as well.
14 comments
Should you really be getting paint on the brake caliper piston boot?
No, some OEM Brembo calipers do! It’s not going to hurt anything,
It won’t stick to the boots well, so if the boot needs to flex the paint will flake away from the boot, no problem. That’s my experience after having used high temp epoxy paint to refinish my own brembo calipers.
What do they typically charge for this service?
(I also find it odd painting over the caliper piston boots)
$600 which is reasonable because the process is about 10 man hours.
That sounds worth it for the quality of the job.
I’m curious to know which Brembos have the pistons and boots covered in paint. (I’m genuinely curious, I’ve just never experienced it). They look amazing afterwards. Could you have had the Lexus logos put back on them if you wanted?
not all of them but I have seen it on some cars like my STI. I think it so the finish won’t be damaged assembling them, they normally paint over the bolts are everything. You can put anything on them.
I have some high-end Brembo Monoblock calipers sitting on my desk and the boots are covered in paint from the factory.
Wow, the end results are impressive. Really nice to see the care that’s taken during the prep too.
FWIW, I bought a used set of front Brembo calipers taken from a 997 911 4S and the stock seals had red paint on them.
Nice work, but no signs of safety glasses, even when using power tools.
I am wondering if it wouldn’t be easier/better to pull the calipers and hang them in the wheel wells on a stiff wire, rather than doing all of that masking.
I was curious about doing this with my Brembos but looking more towards the powder coating solution. Did you consider this as well or did you know re-painting was the way to go?
Powdercoating isn’t a very temperature tolerant coating and tends to easily discolor. West Coast Calipers tells me that the paint they use is.