First jewel

Yeah, this is a bit strange coming from me. I rarely think about the beauty adders. The Subaru is the dead give away. However, for this car my opinion is exceptionally different. This toy is not an everyday car. It's unique. It's got too much "me" in it. So I put everything I like to see in cars into this creation.

Rule number one: the brake calipers have to be red. I tried to reason with my wife about this. She couldn't care less about calipers but I insisted. So she came up with "make them black" and "who looks at those anyways" answers. At that point, I figured out I was right and she was wrong and went with the obvious red. As if there could be any other choice.

I know it's March April now but I started this earlier. It was cold out there. The fingers get frozen quickly while holding metal tools or parts. Thankfully, it is not much effort to take the calipers off the front spindles. So here they are in my basement getting worm.

The only tedious part of the process is to get the calipers extremely clean. Otherwise the paint finish would not last. I tried some simple things first: degreaser and brake cleaners. While it's not entirely useless, it does not bring the calipers to the ready state. Some elbow greasing with a wire brush showed good signs of hope and the rotary tool came to mind. A set of various wire brushing bits and 30 min with the tool resulted in a very attractive results.

The shiny caliper has been cleaned compared to the untouched one on the right. Some time later the second one got the same treatment.

This is an almost ready state. I would only apply some spray cleaner right before laying paint. It should degrease as well as get the last dirt and dust off. I went with VHT products. The reasoning was simple: G2 paint is hard to get here in Canada, Duplicolor got some positive and not so positive reviews, VHT has shown good results. I also have to admit that I did see their advertisement at the Toronto Motorsport Park which did contribute to my decision. I also did use their product for exhaust on my Subaru, so I am not entirely new to the brand.

VHT offers the complete solution for caliper painting. Just read up their website http://www.vhtpaint.com/products/caliperpaint/. I did get their cleaner and paint. I skipped the primer and clear. I noticed that the product number on the clear is in the same pattern as the colours. That made me think that there's nothing really special about the clear but ... well clear. On the other hand, the primer might have been a good idea in the retrospect. I will definitely try to use it when i'll get to the rear calipers.

So one fine day the calipers came out of the basement and the spray of red paint was applied. The sun was shining and the calipers were magnificent.

As you can see the paint on the first coat did not quite cover the caliper uniformly. That's what made me think that primer might have been a must. Later, after 2 more coats the calipers were covered completely but not smoothly. The reason for that is that I suck at painting. On the bright side the paint smoothed out itself after about an hour and made me feel better. The next step would be to bake them. VHT requires their paint to be cured.

I had to stick them in the oven. To prevent any sort of chemicals ending up in my food later, I went for baking bags.

Next step is the oven

And they came out looking HOT but with some imperfections. I saw same brake fluid leak damage and some paint peeling off.

So there's more work to be done. I went back to clean up the spots that were in need of help and re-splayed the calipers again. I am not sure that VHT caliper cleaner is a good thing now. They are ready for the second trip to the oven now but would have to wait for the rears to be ready. I want to put them in together.

I guess this is to be continued ...