Polished/Painted Caliper and Rotor trial:

94whitesnake · Jun 19, 2004

Hey guys, I have no money for a vortech or longtubes and feel ambitious for some reason so I had the bright idea to polish my very rusted calipers.

Here's what it looked like before:

So I grinded away all that crap from the front of the caliper (the part you see). I wanted to at least grind the whole thing, but there are a lot of small crevices that the grinder would never fit into.

I started polishing until it looked as so:

At which time I realized that this was the dumbest thing I ever thought of. How was I going to keep this thing shiney?? Zoop seal is like 100 bucks, so that was out of the question. I also have no patience, so I couldn't wait for a product to be mailed to me, and then it have a drying time of 4 days (!) as the clearcoat from POR-15 recommends. So I decided to bag it and paint them instead. Off to the store to buy high temp paint. Only problem is you have to bake the paint for an hour for it to be fully cured. I have no spare oven, so I used a huge quartz light and a bunch of tin foil instead. Pics:

Here's what it ended up looking like all set up:

Now I have to do the other 3 wheels. I'll post again when I have more pics of my progress.

VIPERn94Five-0 · Jun 19, 2004

i dont see any pics....

Anthony

94whitesnake · Jun 19, 2004

working on it, they worked for like 5 minutes. What's a good hosting site???

1105 · Jun 19, 2004

www.mustangmods.com

95GTeee · Jun 19, 2004

i dont see them either ... are you just adding them as attachments? Or trying to make the whole pic show up?

94whitesnake · Jun 19, 2004

mustangmods.com will work for now, but i wish i could find a free site for a more permanent address, since mustangmods is only 25 images.

94TURBO5 O · Jun 19, 2004

Nice work they look great!

1105 · Jun 19, 2004

looks nice

95GTeee · Jun 19, 2004

Wow ... I am impressed!! Those look great! Good job! Very clean looking!

Nik_95Cobra · Jun 19, 2004

Looks good. Man that car makes me wish my cobra was white.

89MustangGX · Jun 19, 2004

Wait a minute...you polished the calipers and then painted them instead of spending a few minutes at most every once in a while putting some Mother's on them???? And then you painted your rotors????

????

94whitesnake · Jun 19, 2004

Nik_92Stang said:
Looks good. Man that car makes me wish my cobra was white.

Hey man, I always drool for the black ones. Trades aren't out of the question .

94whitesnake · Jun 19, 2004

89MustangGX said:
Wait a minute...you polished the calipers and then painted them instead of spending a few minutes at most every once in a while putting some Mother's on them???? And then you painted your rotors????

????

I would think they would get oxidized very quickly, unless mother's is really good for protection. I figured it was not since it only cost 3 bucks. Rotors were rusted as bad as the caliper, what else could I do?

89MustangGX · Jun 19, 2004

94whitesnake said:
I would think they would get oxidized very quickly, unless mother's is really good for protection. I figured it was not since it only cost 3 bucks. Rotors were rusted as bad as the caliper, what else could I do?

Without having polshed calipers myself, I could only say I would estimate they would be about the same as polished wheels to maintain -- except only a small area shows, so it would be considerably easier to touch up. The oxidation rate I have seen firsthand with wheels is basically nonexistant unless you get them wet. So if it's a daily driver, maybe every couple weeks you'd polish them to keep them looking perfect, or before a show if that's your thing...otherwise probably once a month or two and it would look decent.

As for the rotors...maybe I jumped the gun. It looks like you painted the face of the rotors, where the pad sits -- did you? If so, not only would you cause a potentially dangerous situation since your pads may or may not have good contact with the rotor (stopping!) -- some or all of the paint will be quickly torn off by the pad as the rotors fly around.

94whitesnake · Jun 19, 2004

89MustangGX said:
Without having polshed calipers myself, I could only say I would estimate they would be about the same as polished wheels to maintain -- except only a small area shows, so it would be considerably easier to touch up. The oxidation rate I have seen firsthand with wheels is basically nonexistant unless you get them wet. So if it's a daily driver, maybe every couple weeks you'd polish them to keep them looking perfect, or before a show if that's your thing...otherwise probably once a month or two and it would look decent.

Yeah, It's not a daily driver, but it's not a show car either. I wouldn't think it'd be worth it if I had to rip the calipers off every month to re-polish them. But hey, it wasn't hard doing it, just time consuming, you should try it.

89MustangGX said:
As for the rotors...maybe I jumped the gun. It looks like you painted the face of the rotors, where the pad sits -- did you? If so, not only would you cause a potentially dangerous situation since your pads may or may not have good contact with the rotor (stopping!) -- some or all of the paint will be quickly torn off by the pad as the rotors fly around.

Uh, yeah, I did paint the face. If you notice on my second last pic in my first post, the paint is already stripped off from using the brakes when I pulled out of the garage. I honestly don't think the paint has any chance of causing my brakes to 'not brake', so to speak. The center and edge of the rotor were rusted, so I wanted to cover those areas up with some paint.

89MustangGX · Jun 19, 2004

94whitesnake said:
Yeah, It's not a daily driver, but it's not a show car either. I wouldn't think it'd be worth it if I had to rip the calipers off every month to re-polish them. But hey, it wasn't hard doing it, just time consuming, you should try it.

I don't see why they'd have to come off at all. All you have to do with the Mother's is rub a little polish on them and buff off with a rag. No biggie.

I don't have the patience to do the initial polishing myself -- I've done a little and don't like it. I'd rather have chrome or something already polished.

94whitesnake said:
Uh, yeah, I did paint the face. If you notice on my second last pic in my first post, the paint is already stripped off from using the brakes when I pulled out of the garage. I honestly don't think the paint has any chance of causing my brakes to 'not brake', so to speak. The center and edge of the rotor were rusted, so I wanted to cover those areas up with some paint.

I couldn't tell from the pictures...but regardless, I don't want to do anything to my brakes that would potentially cause them to not work right...even if it means a little ring of rust around the edge of the hub that nobody sees anyway. Or, if I wanted to get rid of it, I'd just do that area.

Don't get me wrong -- the calipers look nice -- but there's something nice that shows with them being polished -- not just painted like every other car out there. Nothing wrong with it at all though.

94whitesnake · Jul 1, 2004

Fronts are done, waiting for paint to dry and aquisition of a self-bleeding kit. Bright silver with black COBRA letters looks pretty good! Pics soon.

YEAHLOH95 · Jul 1, 2004

just one quick queston aren't the rear cailpers steel?

94whitesnake · Jul 1, 2004

YEAHLOH95 said:
just one quick queston aren't the rear cailpers steel?

Probably.

I've also decided to throw on a Skyjacker 4" lift they make for mustangs, even though it's designed for 87-93's only, I made a couple modifications to make it work:

1105 · Jul 1, 2004

4x4's representin'!!!! I got some competition now

Polished/Painted Caliper and Rotor trial:

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