Painting Calipers

I bought the paint kit, TRD vinyls and clear coat. But now I'm having second thoughts because the front caliper is so big. I'm afraid it will scream "look at me" versus just adding a note of color (vs the bare silver they currently are). Would be easy to do, but if I don't like it, how hard would it be to go back? I have a sandblaster, but I don't want to disconnect the brake likes to clean red paint off. I would imagine a wire wheel on an angle grinder would be the only method.

Anyone painted their calipers and regretted it? Or has everyone been happy?

 

Happy from what I've seen as long as it's done correctly.

 

The rim will hide most of it. Just do it, you will like it.

 

X3

I have been happy with them too!

 

How big a PITA was it to take off the brake lines and reinstall / prime the hydraulics?

 

I painted my calipers silver so I didn't have to think about them being too garish, or what color to choose, but then I like to be low key anyhow. A side benefit is that now they stay remarkably clean as well.

 

Yours came out great, nice job!

I agree with what others have said, just do it. I still have stock rims and it hides most of mine, I wouldn’t mind it showing through a bit more. It’s subtle enough to add a little bit of flair without being over the top.

 

On my GX470 I used a way brake bleeder valve that I had from bleeding the brakes on my dirt bikes, worked like a charm.

 

I'll have to research that. I've never bled brakes before, but breaking them down to paint would give me the best results.

 

It was not that big of a PITA. The more pain was not be able to use the rig for the week I had them at the powder coater.

Tear down was easy as the rig was fairly new. I removed the calipers and used the truck’s brakes to help “pop out” the pistons. Then I was as “gentle” as I could be and used uhm.. wood clamps with plasticy/rubbery jaws to pinch the lines and then prepared an old bike inner tube to sleeve over the open lines and zip-tied the heck out of them and then used a hose clamp on top of that.

It was pretty much a two person bleed after the calipers were installed. It was not too bad.

It was work and a lot of it but I really like how they came out. I get a lot of compliments on them.

 

Thank you very much sir!

 

Thanks for all the comments guys

 

Couple of Rustoleum rattle cans and a plastic grocer bag slipped under discs between pads to prevent overspray.

1/2 day job for both sides. No need to remove calipers if you don’t want.

 

@Professional Hand Model I do the same, at tire rotation time. But its more for rust aesthetics than thru the wheel aesthetics.

 

Where did u buy all the products for this install?

 

Where I get 95% of the shit I buy nowadays - the evil Amazon.

But the vinyls I got from Etsy. Search for TRD high temp sticker.



my final decision is to do it. Just waiting until I rotate my tires again to do it. Gotta put my rear ABS guards on too. But i gotta build my sliders first.

 

I'd paint mine black to get rid of the ugly cast color

 

What size were they? I see they have 3,4, and 5” stickers