Rick Hesel

I'm thinking of buying a spare set of caliper castings, grinding them smooth, powder coating them, then rebuilding the caliper assembly with the new castings. Best I can tell from checking some parts web sites, the castings are pretty inexpensive, about $40 a wheel. Anybody actually buy these things (just the casting, not the whole caliper assembly)?

mdigrappa

not yet but that is a hell of an idea since to powder coat you have to take the calipers apart first anyway.

blackblack

I had this exact same idea years ago for my M3. Powdercoating would provide the best effect, even Porsche-like one could say. However, I was told there are small rubber bits in the calipers that makes it impossible to powdercoat them (as the heat required would melt them). No idea if that was a load of BS, but that's what I was told. Good luck with your attempt Rick! I'll be great if this works!

Rick Hesel

The parts that I'm talking about are the caliper bracket and the caliper body, which are both castings. If there are rubber parts on any of them, I think they're replaceable. I'm headed over to the Honda dealer this morning to check this out.

Col

I can tell you two people here in Oz have powder coated their calipers and they haven't suffered any problems. My only coimplaint was they chose a fire engine red rather then the darker brembo red which I think looks a bit better.

As to "rubber bits' I haven't seen a caliper that all the rubber bits don't come off, of course sometimes removing them is destructive as you have to lever them off and even very slight nicks in the rubber are a disaster on brakes.

cdelena

Powder coating is a good option and would look really finished. Red again?

I cad plated mine which necessitated stripping them apart completely so that they could be dipped and baked. Starting with new castings is a good idea to avoid the two weeks of down time I had when I did mine.

I bought the rebuild kits from Trevor ( http://www.handa-accessories.com/s2000.html ) for about $20 a wheel (much less than the local dealer), and he might be cheap enough on the castings to make up for the shipping.

Being on a tight schedule I did not get to spend quite the time I would have liked finishing the castings to get them smooth (it took longer than I anticipated to get the old caliper paint I had used buffed off). Even a regular bench grinder can be used to remove the rough casting marks, but high speed tools are needed to get a decent finish. I would have liked to spend another day or so polishing the finish on mine but had to get them to the plating shop.

Of course the coating shop will have to mask all entries to the body of the caliper. They may even be able to use a bead blast to smooth surface imperfections from your grinding so I would check with them beforehand.

Here is a pic of mine before they were reinstalled.

blackblack

cdelena, any pix of the cad-plated calipers on the car? They look nice!

Mike L

Rick --

I would like to do the same thing -- I would rather do it right the first time around.

Please let me know what you find out -- maybe if there is enough interest, we could do a GB for just the castings.

Do you have any idea where you are going to get them powdercoated? I am going to call a contact I have in Kensington this weekend -- this guy does a lot of custom, side work (paint). Real neat guy -- sold my Harley to his dad, his son is the top jr dragster in the country and the guy I am talking about, designed and built the first suspended jr drag rail in the world (and manufactures them on a limited basis). His paint work is second to none -- although I have not had anything done by him yet -- I have seen quite a few examples of his work.

I will call him and post what I find out.

Tedster

Rick,

have you thought of buying, powder coating or plating, and selling caliper castings? I'm sure there are many here who would take you up on them .

Ted

Rick Hesel

I checked with my local Honda dealer this morning, which, surprise, was a useless visit. They only sell the whole caliper assembly -- for more than $300 a pop. So now I have to check for someone who will sell the bracket and body separately. I'll post what I find out.