Re-Building Two Pot Brakes

[Guest Bjcnz]

Heya Guys, how are ya! Well I'm in the process of stripping and rebuilding some two pot brakes from a B4 for my legacy (I only had single pots) and thought I'd post up progress photos!

So far they're all in pieces, its fairly easy to do, just undo everything and they come apart nicely, (Apart from the pistons themselves, they look like they'll slide out nicely but they don't!)

Unfortunately I don't have any photos as I was doing it all, but I'm sure you could all work it out yourselves. As I said above, the only hard part is pulling out the pistons, which you can do in a variety of ways. Option 1 is to use an air compressor attached to where the bleed valve goes in, and then they just pop out (make sure you have the caliper wrapped up in a old towel of some sort as they come flying out) or Option 2 a lot of Brute force with screw drivers and wrenches and vice grips and what ever you can find (Thanks Evolution Motors in Gisborne for this :-D Option 1 wouldn't work for me, normally it does)

And then you get to this stage :-)

These were in such GOOD condition I was amazed! Usually they aren't as pretty looking as these, turns out I probably could have gotten away with not pulling them out, however I wanted to be sure and also it makes sand blasting ALOT easier with all the rubber seals out

Next I used a mix of Kerosine (Jet A1) and pennzoil in a sprayer bottle (Great mix for cleaning off tar and grease) and a wire-brush to strip all the oil off them and then water blasted them down.

Tomorrow I'm hopefully going to strip all the old paint off them with a sand blaster, will post pics then.

And then will be spraying them Gold with 2 pot paint (Much better than the Spray Can "High" heat resistant paint, in fact, that paints useless)

Sorry for my lack of technicalness, first time working with brakes, should be fun!

[Guest Bjcnz]

Wellll no ones looking, but all smiles, I'm having fun while doing this!

Stripped down the other caliper today and Primed them both up (have no pics of them primed yet)

Got the paint colour mixed today (Gold Yellow), hopefully paint them tomorrow. The paints a 1 pot based paint, but putting a two pot clear coat over the top for the gloss and for protection. If you guys are ever planning on painting your brakes, I thoroughly recommend pulling your brakes off and stripping them down. Not only will you get peace of mind that they're in good condition (or if anything needs to be replaced) but you'll be able to do a good paint job on them. Avoid the spray can paint "Heat resistant" "For engine" or "For Brakes", that stuff is useless and will only last a few months. Do it once, and do it properly, you wont regret it.

Sand Blasted down, looks like new

[Guest keltik]

Man that looks really good. If i didnt need my brakes id take them off and do it properly too

[Guest Bjcnz]

Brakes are over rated :-p just pull 'em off and do IT! haha. Fair enough, I dont think many people would be up to it, because your car would be out of action for about two days, save it for if you're upgrading them

Edit: I sooo want your 3 litre, must go nuts

[Guest keltik]

Thanks mate, mine goes ok but NotAnotherWhiteGTB's goes way harder as hes got the newer version.

Just upgraded to 4pots and the paint job on them was crappy. Was too impatient to wait and paint them properly tho. Will get round to doing it right in the summer

[pl0x]

 keltik said:

Thanks mate, mine goes ok but NotAnotherWhiteGTB's goes way harder as hes got the newer version.

Just upgraded to 4pots and the paint job on them was crappy. Was too impatient to wait and paint them properly tho. Will get round to doing it right in the summer

me and bradly took a whole 4 minutes out of our lives to paint them well really he did all the painting so blame him lol...

But yea there gonna look mint and if i new you could strip and paint them nicely i woulda haha

[Carbon]

Awww, I miss my crappy paint job :-)

What type of caliper paint are you going to use? The gloss is suitable with brake dust?

[Guest keltik]

lol Sorry brad, not having a dig at you. I dont know what paint you used either but it comes off with degreaser!

[pl0x]

 keltik said:

lol Sorry brad, not having a dig at you. I dont know what paint you used either but it comes off with degreaser!

lmao na i dont care haha, i thought the brake fluid that leaked on to it would have done the trick at stripping it to lol, was some "caplier" paint that bradly had?

[QRAF]

can't wait to see them painted

i also was looking at painting my calipers when i replaced my disc's but ran out of time.

[Guest Bjcnz]

 Carbon said:

Awww, I miss my crappy paint job :-)

What type of caliper paint are you going to use? The gloss is suitable with brake dust?

I'm not using Caliper Paint, Caliper paint is really aimed at the people wanting a quick job with a spray can, looks great for the first few months, but after that it'll start flaking off.

I'm using a brand called PPG and Cobra. So after you've stripped them down, you primer the brakes, this just allows any imperfections to be hidden and primarily helps the paint to stick to the caliper better, otherwise it'll just flake off. The primer I'm using also serves as an undercoat which is handy (one less step I have to do) the undercoat is what you see after its painted, so it needs to be perfect and blemish free (the base coat, colour, is actually see through) and then you paint them up. The Gloss will (should haha) be fine as its a 2 pot based clear coat, so it'll be extremely hard and resistant to brake dust, and stone chips and what not. I opted for the clear coat, as I'm trying to get them as near to the gold that some of the Brembo Brakes have on them, and to get that nice shine out of them you need to clear coat

Edit: Note on the clear coat, it may actually be cheaper to get it done through a paint shop than doing it yourself, as calipers don't require that much, and its hard to find little amounts of it, especially as soon as you open the hardening agent it goes off pretty quickly. So it may be worth thinking about primering it yourself, and then buying the base coat (colour) and bringing it into a paint shop to do it. They shouldn't charge tooo much, cause you've done all the hard work and supplied the paint, and if they're nice they may tell you to come back when they're clear coating something else, sooo someone else pays for your clear coat :-D

[Carbon]

Look forward to seeing them finished !

I gave up trying to find a decent gold touchup paint for brembos, not easy it seems

[Guest Bjcnz]

haha naa its not easy, i could imagine. I used to work in the boating industry, and have painted a few boats so I HAD a few good contacts when I lived in Aucks, but now I'm in Gissy it was kinda hard. But I was speaking to an aircraft engineer where I fly, and he pointed me in the right direction. Try asking around at a few mechanics that do touch up jobs, they could probably point you in the right place, so far I've only spent $31 + the brakes, thanks to you :-p haha, they're in such AWESOME condition, cant wait to fit them, I'd say it'll be a big improvement on my single pots :-D

[Guest Bjcnz]

Aaannd the painting process has begun ;D Will post pics for you guys on Monday

[Guest Bjcnz]

:-D :-D :-D Aannd here are the photos of the paint finish :-D Fitting them tomorrow fingers crossed, just waiting on some new seals from subaru to come down.

;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D

[QRAF]

gold drool :o

[Carbon]

BLING! ;D

[Guest Bjcnz]

They've got an 18 carrot gold coating ;D

[Guest Bjcnz]

Grrrr, have to wait till tomorrow to fit them, the new seals sent down were the wrong ones. Oooh Well, I cant wait ;D

[Guest]

Nice, i must admit that is the only place GOLD should ever be on a car, very stylish cant wait to see pics of them on your car

[Guest Bjcnz]

 camrhodes said:

Nice, i must admit that is the only place GOLD should ever be on a car, very stylish cant wait to see pics of them on your car

Yeah I agree, though sometimes, in my moments of weakness, I kinda like the Goldy/Bronzy colour of some GTB wagons, I'd never own one that colour, but it has its place

[Guest Bjcnz]

Heya guys finally fitted them! Sorry about the quality of the first three pics, only had my phone on me.

Today was full of swearing and cursing cause my disks were corroded onto the hubs haha (why am I laughing? lol) Car WAS clean before I got to work on it, but afterwards it got dirty, so excuse the oil and dirt on it.

Yusss, scored myself some rear brakes for her too including the hand brake for $100 what do you guys think of that price? Seems pretty reasonable to me

Old Disks

[Guest Bjcnz]

Need to get some better photos of them, looks ugly in these ones.

[Guest Bjcnz]

Hmmm, there's a bad knocking noise coming out of the front right one, anyone know what that could be? Everythings done up tight, there's nothing loose

[Jimbob]

cool as, i am currently rebuilding a seized one, didn't have access to a air compressor but placing a blocc there and pumping the brakes got one out.

the other(the seized one) i had to tap it out with a hammer and a ground down screwdriver