Car And Truck Brake Parts

Brake Calipers

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Brake Calipers
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Painting Brake Calipers To Show Them Off

When it comes to painting brake calipers, there are so many different options a person could go to do it. With rims becoming such an huge part of the auto world now, painting brake calipers are coming along with it. The reason being, a beautiful set of rims doesn't look too hot with a pair of rusty brown brake calipers. Lets take a look into some good questions out there when it comes to this game.

Is this project going to kill my wallet in price?

It can and it can't. That's alot like asking, "Is school shopping going to take all my money away?" The answer depends on your opinion of what you should spend on what. Most of us have gotten very good at buying the most for our dollar in these days of tough times, and this goes the same in this position.

It all comes down to what paints you are buying and whether or not you want to use high quality primers, or any primers for that matter. It does make a difference with using filler primers and such, but one can also shop around for good prices. I myself have seen filler primer sell for seven dollars a can, but then found the same exact product somewhere else for under two dollars.

Is this hard for a person to do themselves?

Again, another tricky question because there are so many variables that can really change up a lot of different things. For instance, one vehicle could have the wheels and calipers off in no time. While another vehicle could take up to a couple of days.

How long will it take me to do all of my calipers?

Well, how good are you with your tools and vehicle? That's pretty much what it all amounts to. More variables fly into play like broken bolts, how many coats or paint you apply, how hard you attempt at it. The list could go on for days and there is no just cutting to the chase.

About the Author

Author Chris is obsessed with painting in the automotive field. Painting brake calipers is an easy do it yourself job, that can really add some extra extra bonus looks to a vehicle. For more information, feel free to check out guides on painting brake calipers.

How often do calipers and brake lines need to be replaced?

I just had them replaced two years ago and the shop says the calipers are "starting to stick and need to be replaced" and my brake lines may not hold out during the change. Could this really have happened already or are they just trying charge me more for unnecessary repairs?
I own a 1997 Chrysler Cirrus, live in a state where it snows plenty in the winter, had calipers replaced by a family member and they REALLY needed to be replaced. The calipers are probably rebuilt from Autozone and have a warranty.

I am afraid this is a common scam that disreputable shops visit upon any number of people, but more often women than men in my experience for reasons that escape me. It seems that they calculate that practically no women know anything about auto mechanicals whereas there is some greater possibility that some men will, and I suppose that is true, although I am very much surprised as how few men these days seem to have an interest in that.

Still, that is an editorial and what you want is pertinent information, which I will herein hope to convey.

It will be useful I think to explain how your brakes work that you may better understand what you are being told. Brakes are operated via hydraulic pressure. That is to say, when you press your foot on the brake pedal it operates a large piston called the master cylinder that presses brake fluid through the brake lines to each wheel where there is mounted a smaller cylinder that in turn presses the brake pads or shoes up against a disk (also called a rotor) or a drum.

On disk brakes, this smaller piston is housed inside an assembly called a caliper. Imagine that you have a dinner plate set on edge and your hand is clasped loosely around thr top rim of the plate, thumb on one side and fingers on the other and this would be the configuration of a caliper with a metal housing on both sides of the brake disk or rotor.

Now, let us assume that the plate was spinning slowly and you wished it to slow or stop. You would squeeze your fingers together and the spinning plate would stop. Just so, when you press on the brake pedal, the piston in the master cylinder pushes brake fluid down the brake lines and this pushes forward a smaller piston inside the caliper that presses forward your brake pads to clasp the rotor and bring it to a halt. As the rotor is attached to your wheel that too comes to a halt.

So, what are the common failings on a braking system? Well, of course the top one is that the brake pads wear out and indeed are designed to wear away slowly each time they squeeze on the rotor. If they were made of metal instead of an abrasive material they would gouge out metal on the rotor each time you applied the brakes. Instead they offer a surface that can clamp onto the rotor with relatively little damage to it.

Of course the trouble is that when they wear down too far and the pad material is all gone, the metal backing plate does begin to contact the rotor and eats it up pretty quickly and you then hear a grinding noise when you apply the brakes. To preclude this, most manufacturers these days use some sort of mechanical or electronic wear sensor that either produces a small whistling sort of sound when the brakes that have reached the minimum pad thickness are applied, or in the case of electronic sensors--lights up on your dash.

Obviously, when the rotors become grooved from wear that is another failing, and they can either be resurfaced on a metal lathe in a process called "turning the rotors" or if they are worn below the minimum specification they must be replaced.

Still another failing in the braking system can be found in the caliper, and as this applies specifically to your question, I will explain what they mean by "sticking." As I noted earlier, the caliper has a small piston inside it that, when pressed forward by brake fluid, pushes the brake pads into contact with the rotor to stop the car. The insides of that cylinder must be mirror smooth and free from pitting and corrosion, as must also be the case with the small piston that slides to and fro as you operate the brakes. While a fair amount of hydraulic pressure pushes it forward, when you let off the brakes only the minimal contact the pads are having with the rotor as it turns serves to make it retreat, and if the piston and cylinder have rough places on their respective surfaces from corrosion, the piston cannot slide smoothly back and so it "sticks" holding the brake pads against the rotor where the constant friction builds up a great deal of heat, eating up the pads quickly and scortching the rotors. Yes it gets so hot it actually scortches the metal surface of the rotors, just as if you put a frying pan on your stove on high with nothing in it.

So what causes this corrosion that leads to the sticking? Well, every time the piston inside that caliper moves back and forth during normal braking, it drags with it minute amounts of dirt and humidity back into the cylinder which serve to contaminate the brake fluid. Over a period of time, a couple of years for example, the fluid in the piston becomes so contaminated that it causes the surfaces of the cylinder and piston to corrode. Of course, this is pretty preventable if you have the brake lines flushed every couple of years with new fluid to sid the system of contaminates.

Now, as to the brake lines failing. Well, they too can corrode from contaminated brake fluid. Or, the flexible rubber brake hoses that attach the calipers to the metal brake lines coming from the master cylinder can get old and the fittings can wear out, but this happens usually over a much longer period--several years, not two. I had a 59 Mercedes that I owned for about 30 years and I had to replace those lines once or twice in that period of time, but no more than that.

Anyway, I have gone on far too long, and probably bored you to tears with all of this, but I feel that if you have a better understanding of how things work, you may be also better prepared to spot when someone is trying to scam you. In my experience brakes and exhausts are amongst the biggest scam items car repair shops use to heap excessive repairs on unwitting customers--more often than not women. Such is what chivalry has come to I am afraid.

Incidentally, when you do have the work done, remind the service tech that you want your wheels remounted using a hand torque wrench, not an air wrench. A common oversight in shops, which I sometimes even think is deliberate, is to mount tires using an air wrench, which exerts undue and uneven force on the wheel lugs and can serve to warp rotors, depending on wheel design. Then, once the rotor is warped, being no longer flat the pads must ride up and down on hills and valleys in the rotor when you apply the brakes. At low speeds this is not terribly noticable, but at high speeds it produces a vibration or pulsation in the brakes. I never cease to be amazed at how many people report that shortly after they got new tires their brake rotors had to be replaced. Of course it was not the new tires, but the sloppy installation.

Anyway--this is more than enough I am sure. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me at anonymourati@msn.com

Alfa Romeo UK Announces Pricing for the New Alfa Giulietta
SLOUGH, UNITED KINGDOM – April 29, 2010: Pricing for Alfa Romeo’s eagerly anticipated new Giulietta has just been announced for the UK market.

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