A few weeks ago, I spent $135 on new brake pads and rotors for the front and rear of my '08 Max. I bought Centric front and rear rotors and Centric pads. The website I used offered free shipping for orders over $100, which made it nice since the rotors are relatively heavy.

The other day, I was noticing the surface rust beginning to form on the rotors, and there was already some on the calipers from before.

I'm not usually that concerned of appearance over functionality, but with my wheels, the orange rusty color sticks out like a sore thumb.

Autozone carries VHT caliper paint in various colors so I spent another $16 or so and bought a can of silver and black. VHT advertises rates their caliper paint to 900F, where the Dupli-Color is 500F. I don't know how hot brakes get, but I went for the VHT since it was the same price and rated higher.

I unbolted the calipers, brackets and rotors and masked off the rotors. I left the calipers attached via the brake hose and used newspaper and masking tape to keep off unwanted overspray.

I attached some photos below of before and after. If I had a Porsche, I might have opted for red calipers, but decided for my Max, less is more.

I could only do one corner at a time, but this took me about 2hrs, which for me, is about 4 beers.

Not including the beer, I now have about $150 in my brake job.....and of, course, that's if my time is worth nothing......

Before:



After:

 

Yoooooo I like it man nice job look official.

 

Lookin' pretty fresh man!!

 

Looks good!

 

nice paint job..love to do that myself one of these days.

how is the performance ?

I put cheap a** ones on mine too (wearever from advance). The braking is great but when i am stopped on a hilly surface and slowly let go off the brakes, i hear a grinding noise. Not sure if it is the caliper sticking or the fact that they are just cheap brakes

 

Looks good man.

For those who plan on painting calipers, paint your rotor hats while you're at it. You'll be happy you did it in the long run.

 

Very nice. Would try to do that when I install new brake rotors and pads.

 

Im so pissed like 1 month ago I wirebrushed ALL my calipers, brackets and rotors, and just applied graphite spray thinking it would last a while. 1 month later ,all rusted again.... next time I clean them, I'll paint I guess.

 

Looks good....

 

No issues, no weird noises....honestly can't tell the difference from the OEM brakes, other than there's no vibration now. The old rotors were no doubt out of spec on thickness variation or uneven parallelism (incorrectly referred to as "warped", like my sense of humor).

Meant to also post a pic or two of the rears, before and after:

 

Looks nice.

 

looking Real nice

 

Dude it looks good especially since the brakes are like 2 toned.

 

this might be my next mod after i do a brake change.