Powder Room
Brakes go through a whole lot of abuse. We change pads and rotors pretty regularly but often overlook one of the most essential assemblies in the brake system, the calipers. It’s the pistons that reside in the calipers that provide the clamping force on the rotors via the pads that stop the car. And these pistons have o-rings and seals that need to be checked-- especially if you take the car to the track for some-- quite literally-- "hot" laps.
Time, the elements and heat conspire to wear out the o-rings, bushings and dust seals on ordinary brake calipers. When the dust cover fails, road grime seeps into the cylinder and piston and eventually causes corrosion. The piston then sticks, causing the pad to drag on the rotor, which in turns creates too much heat which cause more stress on the system and quickly you get a downward spiral of not good.
If the factory coating on your caliper housing is an ugly rust color, you've probably overheated the caliper at some point.
We've talked about all this before, but it's worth repeating here since we added a bit of bling to the ordinary brake caliper rebuild this time around. Check out the pictures below.
The first step is to take it all apart-- here you see the various bits from the caliper, minus the caliper housing:
A common upgrade is to swap the rubber guide pin cylinders for brass ones:
And now for the bling; we sent the caliper housings out for powder coating instead of the usual paint. Powder coating gives a deeper, more durable finish that typically lasts much longer than standard high temperature paint. Expect to pay about double the paint price:
The end result installed:
