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What color should i paint my calipers?

95_Mystique

Hard-core CEG'er
Joined
Jul 19, 2007
Messages
3,970
Location
Middletown, Pa
I cant decide on what color i want to paint my calipers. under the hood i have a blue/black/silver theme, the interior is blue and the exterior is tan. I like the look of red calipers, but they'd look funny on a car that doesnt have any other red accents. I thought about blue, but blue it kinda ricey. so i guess that leaves me with neutral colors, like silver, black and tan/gold. I've thought about doing silver calipers with black brackets, or black calipers with silver brackets, or fit tan/gold in there somewhere. The thing is, if i dont get a tan that matches the car, it wont look right. Does anyone have an opinion on this?

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I'd paint them black. Or maybe silver. I'd leave the wheels alone. Painted stock wheels look extremely ghetto IMHO.
 
dont worry about the wheels guys. im not painting them. that was a typo lol. i was just asking about the calipers. i'll probably do a black bracket with silver, but still not sure.
 
I did red calipers on my tan tour and I really like it, but another color I thought would look good was an amber color that matches the headlight corners. Black will be almost unnoticable behind the rims IMO but maybe that's what you want.
 
Nobodies being creative here at all. I'd go with a dark bronze or a gunmetal. I know caliper paint is limited in color choices, but they make rim paint in all kinds of colors. rim paint goes to 500 degrees as well. I have cheap 500 degree block paint on my calipers now and only problem is it's not as glossy as the caliper paint ans I did a piss poor job of prepping the calipers since I had an army of little kids that "wanted to see it SLAMMED" that were supposedly helping me put the springs on...

hell, even if you wanted to use caliper paint, they sell it in little cans. buy a can of black, a can of gold, and a can of silver, and mix that stuff together until you get a nice bronzish gunmetal that looks european and carries over well with the rest of your exterior colors. then toss that in the paint well of a cheap Testor spray kit that uses aerosol can pressurized air and you got custom calipers.
 
For stock calipers, you definitely want to stick with either a neutral tone (silver, gunmetal), or else match the body color.

In my estimation, red calipers should say "Wilwood" or "Baer" or "Brembo" or something of the sort on them. If they don't , it's a big ol' ricey FAIL (unless the rest of the car is also red). The last thing I'd want to do is to call attention to stock brakes.
 
Nobodies being creative here at all. I'd go with a dark bronze or a gunmetal. I know caliper paint is limited in color choices, but they make rim paint in all kinds of colors. rim paint goes to 500 degrees as well. I have cheap 500 degree block paint on my calipers now and only problem is it's not as glossy as the caliper paint ans I did a piss poor job of prepping the calipers since I had an army of little kids that "wanted to see it SLAMMED" that were supposedly helping me put the springs on...

hell, even if you wanted to use caliper paint, they sell it in little cans. buy a can of black, a can of gold, and a can of silver, and mix that stuff together until you get a nice bronzish gunmetal that looks european and carries over well with the rest of your exterior colors. then toss that in the paint well of a cheap Testor spray kit that uses aerosol can pressurized air and you got custom calipers.

I like that idea, but i've never seen gold caliper paint. i like the idea of bronze on that car, or gunmetal. i'll have to see what i can find.
 
they make gold, check e-bay. a mix of gold and silver would be close to your body color, black and silver would give you gunmetal, and a mixture of all three would make a bronze.

the cheap testor spray kits are like 20 bucks at hobby stores, be sure to use thinner or they clog up and spray like crap...
 
Heres a pic I snapped of mine to show how they stick out with stock wheels, I think they would be more obvious with your stockers. Didn't really add or take away from the car but my dad said it made it look like it belonged to a high schooler, which it does, lol. I'll most likely paint it black If i ever try to sell it.

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damn i wish i had rear disc. but yea, you're dad is right lol. I had red calipers once....

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Tempo FTMFW!!!!

but you see, it worked ok with the red accents that the car already had. The red is too 'flashy' on a tan car that runs 16's in the 1/4 mile lol. I want it to look 'tasteful' and different if you will.
 
I went with a gun metal color with silver brackets. Looks kinda plain from a distance, but up close they look pretty good. the color has metal flake in it too.

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Now what to do with them peskey drums....

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I went with a gun metal color with silver brackets. Looks kinda plain from a distance, but up close they look pretty good. the color has metal flake in it too.

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Now what to do with them peskey drums....

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how'd you wind up getting gunmetal? looks good man, like brand new stock, not all riced out. I saw some gold/amber anodized looking calipers on a Z the other day and thought of this thread. I think they were stock, but I think that color would compliment some k-sports real nice on my car, heh heh...

also, since you didnt go nuts with the caliper color, I do the drums the same. I think it'll look pretty good. that or you could just do BBQ black, that would be nice and simple too and not draw any attention to them.
 
don't paint drums anything other then black. its just plain odd looking otherwise. other then that do a rear disk upgrade and then match to the fronts.
 
I did silver on my ranger and they looked ok behind the 17's with the silver rotors up front. usually, I'd say match the drums to the front rotors, but that gunmetal he used would look ok for drums.

+1 on getting real brakes though, shouldn't cost much at pull-a-part. I saw a pair when I was there last, which is odd since they were on an automatic...
 
yeah nothing like calling out that you don't have rear disk brakes by painting a drum some bright color just to match the front calipers.

real rear brakes? last i checked drum brakes are real brakes too. nothing wrong with drum brakes ... of course disks look better, etc...
 
yeah, the ranger had lots of red going on, so it got red front calipers. I painted the rear drums to match the rotors, but what I was planning on was the 8.8" rear end with the disk brakes from an exploder...
 
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