Painting Brake Hats

[German]

I got tired of looking at the surface rust on the brake hats (once you see it, you can't unsee it). Little project ensued. All pics here: https://photos.app.goo.gl/YaefvOHrn7pyt66r1

 

1. Here's a good "before" picture. I realize that this surface rust is meaningless and won't hurt anything, I just don't like seeing it through my wheels, thus this project.

2. This is the paint I used. Also visible, the sanding pads, foam brushes, etc. I cut the pad into strips about 1.5" wide; it only took a couple to do a rotor.

3. Scrub away until the metal looks clean. Use gloves, there are a lot of hard and sharp surfaces there. I sprayed it down with brake cleaner after it looked pretty good, then went after it with a second pad and cleaned again.

4. Used a small file to take some casting flash off of the windows. Almost nothing there, but what little there was bugged me.

5. Looking good! Ready to mask and paint.

6. Masked inner and outer surfaces. As it turned out, I removed the "outer" masking on the rotor because the paint is very thin and you'll be rotating the rotor frequently. I masked before opening the can and hadn't yet realized that.

7. Start painting. Two light coats with an hour drying time in-between.

8. Looking pretty good after the first coat.

9. The instructions say to cure the paint in an oven at 400 degrees, or by running the engine (it's for exhaust manifolds). No heat gun, so the next best thing was Lucy's hair dryer (Shhh...don't tell). I obviously didn't get it as hot or for as long as would be ideal, so we'll see how it works out.

10. A couple of pictures after the second coat. I heated it for a while again. I think that should do it, but I'll wait to do the other three until I see how this one holds up to a little driving tomorrow.

[Hussein]

job well done looks brand new 

 

[Guest badbobs95]

I'll give you three "At-a-boys"!!!!

[Blk n Blu]

I didn’t see any pointing fingers but well done!  

[Dave64]

Awrite!  Let us see results after a few hours on the road.

[Chameleon]

16 hours ago, Blk n Blu said:

I didn’t see any pointing fingers but well done!  

 

The filing picture almost looked like pointing - maybe we let him off the hook this time...

 

German, looks great!  

[HOXXOH]

Good job.    I agree that rusty is not something I want on a car.

Thanks for the pic of the paint. I had no idea there was a paint made to look like cast iron.

[Lurch]

Where did you get the paint from? Looks great.

[German]

I got it from Tip Tools http://www.tptools.com/  they have lots of restoration supplies.

[1991 ZR1]

Nice!