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Hey, my car is currently getting re-painted but one thing that isn't is the calipers. I painted them a while ago so I will need to put some fresh paint on them, just looking into what else I can do when my wheels are off.

My question is: can you sand and paint the part of the rotor that is rusted where the pads do not touch, near the center. It's not really an issue in the front because the pads touch most of the surface keeping it clean and rust free, but in the rear because of the smaller pads with my new rims the rust near the center of them is VERY easily seen. If possible would it turn out ugly? I would think that painting that part silver would look alot better than rust.

It may be just a good idea to get new rotors that have a rust free protection spray already on them, you can find some on eBay, or get new rotors that are plain and srpay the areas that the brakes dont touch with like a zinc based spray paint or high heat paint that does not attract rust.

My friend had his rotors on his 300zx painted black, the center hub part and the outer edge. Looks much better than ugly rust, there is still a small ring of rust between the paint and where the pad connects, but its only noticeable if you get up close. When I got new rims I hated seeing the rusty rotors, so I bought some Brembos that have the zinc coating, check out my worklog to see how they look. Now my friend wants to do the same thing, but if you are short on money, I say paint them.

Thanks, i'll paint them a silver close to the colour of the rotor for now. Next time I need brakes I will go with the Brembo's.

if u painted the rotors wouldnt they just get insanely hot and bubble/crack off??

Yeah, you need to tape off the contact area and don't paint the face that touches the wheel or the heat and pressure will stick the paint to the wheel.

If will look good though. (Make sure to use high temp paint. The rotors get pretty hot)

Yeah, I intend to use something like an engine paint, that is what I used on the calipers and that lasted a couple years.

I used heat standing paint. Works very well.

I didn't bake mine for that long. 5-10 min max. And the paint isn't that hard now afterwards, so maybe I should've baked them longer.

Macen wrote:I didn't bake mine for that long. 5-10 min max. And the paint isn't that hard now afterwards, so maybe I should've baked them longer.

Periodic checks in the oven showed me that they were still a little tacky after about 30 minutes so maybe i was just lucky at the time period. My biggest concern was the rubber seals and made sure that i didn't compromise those. After about 1.5 hours the calipers paint felt hard to the touch but left them in there longer just on speculation.

I got new rotors and pads recently and had them painted with engine paint. Turned out really good, but too bad I didn't get the rust-proof ones. These are about a month old, and the paint is still good.

I finally got around to painting them all and it turned out well. The silver I used for the rotor is pretty much the same color as the rim. I'll take some pics when I get a chance. My car has to go back in to repair my bumper since it was rear ended less than 200KM after getting it back from a full body and paint job.
I have some pics of the fresh paint but I havent put up any pics yet because the camera really doesnt show much of a difference from what it was before.

I've gone through the same process almost yearly with my car. Originally I had all the calipers painted with Hi-temp white, but it tended to be hard to clean. My last attempt I stripped my calipers down to base parts and had them shot-peened, then used the gold stuff from Candian Tire that's meant for brake parts. It's held up pretty good for close to 2 years, they have some rust on em (Canadian winter's fault, even with extremely minimal driving)

I've also had the niCad plated brembos for maybe 3 and a half years, they look better than the old stockers I had but still show rust (Damn road salt in action again) The one thing I've found with the gold paint or the niCad is it's close enough to a light rust color that a little bit isn't noticable until you get close. I think I'm gonna respray everything next spring tho.

This is how my stuff turned out:


Also adding a few new pics to the cardomain site