I’ll use Brake calipers as an example since most people debate painting their calipers.
I’ve had a lot of people ask me what the difference is between paint and PC. For calipers, you need high heat and abrasion reistance… Paint can’t hold up to the abrasive road debris and the in the long term, paint dulls and peels with the heat, even the “High temp” spray.
Here’s a similar post i had on a BMW forum. Somebody had sent me their calipers to get powdercoated because they had spilled brake fluid on the paint.
They thought they went about the process the right way. Took them off, cleaned them up, degreased them, and had automotive enamal sprayed on them. The guy went to bolt the calipers back on and got brake fluid on the paint…before he even got them on the car, the finish was ruined. This happened to all 4 calipers.
Some wheel cleaners and constant abrasion from road debris beats them up just as bad, it just doesn’t hold up.
this is the way they were sent to me:
I decided to pour brake fluid on the calipers just to show how poor the paint’s chemical resistance is. the result:
freshly sprayed, uncured powder.
freshly cured, abrasion, stain, UV, and chemical resistant powdercoat.
Last step is to fill the embossed lettering in with white/silver powdercoat. haven’t done it yet though.
SO, the PRO’s and CON’s of powdercoat.
1.) Powdercoat is more impact, chemical, UV, fade, abrasion, resistant then standard automotive paints.
2.) PC needs the propper prep work to work correctly (clean, bare metal surface… so does paint)
3.) Powdercoating only works on metals
4.) Powdercoating Powder needs to be heated (300°F - 500°F) for aprox. 20 mins to fully cure. Plastics/rubbers that can’t withstand the heat have to be removed from the workpiece (i.e. caliper seals)
5.) Powdercoating can be touched and used as soon as it’s cured or as soon as the workpiece cools enough to be touched.
6.) Powdercoating is difficult to remove once cured. (i.e. sandblast 5x’s longer then paint)
7.)Infintely different colors and textures and effects are available in PC. There are even powders available with heat resistance beyond 1200°F
You can DIY with the cheap kits from harbor freight, but you are limited to the size of your oven. Also, because of chemical vapors, you can not reuse the oven for cooking…it’s offically a powdercoat oven once you use it.
some other before and after’s.
just an FYI. One side of the caliper says “UUC Motorwerks” (the distributer) while the backside says “SSBC” (the manufacturer)… before somebody posts a BS flag on my work.
