Hello everybody,

I want to repaint my Brembo brake calipers as they got some scratches and chippings. Since I want to repaint them as original as possible, I do need the RAL, PANTONE or CMYK code for the color.

Does anybody did this already and found a caliper paint whose color comes close to the original color (see attached picture of the rear caliper)?

I picked up the RGB color values with the pipette in Photoshop and ended up with PANTONE 424C (see attached pics) or PANTONE 422C (the lighter one), dependent from which picture I took it.

But as I'm familiar with the possible error sources of this approach (white balance, incidence of light = uncontrolled light conditions), I wanted to ask around if anybody already went through this and can push me in the right direction.

Thanks very much for your efforts guys!

 

Can you get a paint chips book? These are books of sample colours from the paintshop's scheme, when I want a match I take a part to the paintshop and go through the chips books until I find an exact match, then get them to mix up a quarter or half litre of 2 pack.

 

Hi Sean B,

thanks for your reply!
If there won't be other replies, I'll probably end up with sth. like this. Or I'll drop by a paint shop with a colorimeter.

Since yesterday I've done some research and found out, that it's not necessarily easy to repaint the calipers.
Option 1: If I find a dealer/paint shop who will get me the (presumably custom made) high temperature paint, I'll run the risk of flaking after a while (because of the heat). Or does anybody have positive experiences with brake caliper paint and I'm worrying unnecessarily?

Option 2: There's another way to repaint them, but it requires a complete disassembly of the caliper. Then the calipers are cleaned, stripped of its paint and powder coated.
But since the car is my daily driver and the calipers are two-piece, this would be a major job. And since the calipers are stripped down, it's quite useful to overhaul the calipers (pistons, seals etc) after sanding and powder coating, which leads to the unavailability of any repair/refurb sets for the Brembo calipers.

So I think I'll give the (touch up) paint a chance and put enough effort in it to find an exact match for the color, so that any potential flaking won't attract too much attention.

 

If you can flat back (sand down) with fine wet and dry paper the offending areas then spray or fine brush with a sealer primer, flat that then a couple of light coats from a paint matched 2 pack rattle can should give nice results. I've never had the calipers that hot as to lift this type of paint, as long as the original paint is generally good it should be fine.

 

Thanks a lot, Sean.

After doing a little further research, I came along the caliper paint kit from E-Tech in graphite.
This looks quite close to the original color. I'll report back, as I get the time to repaint the calipers.

Cheers, Alexander