When I bought this Camaro in late June, it had a couple of options that I did not order on my original car. For starters, it came with black wheels. I rectified that a couple of weeks ago and detailed the process in the article Camaro Project 3: Ditching the Black Wheels. Now, I am correcting an oddity with the performance brakes on this Camaro.
Oddly, only the front brake calipers were painted red. The rear brake calipers were the standard silver cast alloy. Weird.
Brembo Brakes
The standard brake package on this car is more than adequate for me. I would not have ordered the Heavy-Duty Cooling And Brake Package (a $995 option). This is not a track car, nor will I be doing any extended high speed driving.
Included in the $995 option package are front Brembo brakes. Brembo is a well respected manufacturer of performance braking systems that are found on many high performance vehicles. In the case of the Camaro, it includes larger front brake calipers with four pistons (versus the normal one or two). This allows for great stopping power under extreme driving conditions.
Red Brake Calipers
Many high performance vehicles (especially those with larger wheels) will come with brake calipers that are painted black, red or even yellow. Many times this is without any other performance brake package. With larger wheels, there is a larger window into the parts behind the wheel.
You gotta make those exposed parts look good, right?
I have painted brake calipers in the past, and it is not a difficult task. It just takes time and can be tedious. I did this on my MINI, a Chrysler Crossfire and a friend’s Corvette. The MINI and Corvette brakes were painted red, but the Crossfire’s were painted yellow. That was a great color for the car!
Related article: Crossfire Personality Change
On my current car, the Brembo brake package comes with black front calipers. My car has the additional cost ($595) Red Brake Caliper option. As I noted earlier, only the front brakes are painted red. This drove me nuts, so I grabbed the red caliper paint from my MINI project and got to work on the rear brakes.
DIY Brake Caliper Paint
I detailed the entire DIY paint process in the article below, but since I was only painting the rear calipers it was a relatively easy job. You can either use a spray paint or the brush-on variety. For spraying, you need to remove the caliper from the car to do a good job. The brush on version is easier, but takes a bit longer to do. Since I had paint left over from the MINI brake paint project, I went with that one.
Related article: DIY Brake Caliper Paint
Final Thoughts & Questions
I’m really pleased with the result of this project, and it certainly completed the look of my car. For a $595 package, it doesn’t make sense to only paint the front calipers. I guess I expect too much from GM.
Related articles: Camaro Project 1: Emblem Color Change; Camaro Project 2: DIY Vinyl Graphics; Camaro Project 3: Ditching The Black Wheels
With the completion of this project, I am going to enjoy driving the car for a while before making any other changes. I have a couple of performance modifications I’m considering, but I need to get to know the car better after its 1,500 mile break-in period (I just clicked 500 miles on the odometer).
Let me know your thoughts, or if you have any questions. You may email me at wct.billtaylor@gmail.com, or message me through the Vehicle Nanny Instagram or Facebook pages.