Happy Saturday. For those of us with the red AMG brakes, we know that the clearcoat quality is extremely subpar. When I picked up my car, a ‘13 in 2019 it had perfect clearcoat on the brakes as if new. The brakes remained in perfect condition through the first year and the second year when I put it under a car cover for the winter, when I took off the cover, the brakes clearcoat was delaminating. I’m not somebody that uses harsh chemicals or leaves any sort of oil or fluids on the brakes. It was a clearly delamination between the clearcoat and the powder coat all over the caliper, not due to rock chips. Over the next few years that clearcoat started to chip and not look like the quality that this car should have..

I wasn’t going to re-powder the brakes at this point, but maybe in the future when I have my wheels touched up.

so last week, I pulled off the wheels and chipped away all of the loose clearcoat, which was primarily on the outside of the calipers. I’ve only started with the front calipers as they were in much worse condition than the rears. The clearcoat easily separated with xacto razor blades and what was extremely disappointing was that if I touched any clearcoat with my finger on a good part of the caliper, it showed a bubble of separation underneath. This was very clearly a chemical and preparation issue on behalf of Mercedes. Imagine running your hand along your car and the clearcoat separates underneath. This was in areas not even near the chipping. Very similar to the Mars red debacle.

I cleaned, chipped off the clearcoat, very lightly sanded the area, and then cleaned it again. The ink for the AMG stamp on the calipers is likely half of a micron so this cannot be sanded with any force or low grit, literally a swipe.

I didn’t really take any pictures of the work in process, but here are two pictures, one showing before and one showing after four coats. I followed the instructions and really didn’t lay down too much of a wet coat because I’m not a painter and that’s where people go wrong. The parts still have to cure and get polished but for those of you that want to do a pretty quick aesthetic refresh that won’t be perfect, but will look great and hopefully last pretty well. I used vht.

Prep is everything so we’ll see how I did in the future. My working space is anything but environmentally controlled.

feel free to ask any questions. I’m not an expert, but I did read a bunch and felt this was the best way to go in my instance. Had I gotten into touching up the red? I felt I would’ve had to do a full repaint and I’m not gonna pull off the calipers at this point.

about 20 bucks to accomplish.


Close up before passenger paint applied

Pre paint passenger

Post two coats driver side

Driver side post paint. It isn’t perfect, but it beats milky, chipping clearcoat. It has a little dust on it (not in it) as I didn’t blow it off before the pic but it provided a very smooth finish. Can’t wait to polish it next week.

It’s a bit overcast, so I’ll take some more pictures at a later date


Rear passenger. General conditions of what the front brakes looked like too, before the clear.




And here is the finished pre polish passenger caliper.

 

What brand clear did you use - what are its heat tolerances?

they look good post painting/clear coating

 

https://www.vhtpaint.com/product/vht-caliper-paint/.

Thanks Peter, I didn’t lay it on as thickly as I likely could have, but I wanted to be careful this first time I was trying it out. It’s not shown in the close-up pic, but I did sand and prep the original clear transition. Once it’s cured, I think it should polish up nicely.

 

Agree this looks much nicer that the chipped before pictures!
VHT does make some OK paints that do hold up to heat quite well.

 

I used exactly the same product several years ago. The red faded in 6 months. I hope they improved the formula now.

Would not recommend spray paint on caliper.

 

Nice job !

 

Did you clear coat or uv protect the red you sprayed? If you were following along, I only used clear. Durability is based on prep and curing.
, and mils of paint. Spray paint is fine for many applications. It’s not as though Brembo‘s fancy powder coating worked any better…what do you recommend as a professional caliper restorer and chemist? Thx

 

Thx. Holding up fine so far. I let the paint really cure on these before driving and curing further. Only a few hundred miles have gone by but so far so good. The goal here was a stopgap to a full refinish.