Thread: 2000 Audi A4

very nice, i especially love the painted calipers, ive been wanting to do that for years but never figured it out now wanted to mess with taking my brakes off, you should point me in the right direction and maybe ill take up my own summer project, where do you live that your able to get away with the limo tint? did you do the tint yourself, looks very nice, how much did the calipers and tint cost you?

The everything myself. The Calipers paint/cleaner cost me $20 and I have enough to do at least another 3 cars. If you do paint your calipers, a word of advice... DO NOT TAKE THEM OFF!!! On the driver side I did as the box suggested and took the calipers off to clean/paint them, and it took me a solid 3 hours to get them back on and my brakes working. (If I knew what I was doing I might be able to have done it a bit easier, but I'm not too familiar with brakes.) All you really need to do is slide some paper around them and paint carefully. Trust me, its much easier to take time there, then waste time taking them off.

I also did the tints myself. I only did the back and front windows (not the rear window.) The fronts are 20% and the backs are 5%. Once again I did them myself. I heard from most everyone not to do it yourself, but my friend has a beater car that we decided to do it on just for the hell of it and they looked great! Mine have a few bubbles, but to me the difference between $30 (the price it cost me for the supplies) and $200 (cost to get my car tinted professionally) is worth it. I live in PA where, if I'm not mistaken, the law is 70%. But I live in a rural area without a lot of cops so its not really a problem, not to mention the tints aren't really that noticeable, I can't even tell the difference between those and the ones that came stock on my dad's Ford Windstar :P

If you have any other questions feel free to ask. I'll also have some tutorials up on my site shortly if you'd like to look there.

Thanks for viewing!
-Nate

what kind of paint did you use for the calipers, ive only heard of sandblasting them

Originally Posted by semaj4712

what kind of paint did you use for the calipers, ive only heard of sandblasting them

I just went to the auto-parts store in my area. $20 there was a "kit" which included caliper cleaner and paint. The paint is nice cause it dries in about 10 minutes and is suppose to be really permanent.

*** Side note, I'm not sure if you're aware of this (I wasn't at the time) but many break pads are made of asbestos, which means brake dust, not a good thing to breathe in. Lucky for me I have the repair manual for my car which I needed to take the calipers off which had a warning on it.

nice thing to know thanks, i might try tackling it this summer