hunterp27

While the S8 is in the shop torn into a thousand pieces I decided to take care of the brakes. I ordered a full set of calipers and pads from Adams Rotors. Once they arrived I took them down to the shop and they allowed me to put them on the car. I took pictures of the back rotors but the fronts are down on the ground (you can see them in the thread about fixing the oil leak. You can see they are a goldish color.

For this thread I am sharing the process of redoing the caliper covers. I stripped them down with paint stripper to remove the gnarled up paint and a little bit of rust. I have ordered S8 logo decals that I will put on and then clear over and bake in the oven. Here's were we are now.....

MP4.2+6.0

Looks good so far. Proceed with decals as you say. But before you clear coat make sure your base layer has dried at least a week. If not, nothing like the nightmare of the whole thing cracks when you spray the clear coat. Just had that on some ceramics I am still toying with. Go light on a couple of layers of clear coat too. If you go on thick, it seems to start to crack more.

FWIW, I use VHT colors and clear coat. From having tried the clips in the oven routine, i would skip. Brake heat will plenty cure them anyway. Oven heat will tend to yellow anything lighter. I was doing silver ones and got some nice golden ones back out of the oven half an hour later. You don't want anything white or silver heading toward gold most likely. Your red will tend to go darker over time too. BTDT where I detailed some Mini S JCW Brembo calipers so they were logo'ed appropriately to an S instead of JCW. Over time the red has gone from what yours look like to much deeper cabernet type red.

hunterp27

MP,

Thanks......I go back and forth on the baking process as I've had mixed results. In any case, there's no problem in giving it time to cure between coats and after applying the decals. I have plenty of time as you can see with the car ripped to pieces. The paint i have been using is the VHT red caliper paint and same goes for the clear coat. Probably not required for the caliper covers but its a small amount of price difference plus the paint seems to be better paint. I suffered thru the cracked clear coat issues when I redid the big red calipers on my 1996 993 twin turbo Porsche. Got the red base all perfect looking and then jacked it all up with the clear coat. Had to sand it all (clear coat) down and start again. Pain in the A$$. I will keep ya posted

hunterp27

Brief update:
Decals arrived and I put them on. Gonna clear over everything next and get them ready for installation once the car gets put back together next week.

Darren Coogan

Wow, very sharp. Nice work. Looking forward to seeing it all back together.

CobraCommander

Looking forward to the updated pics...how many miles on the motor before the tear down?

hunterp27

Cobra,

The motor has roughly 74K miles on it and other than the oil leak and several seeps, there isn't a thing wrong with it. I was just extremely tired of having a wet underside and a messy driveway. In addition to that, it creeps down the bellypan and attracts dirt which just adds to the mess. I really didn't wanna get this far into this but once we chased the leak down, we were half way there. So, button it all back up again means I would have had to re-spend the labor/money again at some point as I wanna keep this car for a while. Either way this has been quite an experience seeing your entire motor and tranny ripped out and scattered all over a work shop. I have gotten a really good look at the internals, chains and so forth. Nothing is marred or scored or looks stressed. Its a work of art motor but this oil pan and block design wasn't well thought thru if you ask the guy who's spending over 3K to fix and damn oil leak. Oh well, its the price we pay

CobraCommander

Good point...I feel the same about mine...I actually asked myself what I could get to replace it...and outside of another S8, not sure there's another car that better suits my lifestyle, size (6'5"- 225lbs), and family.