So i decided to paint the calipers on hazy “porsche” red. I can’t afford a porsche, but i CAN afford to paint the calipers like porsche started doing a couple years ago.

Follow the jump to see all the progress and pics!

My caliper painting adventure!

Here’s a pic from our trip to helsinki in 2000 to show the the porsche calipers.

So hazy’s look kinda boring compared to that:

You can see that the porsche stock rotors are drilled too. lexus isn’t cool enough for that :) Just for clarification, i THINK that the porsche wheels are 18’s, but Hazy’s are only 17".

Things i bought: G2 caliper paint. don’t remember where, but here’s G2’s page. Not to be outdone by the white “porsche” printed on the calipers, i also got some decals from Flatline Graphix. See this post at IS300.net for details on Jeff’s decals. I also got some high temp clear coat spray engine paint to make sure that they ended up nice and shiny!

Friday night i put the car up on jack stands. The G2 paint is really a 2 part epoxy paint, so once you mix it, you only have 4 hours or so to use it all, so its kinda silly to jack it up one wheel at a time and do several coats.

Hazy off the ground!

Then off came all the wheels. I masked off all the areas that i don’t think i was supposed to paint over, then started putting on layers of the G2 paint.

Calipers all masked

The can says there will be enough for 2 coats. there was enough for like 8. I put the first couple coats on thin, by then it was starting to get late (i started at ~8 pm, after lifting the car and taking off the wheels and masking all the calipers, it was probably around 11. ~20 minutes between coats and after actually doing 2 coats, it was probably around 12:30. so i decided to put it on thicker. 2 more coats later and there was still a TON of paint left over. i slopped one more coat on and decided to stop. I used the rest of the paint to paint the edge of a shelf in the garage where i park the car. There was STILL some paint left. i decided to go to bed.

Painting

Saturday morning, i got ready for step 2. the decals. I started with the lexus logos on the rears, then the passenger “IS300”, then the driver IS300. I let them sit for a while, then put a thin layer of the clear coat spray on. for some reason, the edges of the IS300 decal on the drivers side started to curl. none of the others did. strange. i pressed it back flat, and let the clear coat dry, but as soon as i put on another layer of clear, the decal curled again. i ended up removing that one. but then there was a wierd IS300 shape left in the clear coat. so i sanded it back to smooth, then put a few layers of clear back on. i need to get another decal and redo that one.

Decals and Clearcoat

While waiting for layers of clearcoat to dry in the afternoon i alternated between watching the M’s game on tv and washing and polishing the wheels. i figured that since they were off, i might as well clean them and polish them up!

Saturday night i put the wheels back on and took it off the stands.

I’d say they turned out pretty good!

Wheels with Decals

Update 10/2/02: i got a couple new decals from Flatline_IS and fixed the drivers side caliper. washed it, sanded it, washed it, rinsed it, put on the new decal, and reapplied clear coat. its looking good!

Categories: Exterior, Mods, Uncategorized