Alright, so yesterday was brake rebuild day.
First I took off the wheels, and while I was at it I put one of the new rims on to have a look at it on the car.
Definitely happy with how they have come up.
Then I had to take the calipers off, and as you can see, the paint is stuffed too.
The next step was to strip back all the paint.
I stripped them using a drill mounted wire wheel which worked really well and quite quickly, but it still took around half and hour per caliper.
Then I painted them, I used the Duplicolor metalcast, and went with the silver. It turned out more of a gunmetal finish, but I am quite happy with it.
I'm going to go over the "subaru" writing with bright silver, then maybe a blue to get a light silvery blue effect on the lettering.
Once they had been painted it was time to disassemble the caliper for the rebuild. I was a bit lazy with the photos here, but I have a few.
First up I pulled all the rubber dust covers off the pistons, they were well and truly stuffed to the point where they all split in half as I tried to remove them.
Next I had to get the pistons out, this was a bit tricky, but I found a technique that worked well enough. I used an electric tyre pump with a plastic inflatable bed type of connector on the end. I put the end of the connector into the hole in the caliper and used the pump to push the pistons out. I used pieces of wood and clamps to make sure that the pistons came out the right amount and one by one.
Not the best method, but effective and I could do it at home.
Finally got all the pistons out.
I used a lot of brake cleaner, elbow grease, fingernails, and a nylon brush to clean up all the pistons as well as the cylinders.
Whoever first painted them managed to get a lot of paint around the tops of the pistons, but I got most of that off.
The old inner rubber seals were still in quite good condition, but I still changed them to the new ones. The best way I found for getting the old seals out was by carefully using a scalpel to pierce the seal and then lift it out of the groove, I could then grab the seal and pull it all the way out.
The new seals then had to be greased and put back into place, followed by putting the pistons back in, then greasing and fitting the rubber dust covers.
Then I fitted the brakes again and bled them (twice, because I didn't quite get it the first time).
I'm happy with the result, and they are a lot more low-key than the bright yellow. I just need to touch up the lettering, and then I'll be happy with them.
I coated the new wheels with a ceramic coating, so hopefully between that and the dixcels I won't have to worry much about cleaning them.
On a side note, I have done some more spirited driving, and the dixcels are excellent, they have a really nice linear feel to them and they bite damn hard.