legacycentral bbs

beatersubi wrote:

Legacy777 wrote:Just another thing with the struts & brake lines, what myself and others have done is just cut a slit in the strut that you can bend down and slide the brake line in and then bend the tab back up. That keeps you from having to open the brake system up.

I know that you meant to say the brake line holder tab, but I'll specify just for safety's sake.

Another thing to try on the caliper pistons is emery cloth.

Thanks! Edited for clarity

Thanks for all the suggestions guys! do the kyb struts have the same tab?

i don't think i want to paint the inside of the pistons, does that mean i should just leave them be?

Yes they should as they are direct replacement parts. Yes you can leave them be. They are not painted from factory. If you want to you can just put a very thin amount of grease on the metal to keep it from corroding.

SILINC3R wrote:Yes you can leave them be. They are not painted from factory. If you want to you can just put a very thin amount of grease on the metal to keep it from corroding.

Thanks! I guess what I meant though was, should i not bother sanding them out at all since they'll immediately get corroded again. Or maybe I should sand them out and then grease them? How long will the grease keep them from corroding?

I seriously doubt you'd be doing yourself any good even bothering with the insides of those cups. They last for the lifetime of the car with no paint or grease so you're just wasting your time.

I can verify that KYB struts do have the brake line tab. I've had both AGX and GR2s, and they've both had it.

kimokalihi wrote:I seriously doubt you'd be doing yourself any good even bothering with the insides of those cups. They last for the lifetime of the car with no paint or grease so you're just wasting your time.

Ok, that's what i was starting to get from this conversation. Thanks Kimo.

beatersubi wrote:I can verify that KYB struts do have the brake line tab. I've had both AGX and GR2s, and they've both had it.

Thanks beatersubi, That's good to know.

So everything is sand blasted and ready for powder coating i think.









Only thing is, after I blasted them, i cleaned them with solvent, and then with the wheel cleaner that was recommended. But the cleaner left big light brown spots. kind of like the color of pre-treated wood or maybe oxidation. some kind of reaction that i'm sort of worried about. But they should be clean in any case.

What type of solvent? Use a brake cleaner that doesn't have petroleum distillates in it. It will dry cleanly without a residue. I would think the powder coaters will clean and prep as well.

blarg, so i did the work at my friend's dad's shop. He let me use his sandblaster and he cleaned up all the parts afterwards using his solvent sink. I think it was mostly paint thinner at that point. That being said, there was no apparent residue. The discoloration only happened after i used the wheel cleaner. Mayhapse the paint thinner left residue that reacted with the wheel cleaner. But, i don't think a little discoloration will matter after powder coating. I'm not sure the powdercoat guy will do any prep work. I never really ask him what he does because i feel like he's doing me a favor since he does the stuff for me so cheap. Maybe he does. We'll see.

Sent everything off to be powdercoated today. it'll be 50 dollars according to the guy. I asked him to stay away from anything machined, but it sounds like he's done this before.

Question though, Do i need to be worried about the added thickness of the powdercoating on the calipers and brackets?

No I don't think it should be an issue, and you should have enough room to get the pads on and caliper swung down. How much added thickness will be there?

I'm not really certain, that's the problem. I don't think it adds that much, maybe a couple millimeters on either side? But again, i don't have a point of reference on this.

Couple milimeters? No way. That's huge. It'll be fine.

Oh man, you're completely right. I read that "Thickness can range from 1.5-6 mils. Our one coat standard is 3-4 mils."

Then assumed mils was mm for what ever reason, but it's actually 1 mil = 0.0254 millimeter or 1 mil = 0.001 inch. So at most .1524 mm on each side of the bracket, so a combined thickness of a little less than 1/3 of a mm.

Units.....that's what caused a martian space ship to crash

units and physics. My worst enemies.

I never really consistently carried the units properly in college. It wasn't until I started studying for my professional engineering license that I really focused on it. They would put the wrong answer in the exam to trick people that didn't include the conversion factors for units.

Plus, if you sit down and look at what you're given and what you want, you can kind of do the unit derivation which helps in determining the path/formula(s) to use.

I've always been terrible at math. Up until Calculus i didn't have to study for tests if i paid attention in class. But Calculus wrecked me. Even basic additional and multiplication take me forever to do in my head.

So the calipers and brackets came back from the powder coater. As usual, the job was a little sloppy, but over all fine for the price.

None of the piston bores have any coating in them fortunately, but around the lips of the bores there's some burrs. I need to figure out how to smooth them out a little.

Jumped the gun and did some practice with the vinyls.

Looks pretty good.

Thanks Kimo. It's a little thin in some areas, but fine. Still trying to clean up the burrs, hoping they won't screw up the caliper rebuild kit.

If that where the lip of the boot sits, it should be fine.

Yeah, it's only around the very top. Nothing got into the bores, just some clumping or something around the top rim.

If its in the way of the boot, take some emery cloth or sandpaper to it. Be careful not to chip it though (it take a bit to do so), as the metal underneath will oxidize around the chip and its difficult to seal.