This is my project to replace brake rotors, brake pads and refinish the brake calipers and caliper brackets.

The car is currently 13.5 years old and is at 95,490 miles. I have had the car for just over 8.5 years and 34k of my own miles. I replaced pads all around in 2012. The rotors are the same that were on the car when I bought it and in the past few years have been giving a slight vibration under braking. It’s more noticeable at certain speeds under braking. That being said, I figured it’s time to do this and timing works out considering my Gold Class entrance at Monte Nationals this June – I’ll have brand spanking new parts and am able to thoroughly clean and detail everything down under while I have the access.

I was not looking to get super crazy with brake components at this time but wanted to replace with good stuff. I went with EBC’s Stage 12 kit which is their thermic black coated rotors and Redstuff pads. And if you're wondering, the black coating will wear off where the pad contacts but will remain on the rest of the rotor. Some reviews of increased brake dust with the Redstuff pads is scaring me from using them but you can’t be too sure how accurate a lot of reviews are. Did people properly brake-in the pads? Did they allow the entire brake-in period before reviewing? Hard to say. Because of that, I also purchased a set of ACDelco pads through the dealership. So I have a couple options and as of now haven’t made a decision which to use yet. The pads I installed in 2012 that are coming off the car now are ACDelcos and they’ve been great with extremely low dust. And I will be repainting the calipers and caliper brackets in red this time.

 

Here’s a few shots pre-disassembly.











And a few shots post-disassembly. Driver side rotors came off relatively easy, passenger side were a pita especially the front but eventually were off after some Liquid Wrench, taps and persuasion. Everything here is factory original except the strut assemblies and exhaust - those have roughly 15k miles on them. I took the time to clean up and detail as much as I could in and around the wheel wells which will also make for a clean environment for painting the calipers since I’m not removing them from the lines. Once the brake work is finished, I’ll be continuing under the car with a full undercarriage detail.

 

Beautiful attention to detail. This car is going to be a time capsule!

 

Definitely a beautiful and clean car!

I've seen those rotors before and wondered how cooling was impacted with the full coating. I've been running centric blanks on most of my cars which only have the hub area coated, but leave the inside cooling vane area bare. Just wonder how it compares in terms of heat transfer to a normal used rotor where the cooling vanes are rust covered.

I've had red stuff pads on my monte for awhile, and they're not bad. On mine, the dust isn't bad at all - certainly the lowest of my cars right now. They're a bit noisy, but nothing crazy. The Carbotechs on my vette sound like a dump truck when warmed up, so the red stuff is worlds better than that.

To be totally honest, performance wasn't quite as good as I'd hoped. I was shooting for something right in between street pad and light track duty pad. I feel like these are closer to regular street pads than I would've liked. Performance and fade is a bit below what I would've hoped as they were marketing them as a notably more aggressive pad than street at the time. But if your baseline / expectation is comparing them to Delco pads, I dont think you'll be disappointed.

The one odd thing I noticed with them was with their added "brake in" coating. This was applied so thick on my rear pads that I actually had to grind some off to be able to get the caliper back on the rotor. I had the piston compressed all the way, and didn't have to even grind all of the extra coating off. Just thought it was strange.

 

Your Monte looks very clean both in person and in the pics. I have no doubt that it will be even nicer when you are done!

 

Thanks guys! If you know me well, you know that I take my time to do stuff right, clean as much as possible while stuff is apart and pay attention to even the smallest details. That's why everything takes me at least 2x as long but it's worth it to me and I enjoy it.

This is an interesting detail. I need to take another look at both the EBC and ACDelco brake pad kits I have and make a decision on which to go with as I'll be starting reinstall tonight.

 

I will be starting reinstall today. For now, here's some progress up til yesterday.

I realize it’d be a lot easier to paint the calipers off the car but, going into this project, I did not want to remove them from the car and deal with brake fluid. So I masked off the entire car, the wheels sitting off to the side and as much of the garage floor and other stuff as I could. The overspray with this aerosol is ridiculous but I prefer it over brush-on because it applies a lot faster and IMO covers better and gives a better finish.





I had a friend of mine sandblast the caliper brackets back down to bare metal and also did the exposed head of the pins for the fronts. Once back I cleaned and masked the pin holes and where the pad retainers seat.





I fully sanded the calipers with 220 grit, cleaned and masked where needed. I shot some Eastwood rust encapsulator on them where needed before the finish coats. Red paint tends to not cover well, especially over lighter colors, so the brackets took 5-6 light coats to adequately cover the bare metal. The calipers took 3-4 coats. Exactly two cans of the Duplicolor red caliper paint was what I needed to do everything.

 

So far, everything is looking great! I need to clean up some stuff on the underside of mine, I have not had the time.

 

Thanks, going to be posting some finish shots soon. And yes, there's never enough time - isn't that the truth? I was going to fully detail the entire undercarriage while up this time but I only got from the rear wheels back plus all four wheel wells. So I guess I'll come back another time to finish the rest, whenever that'll be. Hell I might just buy a pair of ramps, throw them in the car and bring them to Nationals and do it down there - that way it's fresh for judging.

 

Love the pics, great work!

We definitely need more threads like these out there!