neocyclist

Hello,

I recently bought a preowned 2006 RX400h from a dealer which I am very pleased with. Although I noticed quite a bit of rust on the brake calipers in both the front and rear brakes. I am not having any trouble braking, but it just looks ugly looking at all the rust. Has anyone else experienced this? Does it matter if there is rust on the brake calipers or not?

mandyfig

What do you mean with rust? Rust on the braking surfaces?

You can get the rotors off and have it bead blasted to remove rust. Or just clean it.

Or get new rotors.

The previous owner/s got crap on the rotors.

pauljcl

Here is FL, rust forms on the rotors quite fast if the car is unused. A little bit of use cleans the rust off.

mandyfig

Or spray anti-rust, but be very careful none of it hits the rotor brake surface.

mandyfig

That's because of the humidity. Condensation, pronto!

rcy

If you're talking about the calipers themselves, yes, I have quite a bit - more on the front than the rears. Doesn't affect braking at all, but sure looks like crap, especially if you have nice clean wheels.

I was thinking about painting mine (I did that to my last vehicle -a Subaru Outback), but to do a really good job, the caliper should be taken off. Easy enough to do, the problem is after putting them back on. The Subaru was easy to bleed (same as any normal car and the regular RX should be no different) but the RX400h cannot be bled normally as there is not a traditional vacuum booster. I believe the Lexus computer needs to be hooked up to tell the system to cycle in order to bleed.

neocyclist

Yes, the actual brake caliper has a lot of rust on it as well as the rear. The rotors are fine. I am not sure what I am going to do about it yet. Paint them or replace them with better calipers (which I am sure would be really costly). It looks really bad if the rest of the car is clean and the wheels have just been cleaned.

action

it's easy to deal with. take the wheels off, tape up the area you dont want painted and paint them with some HIGH TEMP caliper paint. Around $6 a can. Make sure you scrub the calipers with simple green to get off the loose dirt and oil and let dry first. Not sure there is any "better" brake ready swap options for our car though... you can go custom route or brembos... but then your looking into the thousands for a custom package just to get rid of some rust..

mandyfig

Have thought doing exactly what you said, tape then up and spray. Just time consuming if you really want it to look good. But takes the rust look away.