guitarplayer16

iTrader: (8)

I was able to get my rotor screws off (note that I have an 04, that's in CANADA. Rust galore!!!).

There's a trick to get them out without drilling them out.
Just hammer on the screws really hard. The vibration gets the screws loose and you'll be able to just take a screwdriver and take them out. No impact screwdriver or anything!

I saw my mechanic do it today and I DOUBT my rotor screws have ever been taken off in its lifetime.

rockstar143

iTrader: (6)

Hmmmm...that's great to know...so just hammer the shit out of the head of the screw then? I didn't try, but I have a feeling mine would come out with just the screwdriver, maybe not.

Now, a bigger thing for me is that they are still in good condition, so I don't know if I should go drop 200 bucks on new zinc plated ones...maybe...hmmm...

acura_dipset_tl

iTrader: (40)

Agreed, that's how i did mine.

rockstar143

iTrader: (6)

Hmmm...well, I'll have an awesome update tomorrow but I DID try hammering on the screw area and tried to unscrew and it wouldn't budge (just for kicks)...the screw is recessed a bit...did the guy use a punch of something to hit the head of the screw? Or just whack the shit out of the area where the screw sits?

J

acura_dipset_tl

iTrader: (40)

^ I first sprayed the screw with a little screw loose (wd-40) will work also. Then i placed the screw driver on the screw and hammered away. After that just twist the screw driver as if you were gonna unscrew the screw and at the same time hit it again with the hammer, you should feel the screw budge. Hope that helps.

swoosh

iTrader: (5)

am assuming you guys dont have a breaker bar....

or access to Firestone or some shop like that....they can break the bolt loose and hand tighten it....you drive home and pop everything off

RaviNJCLs

iTrader: (4)

Get one of these....

http://community.craftsman.com/Craft...ws?tab=details

They are great for removing those screws. HF also has one for a hell of a lot less but I was not able to find it at my HF. This thread reminds me I need to pick one up.

guitarplayer16

iTrader: (8)

I believe my mechanic used like a punch or something.

You have to hammer it HARD.
My mechanic gave it a few hard hits with the hammer and I think it knocked off a LOT of rust too lol

rockstar143

iTrader: (6)

Thanks fellas...thankfully, this was all a preemptive attempt! I probably won't be changing my discs just yet, since I don't have a vibration when braking or anything. I do like the brakemotive ones and it's a heck of a deal for the discs, but I don't want to pay for the pads too. Plus, I just took the time to sand down and wire brush and repaint the hubs and discs. Took many, many hours...but was well worth the end result.

guitarplayer16

iTrader: (8)

Yeah really looking forward to getting Brakemotive rotors too (for the spring, I don't want them to rust in the winter).

I'll be getting different brake pads too because I heard the ones that they sell make a lot of brake dust.

RaviNJCLs

iTrader: (4)

I have 23K on the pads now and still at about 50%. I'll probably change the pads before the end of the year though. I just don't want to do them in the dead of winter.

rockstar143

iTrader: (6)

Ok...so this long holiday weekend, decided to tackle this, since I knew I could leave my car out of commission and take my time.

Got 2 things done, swapped out my ebay special jpower front camber balljoint to the spc one. I have to say, the jpower people did a GREAT job of copying the style. It's identical, save for the 17mm castle nut vs the 16mm spc (lucky I realized before I stripped it). Also, the SPC one, when you tighten it down, it actually presses the balljoint into the upper control arm, the ebay one was moveable as soon as you'd loosen the upper nut.

Next up, I got my brake calipers and hubs/discs done. I had done a half assed job of spraying the discs in silver a year ago, but I definitely didn't prep correctly. I'll probably end up getting some zinc plated brakemotive discs down the line, but this'll buy me some time.

On to the pics...I made a semi DIY, although I'm sure it's pretty self explanatory. Won't bother with the camber pics, although there's one of the spc one installed.


Here's what we're starting with...some rusty hubs and here are some good pics of the bubbling that was occurring on my brembos...the final push I needed to go ahead with repainting them.


prepped everything at once, wiped down with some natural solvent stuff for the kitchen, then sanded with 50 grit and then 150, then wiped down again, then taped up, then wiped down with IPA. I learned on one side, use 150, the 50 leaves deep scratch marks, but you have to look closely to see them.


depending on your rims, you can see some parts of where the rim seats against the hub, so paint that too...covered the lugs, you don't want a few millimeters of paint on those.


Ok, HUB done...

For the discs...the brakes will take care of scraping and burning off any extra paint after, but you don't want all that gunk on there...I used 1.5" painters tape, put on long straight strips to cover the most area...then I put a razor blade on the grooves and spun the disc by hand to cut a perfect circle. Took about 5 minutes per disc and made cleanup a breeze (nonexistent). An ounce of prevention...pound of cure, right?
Once that was dry (and after getting home from the UM game)...I reversed the process...covered up the disc and secluded the caliper. I will make this recommendation when doing this, if you want to do it right and get good coverage and NOT on your pads or have weird paint lines where you should have painted but didn't because you had to tape and overtaped (if you've ever painted calipers back in the day you'll know what I mean). The level of detail and perfection is the line in the sand that separates if something looks oem and classy or like a hack job and why would you do that to that poor tl look from people. SO REMOVE THE BRAKE PADS/SLIDES/PINS. Seriously. Takes an extra few minutes but makes it easier to mask under...I basically just put a piece of newspaper and then slid it under the caliper.


Already looking pretty good...OK, now, let me say this too...get a bearing on where the decal ends up...once this thing touches the semi wet paint (i installed after 30 minutes after the last coat of the base silver color, after an hour, they say not to do another coat of anything for a week) it will stick and NOT move. I messed up the first time...the pulled the letters off and put on my second one...but you could kind of see the ghosted image of where I messed up and put down the original letters...so scrapped it all and sanded it all back down and redid it. Then I measured where the center was vertically for a bearing, and then eyeballed horizontally...got it right. Only had 4 black decals so once I messed up the first two...ZERO margin for error.


Then clear it...I did 3 coats of base, 3 of clear.
Rears done...


and now the fronts...

with the tein and spc, it looks like Christmas under my fender!


and here it is, complete...

guitarplayer16

iTrader: (8)

damn man that turned out REALLY good

GREAT job!!!

TLDude876

iTrader: (7)

Nicely done sir and yes I am going to copy your headlight mod

RaviNJCLs

iTrader: (4)

^^^^

Very nice work. At first I was thinking that silver was a poor choice until I saw the "Brembo" logo on it.

acura_dipset_tl

iTrader: (40)

Nicely done.

swoosh

iTrader: (5)

J I have to mention you are a damn Rockstar....

Complements:
1> Professional Job
2> Great DIY
3> Patience you got
4> Awesome outcome
5> Caliper stands out very nice without taking the attention away from your rims

Critics:
1> Looks stock (some might take this as a complement...but the way I see it is, if I spend sooo much time trying to make the caliper stand out, I want it to be like "dude well done"....rather than "baah it came stock" or "rich kid got brembo's")
2> Too many colors black/blue/silver/golden (on the wheel caps)

But again....great job....it looks awesome....

you make me wanna do a BBK swap

CLtotheTL32

iTrader: (3)

Dayyyuuummmmmmmmm

rockstar143

iTrader: (6)

Thanks, buddy! I appreciate the compliment, especially from such a diyer yourself.

...by all means, greatest form of flattery, right?!?

Totally agree Ravi, without the logo (or some kind of logo on it) I think it would look like ass. Like you dumbed down a mod. Honestly, I would have stuck with the ACURA emblem, but the brembo ones were more readily available on ebay and cheap. Also, I would NOT put a brembo sticker on if it wasn't a brembo caliper. The lady that sold them to me, sold me 12 for $7 shipped. She had 1/2 of them being smaller ones for the rear that I said hell no to. She swapped them to all full sized ones.

, thanks dipset. I appreciate it.

Swoosh, thank you very much, buddy. I appreciate the compliment very much. It definitely tried my patience, but we used my fiance's accord all weekend so I could just leave mine on jacks in the 1 car garage. Did 1 side, then the other the next day. PS...you don't have BBK, huh?!?! You're hating on my color choice because of it! At 32 years old...if someone said "rich kid got brembos'" I would just be super happy that someone still thought of me as a "kid"

I get what you're saying though, and don't take offense since I know you're rockin blue. But I had done some test samples and found that if I did a base of silver, I could lay over some of that anodized finish blue that I did my lugs in and it would have matched beautifully...but only in the sun, such a large surface area, in the dark would look like normal blue and that just reminded me of my old 1997 accord. Not to say it COULDN'T look good, but for me...I feel like I'm always on the verge of overdoing it and I don't want to push my car (as a whole) to a level of looking like I've just done every mod to it. I like the black and blue theme a lot, but I think less is more. The silver, popped...didn't look as much like the oem black (which I didn't feel like doing all that work for it to look stock)...the blue I think would have been overkill. The copper from my engine bay covers was my other option...but that DEFINITELY would have been too many colors and Lesbianas, like someone (maybe you?) mentioned...those super loud calipers should be done by powdercoat and should be on lambo's and cts-v's. Don't quote me though, I may end up changing them up in the future, or if the silver doesn't hold up. Oh, and the center cap, has like a golden hue to it, but when you see them in person, they look like silverish...so black, blue and silver are all I got, really.

For now though, I'm very happy with it.

PS, this guy pulled up next to me last week and is really what had me reconsider doing the blue...

Tyler...thanks! 1 word is worth a thousand pictures!

acura_dipset_tl

iTrader: (40)

Where's the thousand pictures?

swoosh

iTrader: (5)

J thanks for the explanation bro...i hope no offense were taken by you as well...am just thinking out loud (or writing out loud )

i dont have BBK since no MT or Type S

but yeah those calipers on the truck look like crap....but hey you and him got the same tires LOL....

none the less...the calipers look great....and shit i didnt know u were 32....LOL

rockstar143

iTrader: (6)

LOL...sometimes I don't even know I'm 32!!!
no offense, at all...
I write like I think too...that's why my explanations are so long sometimes...because I type fast so I just write at the thoughts pop up and go with it.

So on a negative note, I got under the car today to see if I could finally find this annoying exhaust vibration I get under load when accelerating...it doesn't do it when just revving. I also noticed, I had it originally when I installed the j pipe but from one day to the next it got much worse. I thought maybe the muffler or a heat shield...
I've retightened all nuts to the jpipe.
I bent heat shields away from the exhaust to make sure there was no vibration
Today I opened up my intake again to retighten the nuts that I torqued down when I installed the thermal gasket.

2 things I noticed,
There was some fluid on the oil pan...but it wasn't oil...I think it was power steering fluid, maybe from turning the wheel when I didn't have the car on since it overflows from the pump...not sure. All my fluid levels are normal though so I am not too worried. I cleaned it up and will find the source later.

I noticed that under my valve covers or even where they join to the block, there seems to be a lot of crud built up. 75K and 8 years seems early for an oil leak, no?

Then, I noticed this:
side motor mount is shot. I'm thinking it finally gave completely way and it's allowing the motor to twist when accelerating at a certain speed which, in turn, is putting a strain on the exhaust from one side causing the weird vibration/raspy sound.

If I'm not mistaken, the front and rear motor mounts are liquid filled so if I don't see liquid all over the place around them, they are probably not broken, right?

J.

rockstar143

iTrader: (6)

and back to fun...looked on oemacuraparts...dang...shipping is 18 bucks for the side motor mount. I'll stop by acura...they give it to me at 15% above what they pay...probably just as cheap with only 3 bucks tax instead of 18 shipping.

rockstar143

iTrader: (6)

Supposedly the zinc coating on all the holes/grooves will keep them from rusting. As far as dusting, they are ceramic, so they really shouldn't.

Yeah, I'm with you, I had 75K on the rear pads and probably could have gone longer...but I had them all apart, so figured it was a good time to grease everything up and put new pads. I also opted to switch over to ceramic since my brembos up front are ceramic since 40K or so. I've changed them once already but mostly because if you buy your pads from autozone, their warranty includes wear, so you technically can walk in every 10K and they hand you new ones.

Steven Bell

iTrader: (2)

Wow, love the new beauty shots brother!

guitarplayer16

iTrader: (8)

Nice shots!

My motor mount (the same one you took pics of) is torn too - just not as bad as yours are lol

rockstar143

iTrader: (6)

Thank you very much Steven, I'm honored!

GP...gotcha...I'm really thinking it was weak and finally snapped, that would explain the exhaust slightly twisting and causing the vibration/rasp under load. If something was just loose or touching...it would make the noise when I was revving. ALSO...I think it's imperative to fix it soon because if not, it'll probably end up destroying the front and rear ones since they are not designed to take the extra load. I will probably order and put up a DIY on how to change it. Looks easy enough. I'm hoping it also gets rid of my slight shudder...



J.

RaviNJCLs

iTrader: (4)

Right now my plan is to go with the CMax pads from Autozone.

rockstar143

iTrader: (6)

Those are the ones...lifetime warranty INCLUDING wear!

TLDude876

iTrader: (7)

+1 on those pads.

GtMaxx

frigggin sweet bro if you can charge me a good price or help me out since im local 2 also NBP I would like to spray the ring in the head lights as well a nice color i dont wana say until its done with pix.

rockstar143

iTrader: (6)

since you pm'd me the color...want me to tell everyone what color??!!

lol...just kidding. Like I said, I don't think I'm at THAT level yet to be charging people to do their headlights but I WILL tell you that I think you can do it...just read up ALL THE DIY THREADS beforehand and learn what you need to learn before you start...then get your materials together etc.

06tl4life

man i love your car, great job on the calipers man!

24no7

iTrader: (2)

those calipers!!!!! love the car!! not so much about the driver

swoosh

iTrader: (5)

Holy shit !!! the new pix look awesome....you have great camera skills....

Veggie where are you....his editing skills will make those pix EPIC !!!

EDIT: Yeah the side mount is busted...why dont u look into Innovative mounts/XLR8 mounts ?

guitarplayer16

iTrader: (8)

What if he provides the beer? heheh

And yes you're at "that" level =)

HQTL6SPD

wow calipers look great!

veggiemonster

iTrader: (1)

that website literally has never loaded for me.

thank you though!

veggiemonster

iTrader: (1)

your welcome for the silver caliper picture. i see you copied it to a freaking T. by the way, the car i posted was a powdercoated BBK. not painted, so you did a DAMN good job.

about the silver/blue thing. look at this. when i was 16 i was in a CAD/product design class. designed a car for a competition, and had to make a model as well. i did this with duplicolor spray cans and 3 coats of silver, with 2 coats of the 'electric blue'. (well, there was joint compound, and a shit load of black primer to get it smooth)...i mean its not professional since it was my 5th night in a row without sleep, but just an example


also, lastly, what brand silver did you buy? i ask because my project ^^ the 'silver' was really chrome until the clear coat hit it. so there was some really weird spots and the blue paint didnt cover over that silver as well as i wanted (look at the fade down the sides)

veggiemonster

iTrader: (1)

J, you know how the quality suffers, but here ya go. i made you stand out less






i love these mirror shots. one day i will get myself a mirrored roller shot (i don't care of what, just that i take it)