I'm not really sure if the rust is from the caliper itself or if the rust is from dust from the rotor wearing from braking that settles on the caliper and rusts on it.

I plan on removing all of this with a hand brass brush and a dremel with a brass brush attachment (cup and disc). I'm just wondering if the original calipers come with some kind of special coating or something that makes it a bad idea to go at this abrasively. Is it just base metal with no coating of any kind? I don't want to hit this with brass brushes and clean it all up only to find out I removed some kind of special coating that leads to this stuff rusting faster.

Something tells me if it's already rusted and the rust is truly from the caliper any coating is already gone anyway but there's still a possibility the rust is not from the caliper itself.

I'm not sure if the calipers are made of iron or aluminum (didn't think about doing a magnet test at the time). But regardless I'm still worried that it could be coated aluminum.

 

What year is the car ? Most are steel and don't have any real coating. Most are just bare metal that is oil coated. It won't hurt anything to clean and paint them. Why are you using a punch?

 

It's an '09.


Ahh I forgot about steel. Welp I guess that's a possibility too.


I'm not sure what you mean by a punch? I'm planning on using a brass brush by hand (the wooden kind with the bristles on the end) and for the tedious parts I'm using a dremel or whatever rotary tool that takes brass brush attachments on the end (one of them looks like a disc and the other looks like a cup).

 

My bad. I was watching hinges TV at the same time. I would use a steel brush on steel ot iron. The brass brush is a bit soft and flexible. You can use the brass one but it may be a bit more extra work to get it clean.