I don’t recall ever buying a caliper, OE new or rebuilt of any brand that was painted. And I might suspect that the paint was used to cover rust rather than properly clean the part. But external surfaces aren’t important. If the caliper bores and the piston walls are clean, straight and properly honed they will function as they should barring damaged bleeder ports of course. Has anyone else run into painted calipers?
It’s likely that the painted caliper was an aluminum casting which won’t rust and had a pressed in steel cylinder. I’m real curious about that part.
The mighty dollar probably. Consumers want things as cheap as they can get them. Producers want to produce a product as cheap as possible to make as much profit as possible. The end-product suffers as a result. Meanwhile I’m over here just wanting a good quality product even if it costs more. Surely there is happy medium somewhere between dealer prices/quality and parts store prices/quality. This caliper was $81 and change. The dealer product is $250. I would have gladly paid another $50-75 if it meant I got a product close to dealer quality. Oh and I definately agree that the biggest issue to me at least is the time consumed installing and reinstalling a part that should have worked from the getgo. Throw in the parts counter people’s attitude acting like I am fibbing about it. Like I don’t have anything better to do with my time other than fabricating stories about their crappy parts. That’s just my two cents.
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I thought the caliper might be aluminum at first, but the handy dandy magnet I have here sticks to it everywhere. This is my tenth caliper in two months and every one but two were painted. The other two were just blasted metal with an oily coating.
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All the auto parts stores around here offer levels of quality from rebuilt to new, even OEM quality parts. It all depends on how much you want to pay. If you’re getting parts that look like the above picture, those are bottom of the price range, rebuilt. The counter people around here normally give you options once they pull it up on the screen. If your stores aren’t offering similar, you may want to buy online from a place like RockAuto. They clearly identify the price ranges/quality of part…
With the paint I would have thought that caliper was a top of the line rebuild @TwinTurbo.
I just checked this according to them it is their #1 top line for rebuilt. Their top new line is very close to Honda’s price, which I just bought and I must say the quality is top notch so far. Funnily enough, I bought their remans on advice from their techs which comes with a 3 year warranty and after the core charge and taxes I paid $175. The brand spanking new honda oem was $25 cheaper, but only had a year of warranty. After checking around I could have rebuilt an oem core myself for about $100, using Honda pistons, seals and boots or about $60-$75 for cheaper parts. In any case time just won’t allow it right now.
The quality of after market NEW parts has been questionable for me. Out of the box faulty water pumps and axle shafts burned me long ago on all such parts regardless of the warranty. Such parts are the worst that China has to offer.
Agreed. Lifetime warranty don’t mean anything if it doesn’t work to start with or only last a few thousand miles. Repair shops have got to be fed up with this as well. On another note a long time ago I bought a used oem alternator for my dsm and it lasted several years. I trust those more so then the new/rebuilt stuff being peddled.
Hopefully this is the end of saga, OEM is OEM 
Let us know how it ends anyways!
Considering what you discovered when inspecting it, that doesn’t say much about their top line rebuild does it?
I discovered many years ago, trying to save money buying low priced parts is a costly endeavor. Now I spend more money on parts but I only do the job once and it lasts. My time is worth way more than the potential money I might have saved…
Fingers and toes crossed on all hands and feet plus some hard praying that these work. It will be toward the end of this week before I get a chance to do the job.
You’re absolutely right. I paid roughly $300 for the generic calipers. I am getting these oem just shy of $500. Luckily Honda is actually giving me more back in core than I originally paid for the generics.
Thats a great point about lifetime warranty if they never work from the get go… It’s like a warranty for keeping you in senseless part replacements for life. Keeps you busy, keeps parts moving into and out of the store, pleases the stockholders prospectus for next years sales etc! Its the new world order of parts man!
I feel your pain, I do, but I would have used an entirely different store name and product line just to see what they had. I’ve had issues before but they were rare…they aren’t as rare today and I’ve often uttered the word that I would pay more for a better quality product. This is how businesses are born tho no? Find a niche and fill it…
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If there is a core charge those calipers are remanufactured, the parts catalog indicates that they are reman. But not to worry, the parts supplies at the dealer are of much better quality than the Auto Zone Dollar store.
Years ago I bought a rebuilt Toyota starter motor from a Toyota dealership, and it worked fine, no difference than a new one. So a rebuilt caliper from a Honda dealership might be the best in the way of cost effective but good quality strategy.
Not sure what you’re saying but you can buy new parts and pay the core charge until you return the old one. Just paying a core charge doesn’t mean the part you bought is a remanufactured part. At least that has been my experience. I have bought brand new parts, paid a core charge and then got that back when I brought them the old one.
It’s possible that the dealer will add a refundable core charge to a new part but that seems unlikely to me. The manufacturer of the new parts has no need for rebuildable cores. But of course there is a cash market for some cores.
Core charges are even mandated by some states to promote recycling and reduce amount of stuff going into landfills. It’s not necessarily a matter of whether or not the original manufacturer wants the part back. There is value in the core and they can sell it to a recycler or a remanufacturing operation.
And we’ve seen in this thread how reliable this “remanufacturing” can get, haven’t we ?
Oh sure they do…especially if there’s a shortage of the cores. My 05 4runner had caliper design problem…and the old calipers were in high demand. You could buy a NEW caliper from the dealer (which is a really stupid thing to do), and the core deposit was more then the new calipers. They really wanted those old cores.