Painting Calipers + Rear Brake Release

[cwcwcw]

vanity is a hell of a thing.

Touché. My thought is that any amount spent over $10k for a vehicle that functions and get you from point A to point B is living somewhere on a spectrum of vanity/convenience. We all have different lines for where we fit, but given that all of us owners spent >$80k for a new car, we're all probably living somewhere on the right side of that spectrum.

But yes, just like it's been called out elsewhere, this decision is purely aesthetic.

Most of Rivian's response actually seems reasonable to me. Both the warranty part, and wanting to double-check the work that others performed before clearing the error code they caused. If they clear a brake error code, and then you crash because the brakes failed you could quite reasonably sue them. The only thing that doesn't seem reasonable is there being no way for an independent shop to clear the error codes.

What if you just remove the 12V battery prior to starting the project and leave it unplugged until everything has been reassembled? Without power, the computer would have no way of knowing that the sensors had ever been disconnected.

Alternatively you might want to reach out to a Rivian-authorized body shop and see if they can help. It seems like they would have to have the ability to replace brakes that had been broken in a crash.

The more I've sat on this, the more I'm understanding their perspective. Liability has a cost, and its not like they're coming back and saying "no way" - they're at least giving me options.

Great idea on reaching out to a Rivian Certified Body Shop - I hadn't even thought about this, and checking out the Collision Center listing on Rivian.com shows a few close options that might be able to speak more into it.

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[SoCal Rob]

Sorry for another Land Rover reference, but relevant, I think. It seems like the EPB mechanism on ours had sensors to let the vehicle know if the parking brake was engaged or fully disengaged. Towards the end, while driving on really rough roads we’d get a flashing parking brake symbol for an error, probably from vibration making something loose trick the fully disengaged sensor into thinking it was at least partially engaged. We could reset this, essentially recalibrate, by using the EPB switch and hold it until it forced the EPB to be applied then release the parking brake on paved road and continue on. Rivian could do something similar if the EPB is in an unknown state by holding in the park button for, say, 5 seconds when the EPB is reporting an error. Then place in D or R so the EPB is released and continue on. That’s assuming there is no ongoing issue with the EPB. A recalibration attempt wouldn’t fix that.

 

[Ripped]

Not certain why one wants to paint their calipers, because the finish will have a limited lifespan.
TBH if some place is just going to paint the calipers, you can do that yourself with VHT paint, and a bit of clever masking. On a new set of calipers it should not be that bad. Check Summit racing.

https://www.summitracing.com/parts/vht-sp739

I may actually do this, but the way I would do it, is order a second set of calipers from Rivian. Send it out to a high-end place where they completely disassemble the calipers, powder coat it any colour you want, from gold metal flake to black. Reassemble then have Rivian service perform the swap.

It's an expensive vehicle, why do something chintzy and have a non-qualified person mess with the brakes?

Otherwise you could rattle can them yourself and easily mask the lines.

 

[LL75]

Yellow is not for everyone! The Facebook member that I posted earlier painted his calipers white on his GW r1s. Imo, it looks awesome. He never mentioned that rivian charged him a for resetting the 12v.

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