are some OE calipers silver?
 

I came across a CPO base 987 that had silver calipers which surprised me. Were some really not painted black, or are these non Porsche replacements?

Thanks

The base models came with black anodized calipers, but in many cases, putting them through car washes that use acidic wheel cleaners strips them of the black, and so they start looking so bad that the dealers end up stripping all the black off until the bare aluminum is showing. You can repaint them yourself if you want.

Now Porsche did once paint the calipers of the 911 C4 4 wheel drive models to signify the 4 wheel drive model range, but that does not apply to the Boxster line.

The anniversary Boxster had silver calipers.

Ah yes, the 2004 550SE.

So what would you all make of the fact that a 987 being sold as a CPO has what appears to be silver calipers with the white Porsche lettering. I want to gut check whatever story I get about why the calipers don't look original.

As I said, they appear silver because the black anodized coating has either come off from repeated use of acidic wheel cleaners or faded so much that it looked bad enough that the dealer decided to totally remove the coating. I can pretty much guarantee you that what you are seeing is bare aluminum and not a silver painted caliper. As you can see below, I took a picture of my own caliper after it got faded so bad from caustic wheel cleaners that were used at a car wash I used to go to often (when I lived in NYC, I had no choice but to take my car to car washes because my parking garage in the city did not allow me to wash my car there). As you can see, it looked silver, but had white looking Porsche lettering that was etched into the caliper. I had masked all the area around it off in preparation for painting them red, which is shown in the picture below it, and that's how they look on my car now...

Before, with the bare aluminum calipers (black anodized coating faded off completely):
http://i35.tinypic.com/33tie7n.gif

After painting it:
http://i36.tinypic.com/25svj0w.gif

Wheels back on:
http://i38.tinypic.com/mwsj6w.jpg

The red paint on the calipers of the S models will endure cleaners a bit better than the black anodized coating found on the base models. Or, you paint them like many of us do, and no longer worry about fading calipers. You could point out to the dealer that you know that those calipers should be black, and have faded, and maybe work out a discount of some sort. Also, if I recall correctly, on the silver painted calipers that Porsche offered OEM on some cars, the PORSCHE lettering on the silver painted caliper was black in color, not white, so I'm pretty sure what you are seeing on that 987 CPO car is a faded caliper like what you see happened on my car, with the underlying white etched lettering.

Boxtaboy, thanks for taking the time to post. The pictures helped a lot. Your bare calipers in the first pic look like what I saw. By the way, which paint product did you go with, and how many coats did you apply. The gloss finish looks great.

Thanks again.

Jim

No prob. I used the G2 Caliper Paint Kit. Here's my DIY write up hosted on Mike Focke's helpful website...

http://mike.focke.googlepages.com/paintingyourcalipers