Is wheel wax/protection really worth it?

OCD

OCD

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I have never used them before and wondering if they are worth it? Or is it a lot of hype? Common sense tells me they are because you protect your paint why not your wheels, but I do not know. Thanks!
 
Arguably, it's more important than protecting body paint since the wheels are under constant bombardment and high heat.

It can be a real pain to apply if you have an intricate wheel design though.
 
For one reason you can clean them with just car shampoo instead of wheel cleaner.
 
OCD said:
I have never used them before and wondering if they are worth it? Or is it a lot of hype? Common sense tells me they are because you protect your paint why not your wheels, but I do not know. Thanks!
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Protection for your wheels is definitely important. But buying a wax or sealant "designed" for wheels is a hoax IMO. I just use black fire crystal seal or whatever wax/sealant i have on hand:)
 
blackfire crystal seal is great for wheels. or use any good wax/sealant as mentioned above.

i have also used wheel wax and blackfire polish & seal with great results. the local BMW dealer has the wheel wax.

nice xterra! what year? i have the 2012 PRO 4X.
 
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It could just be some clever marketing to get everyone to buy a separate product for your wheels. But I do give some companies the benefit of the doubt. I would think the wheel wax/sealant would be designed to withstand higher temps and be more resistant to corrosive brake dust. But I do like to experiment with some off label uses of products. With the latest sale I just ordered Finish Kare 1000P High temp paste wax, I think it might make a great wheel sealant.
 
DP wheel wax was more trouble than it was worth. I regularly apply Permanon to mine now and it's a huge difference in ease of cleaning.
 
Yes I have Wolf's Rim Shield on for 6 months still going strong and opti-coat is great as well both are easy to apply.
 
Collonite 845 and 476s work great on wheels too. IMO if you want better go with a coating.
 
especially important if your wheel is expensive. as for me 845 for stock wheels and opti coat for 2500+ wheels. gotta keep those resell up.
 
i have tested xzilion, i think thats the correct spelling, on wheels and brake dust still piles up, several different waxes even collinite. Nothing really does anything long term.
 
Permanent protection would be opti-coat.
Temporary protection that works even better than opti-coat would be Wolf's rim shield; a hose pretty much gets off most/all of it.

Though a very EASY and GOOD solution that works pretty well is Carpro's Hydro2; you don't need to apply by hand and doing wheels is SUPER easy.
 
HellDemon said:
Though a very EASY and GOOD solution that works pretty well is Carpro's Hydro2; you don't need to apply by hand and doing wheels is SUPER easy.
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I treated the wheels with Hydr02 2 weeks ago. This was 2 weeks worth of brake dust and grime. No Wheel cleaner/soap pre-soak was done prior to the rinse.

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o2ApClM2krg&feature=share&list=FLMdQgqthzNZRrYFo3sBE0Dw]Cleaning Wheel after being treated with Hydr02 - YouTube[/video]
 
"Wheel wax" is marketing hype. If your wheels are clear coated, you clean and protect them like the paint on the body of the car. The trick for wheels is cleaning them more often.

I've been using a hand-held steamer every two or three days on my Team III Halibrand replicas. The rims are bare polished aluminum and the centers have a rough cast finish that's painted gray to look like new bare magnesium. I polish the rims once a month with Meguiar's Nxt Metal Polysh or Mother's Billet Polish and coat them with Meguiar's #21 (I still have some Ver 1.0!) or whatever's handy once a week. Nine years and 25,000 miles later, the wheels look brand new.

I also steam clean factory clear coated wheels. It's surprisingly fast and easy - you can even do it in your garage as the small amount of condensation turns into very little water on the floor.

No product will stand up to weeks or months of brake dust on your wheels finish. If you keep you wheels clean and coat with wax or sealant, they will look new for a long, long time. Coat the with Optimum Zoop Polycoat 3 Super Wheel Sealant and let them turn black with brake dust and wash them once a month and you will destroy the finish.
 
The 2 best things I ever did for my BMW:

1. Re-powder coated the wheels in brilliant silver, then Opticoated them right when they they came back from the powder coating place. OC is amazing on wheels. The dirt just hoses off.

2. Changed to no dust ceramic brake pads at all 4 wheels. Yes no-dust. I say "no-dust" because I haven't seen a sign of brake dust since I changed them. The car literally went from having the worse BMW M brake dust wheels to clean, to the easiest wheels to clean overnight.

My car is an "M" model, so I was concerned the new brakes wouldn't stop well. But they are fine. These are what I used:

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- the wheels went from always being filthy to being just as clean as the paint.

Here is pic of my wheels now from my garage. This is how clean they stay (I don't drive this car in rain)

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The biggest waste of time:

1. Trying to keep the wheels clean with the factory pads. A few laps around the block and the brake dust was back. It was so frustrating.

So, OC does help a lot in the cleaning process, but it won't necessarily keep the wheels looking any more "dust free" between washes. I tried wheel wax and thought it was a waste if time. The reason why was I takes a whole lot of time to properly wax wheels if your an OCDetailer, and no wax holds up long enough to be worth it from the cleaning with wheel cleaning agents.

So, unless you need special race car brakes for high speed trips to someplace, the best investment for your own personal car I believe you can make is to change the brake pads if your struggling with brake dust. It's a night and day difference. OC the wheels will make any road dirt pretty much just blast off with a pressure washer.

After doing those to things, you can maintain your wheels easily with a very mild wheel cleaner, even car wash soap if you choose.
 
I don't know what's worse. Paying extra for high the high performance components of an M series and not driving hard enough to actually use them or neutering the high performance brakes with zero dust pads.
 
11PX1 said:
I don't know what's worse. Paying extra for high the high performance components of an M series and not driving hard enough to actually use them or neutering the high performance brakes with zero dust pads.
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Thanks for the comment.
 

Wheel protection is important if you want to keep your wheels looking great for their lifetime.

"Waxing" your wheels will help with this. BUT, I would suggest putting OC on your wheels. This is real protection that lasts.


 
11PX1 said:
I don't know what's worse. Paying extra for high the high performance components of an M series and not driving hard enough to actually use them or neutering the high performance brakes with zero dust pads.
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I have an American car that would like to compete with the German cars. Granted, it has the best brakes of any car I've ever had, however, the wheels quickly turn black with dust. Sometimes I wonder if black brake dust is the price for good braking, or whether the mfr. simply thought that customers expected the brake dust to be terrible, so they use pads that meet the customer's expectations.

When the factory pads are up, I'm going to sort of do as Swanicyouth did, repaint the wheels and install Akebono Pro-Acts; it will be interesting to see what the difference is performance and appearance-wise.

As to the OP's question, I also think dedicated wheel waxes/sealants are a marketing gimmick, although I did win a jar of Poorboy's Wheel Sealant some years ago, and it worked well, so it's not like they are bad products.
 
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