Wheel barrels that aren’t worth cleaning?

Eldorado2k

Eldorado2k

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How often do you run into some wheels where you’re better off leaving the barrels untouched and caked, because you know that if you decide to do them you might wind up with a variety of negative outcomes...

Have you ever run into wheels that present that sort of situation? If so, post your thoughts.
 
Yeah, wheels where the barrels aren't painted and they are just all rough and etched already...it's almost not worth doing anything because the improvement is almost non-existent and a short time later they will be back to the way they started.
 
Setec Astronomy said:
Yeah, wheels where the barrels aren't painted and they are just all rough and etched already...it's almost not worth doing anything because the improvement is almost non-existent and a short time later they will be back to the way they started.
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Yes... That’s definitely 1 of the instances.
 
I’m debating on whether or not I should remove my wheels and fully clean the barrels. So far I haven’t touched the barrels at all and the only way to get em right would be wheels off.

But these are those types of barrels... They’re grooved, they’re rough, they’re caked, and even when they’re as clean as I could possibly get them they’re not going to be perfect and top it off they’re bearly going to be visible.
These wheels are borderline better off leaving them caked because at least they look black inside and give contrast.

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But part of me is still itching to remove the wheels and clean them. Lol. What would you do?
 
With my most recent vehicle, I deliberately bought the cheap steel wheels because they came with plastic wheel covers that hide the wheel barrels. No more scrubbing the barrels for me. My wheel covers show a bit less of the barrel than your picture above. I pulled the hub caps off when new, coated them, and wheel cleaning is a breeze. I'll never buy nice wheels again. Plus, I'm old and the wheels always seem to be at the bottom of the car and hard to reach :) So I wouldn't touch them.
 
Remove them, clean them, sand/buff them to high shine and seal them. That's what I would do anyways if they were my off a personal vehicle

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minerigger said:
Remove them, clean them, sand/buff them to high shine and seal them. That's what I would do anyways if they were my off a personal vehicle

Sent from my SM-G930V using Tapatalk
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But they’re machine grooved.. I don’t think any amount of sanding is going to remove those metal grooves in the barrels. And I don’t think they’d polish out to a high shine even if they were brand new. They were never chrome like the face of the wheel.
 
This is what the barrels look like when new.

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If you drive the car daily it might be awfully tough to keep the barrels clean due to the design of that particular wheel but I fully understand the itch to want to take them off and give them a complete detail job. Just as long as it’s still something fun for you to do. Don’t feel obligated to do them if it becomes anything more than that. That’s the curse of detailing.
 
Bill D said:
If you drive the car daily it might be awfully tough to keep the barrels clean due to the design of that particular wheel but I fully understand the itch to want to take them off and give them a complete detail job. Just as long as it’s still something fun for you to do. Don’t feel obligated to do them if it becomes anything more than that. That’s the curse of detailing.
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Yes yes I completely agree. You know how these wheels are... Very similar type of wheels on my Seville, and I actually cleaned 1 of those wheels perfectly clean once [actually it was far from perfect, but I got it clean] while it was off to replace the tire... Put it back on and I swear I couldn’t tell the dirty 1 from the clean. Lol.

These have a bit of a wider opening, but the more I think about it I’ll probably just leave them be. The bad outweighs the good. Thanks to everyone for posting.
 
If the barrel are hidden, I see no reason to clean them. If they are visible, then I think it's important to clean them.
 
Eldo, since you use Meg's Wheel Bright that should be a fairly touchless process and would be worth doing because it's not much work.

I had to laugh at that picture of the new wheel, because if that wheel had been on even a new a car, it would be all stained just from driving it on and off the transport vehicles and around the dealer lot. When I was telling my story about the Buick dealer a couple weeks ago, I was quite interested to see on one of the vehicles in the showroom, I think it was the...what is the convertible? The apparently come with plastic shrouds over the rotors, because they had accidentally left on one--I guess that's to keep the brake dust off during what I described above...obviously not if you're going to drive it at speed.

Why GM can't paint the barrels on a Cadillac is beyond me...but that's what we were talking about GM being cheap in that era. I'm sure the barrels on your Kia are painted.
 
Setec Astronomy said:
Eldo, since you use Meg's Wheel Bright that should be a fairly touchless process and would be worth doing because it's not much work.

I had to laugh at that picture of the new wheel, because if that wheel had been on even a new a car, it would be all stained just from driving it on and off the transport vehicles and around the dealer lot. When I was telling my story about the Buick dealer a couple weeks ago, I was quite interested to see on one of the vehicles in the showroom, I think it was the...what is the convertible? The apparently come with plastic shrouds over the rotors, because they had accidentally left on one--I guess that's to keep the brake dust off during what I described above...obviously not if you're going to drive it at speed.

Why GM can't paint the barrels on a Cadillac is beyond me...but that's what we were talking about GM being cheap in that era. I'm sure the barrels on your Kia are painted.
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IME Wheel Brightener can’t handle that task.. Even with the wheels off it usually can’t. And if you try it with the wheels on its a complete fail. Even Brown Royal requires some work to clean these type of barrels with the wheels on the vehicle, but it can do it whereas Wheel Brightener cannot.

I tried Wheel Brightener on the barrels of my Seville [which are the same as these new wheels] WB couldn’t even begin to clean the barrels.

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The wheels on my fathers Tacoma have these type of barrels and Wheel Brightener couldn’t touch them either... I was able to get them about 85-90% clean with Brown Royal without removing the wheels but it took alot of work to try to get in there with the wheel brushes. Alot of work!

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And once they’re clean they’re not smooth, so it’s a PITA to maintain them clean. I personally gave up trying to keep those barrels clean.

On smooth barrels that are caked, baked and removed from the vehicle, Brown Royal cuts through it...

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Like a hot knife through butter. Spray, quik scrub, perfectly clean.

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WB is great for maintenance cleaning, but when it comes to caked & baked, it usually fails.

Yea, the wheels on the Kia are painted. I think it’s more of the way some wheels were made in those years. These days just about every OEM wheel has painted barrels, they’re also the same bland gray anodized color which is also cheaper for them to produce vs. chrome wheels. I think these modern wheels are also alot lighter.

So I wouldn’t necessarily call them cheap on this 1.
 
I got fed up with my wheels that didn't have painted barrels and had the wheels repainted including the barrels.

I saw a commercial for that new Cadillac XT4--they said it has massaging seats...do you think the barrels are painted? I guess if they're not, at least the massage will take your mind off it.
 
Same way on GM's top of the line SUV (Escalade) which can topple six figures. Bare unfinished aluminum barrels, GM should be ashamed of themselves.
 
I always attack and clean as best i can the wheel barrels. My thought is that they contribute to "dirtying" the exposed part of the wheel by throwing crap out front.

My DD wheels are easy to clean inside but those look difficult to not only get to but maintain, Eldo. I'd still want to do a wheels off cleaning and seal or coat.
 
I start with a tar remover when any deep cleaning is needed. The thought is that whatever is used to manufacture the brake pads has some kind of adisive in it. And when it's heated up and released when you brake. Some of that adhere on the wheels and mostly the wheel barrels. When the tar remover is done I move on to useing the wheel cleaner of choice. Just look up so the tar remover is fine to use on bare aluminum.

And as long as the dirt from the wheel barrels don't come out on the wheel faces. I would just clean what I can reach in the wheel barrels. Or if it's not so cosmetic fine I would maybe do a wheels off cleaning. We have the opertunity here in Sweden to do so since the law of the use of winter tires in the winter months. So deep cleaning is done either when I get the wheels off or when I'm put them on. Depending how lazy I am LOL.

Would be intresting to see how McKees 37 wheel cleaning gel does on bare aluminum. The results I have seen on here is pretty impresive on regualar caked wheels.
 
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