Wheel Wednesday!

DFB

DFB

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Cleaning and Clean Wheels, post them up!

To start off, my absolute favorite wheels to clean, the 19-inch items fitted to my XR8. A clean, open wheel design that are so simple to clean, without looking plain..........................







Feel free to join the fun...............
 
My wheels are intricate but having the correct brushes makes it fun and easy, plus I've only got one car
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Alright, I'll play, they weren't too bad on the Qashqai, so I gave them a wipe over with Ech2o. Because they're cleaned so often, and there's good protection on there, these are really easy to clean, except for occasionally jamming my fingers in the narrow gap near the centre, that's not fun. First shot is the rear passenger, second is the front driver's, with fancy lighting.
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Big Dave said:
Alright, I'll play, they weren't too bad on the Qashqai, so I gave them a wipe over with Ech2o. Because they're cleaned so often, and there's good protection on there, these are really easy to clean, except for occasionally jamming my fingers in the narrow gap near the centre, that's not fun. First shot is the rear passenger, second is the front driver's, with fancy lighting.
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That's a crazy 3Ddesign on the sidewall Dave

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This week, Ranger Wildtrak 18-inch wheels.



These have had a few different finishes over the course of PX II and PX III Ranger's, this version has a machined face with dark painted inner spokes and barrel.

This car is actually driven, so where most of my cars don't need the use of a wheel cleaner, these need a little chemical assistance. Most times, I use Brake Buster from my foam cannon. For the tires, I need more grunt, so I tend to use Brake Buster undiluted or a variety of other rubber specific cleaners.








Carpro Darkside..............




Carpro Perl, undiluted.............

 
Love Darkside

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I hadn’t seen this thread but I’m glad I did because it inspired me to tackle this set of winter shoes although Wheel Wednesday turned into Wet Wacky Wheel Wednesday

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I didn’t have the means to clean them up before I put them away last spring

It’s that time of year so all my hoses are already drained and in the garage so anything from here on is a drag the hose out and put it back situation

We had our first freeze yesterday so it’s a good plan
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I got my wheel bucket filled and pressure washer set up and hit the first tire with TW Hybrid cleaner and the brown instantly started blooming
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It started raining hard right about then but I got both sides scrubbed down and was about to rinse things off when the wacky part kicked in

The connection from the PW hose separated from the gun and started whipping around

I got whacked a couple of times before I got the PW shut off
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I quickly screwed it back together and got things rinsed off and put everything away because it was pouring rain
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I blew the wheel mostly dry with compressed air and I’ll hit it with some sealant after it’s completely dry
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I’ll be trying Perl on the tires


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chilly said:
I hadn’t seen this thread but I’m glad I did because it inspired me to tackle this set of winter shoes although Wheel Wednesday turned into Wet Wacky Wheel Wednesday
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Nice results..... but why did you not wash them before spring storage? :D

Your post brings back memories of doing that for 30+ years. I cured it by moving to AZ for the Winter.
 
John U said:
Nice results..... but why did you not wash them before spring storage? :D

Your post brings back memories of doing that for 30+ years. I cured it by moving to AZ for the Winter.
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We were moving into our new house and I had almost nothing in the way of supplies or equipment

I didn’t even have a garden hose

I had to have them changed over by May 1st so I got that done for both vehicles and just stuck them out of the way

I will make sure to clean and protect the summer wheels after I swap them out
 
After the touch-free wash I touched up the rims w/ Veros QD and topped up the Pirelli's w/ Griot's Garage Ceramic tire dressing using that make-up applicator The Guz reviewed a while back
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So...not for nothing, but I have a question. I see people washing their wheels and tires with a dedicated product...like Brake Buster....or some type of color-changing product for iron removal. Unless I'm facing some wheels with a lot of brake dust buildup, I never have to reach for anything besides Bilt Hamber Surfex HD (at 10:1) to handle this task, and wheel wells, for me.

Here's the question....for you guys who use these dedicated products.....have you ever tried using a quality APC...properly diluted of course....instead? If so, did they not work for you? were they not cost-effective to use? I'm not knocking anyone's process or product choice....I just reached a point where I wanted to narrow down the number of products I use, so I found an APC that would do the job.
 
briarpatch said:
So...not for nothing, but I have a question. I see people washing their wheels and tires with a dedicated product...like Brake Buster....or some type of color-changing product for iron removal. Unless I'm facing some wheels with a lot of brake dust buildup, I never have to reach for anything besides Bilt Hamber Surfex HD (at 10:1) to handle this task, and wheel wells, for me.

Here's the question....for you guys who use these dedicated products.....have you ever tried using a quality APC...properly diluted of course....instead? If so, did they not work for you? were they not cost-effective to use? I'm not knocking anyone's process or product choice....I just reached a point where I wanted to narrow down the number of products I use, so I found an APC that would do the job.
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Subbed…

I normally use diluted APC as a routine wheel/tire cleaner

I hadn’t deep cleaned any of my wheels in over a year and I saw the TWHyper stuff on a BOGO at the parts store and I knew it worked but wasn’t super aggressive so I grabbed some

It worked well on tire and wheel

I tried Brake Buster a year or two back and was totally underwhelmed, although I know there are a lot of people who love it

I don’t see the need for a reactive cleaner every single wash



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briarpatch said:
So...not for nothing, but I have a question. I see people washing their wheels and tires with a dedicated product...like Brake Buster....or some type of color-changing product for iron removal. Unless I'm facing some wheels with a lot of brake dust buildup, I never have to reach for anything besides Bilt Hamber Surfex HD (at 10:1) to handle this task, and wheel wells, for me.

Here's the question....for you guys who use these dedicated products.....have you ever tried using a quality APC...properly diluted of course....instead? If so, did they not work for you? were they not cost-effective to use? I'm not knocking anyone's process or product choice....I just reached a point where I wanted to narrow down the number of products I use, so I found an APC that would do the job.
Click to expand...

I've tried a moderately strong APC dilution for tires but was left underwhelmed. It did the job, but something was missing.



I will say that I'm very particular with tire cleaners as I prefer something that lathers up properly when agitated. Some do this better than others, Brake Buster is noticeably best in this regard. I do realize lathering doesn't necessarily mean increased cleaning ability, but for me, it makes it feel as if I'm actually achieving something. And no, I don't dilute Brake Buster for cleaning tires, I have in the past and it completely kills the ability.

I actually go another rung down from APC for wheels, typically using a pH neutral soap from a foam cannon. For well maintained and coated wheels, soap performs just fine, while being much nicer to work with.




For the iron-remover wheel cleaners, I use these when needed on neglected wheels or as a periodic deep clean. The same applies for Brake Buster, the foaming ability helping to increase the working time compared to a liquid wheel cleaner which tend to just run off.

 
I too had less than stellar results on wheels when using something besides a dedicated wheel cleaner.

For me, I judge the product based on the condition of the wheels and occasionally even the type of car.

Currently, my household cars are both Japanese and the OEM pads on them are very low dust. Any grime that builds up is just from driving, but since I wash them frequently, the build up is never really bad. This drives me to wash them using just car wash soap and my brushes. However, if they go for an extended time and get pretty dirty, i.e. coming out of winter into spring, I'll hit them with the wheel cleaner.

For cars that are realatively neglegted or tend to have a lot of break dust build up, I always go staight to the wheel cleaner. My mother-in-laws Genesis falls into this category. I only get to wash it every couple of months when we visit, and the brakes seem to dust like crazy.

For most German cars I go straight for the wheel cleaner. Their OEM pads dust like crazy and the performance pads found on many of them not only dust like crazy, but it's a dense, almost sticky-like dust. No APC or car wash soap I've ever tried will get the wheels squeaky clean, even if it is only a light dusting and the wheels are fairly clean.

There is something in a quality wheel cleaner that cuts through the break dust better than other cleaning products. Normal dirt/grime may come away with soap, but they often don't do so well with the brake dust. I've washed wheels with soap, and then noticed they didn't feel/look totally clean, occasionally I'll even get a little black residue on my finger from what looked like a clean surface. I then hit them with a wheel cleaner and the are noticeable better.
 
I use Brake Buster undiluted in a dedicated foam cannon. I like it for really getting the foam there to work with my wheel brushes. So far, it works on all my situations, but I generally need to follow-up with a dedicated tire cleaner on daily drivers. I've got P&S's dedicated tire cleaner now and I kinda feel it's a bit underwhelming. My favorite was Adam's (assuming it hasn't changed recently). I'd really like to pickup something new just for tires, though.

I haven't tried an APC for wheels/tires. What is a good one?
 
Azure said:
I use Brake Buster undiluted in a dedicated foam cannon. I like it for really getting the foam there to work with my wheel brushes. So far, it works on all my situations, but I generally need to follow-up with a dedicated tire cleaner on daily drivers. I've got P&S's dedicated tire cleaner now and I kinda feel it's a bit underwhelming. My favorite was Adam's (assuming it hasn't changed recently). I'd really like to pickup something new just for tires, though.

I haven't tried an APC for wheels/tires. What is a good one?
Click to expand...

That was my issue with Brake Buster, it was just kind of ok on wheels that were dirty but not contaminated, but on the 2 brands/models of tires I had, it wouldn’t touch old tire dressing or dirt


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