Brake dust and its removal/prevention seems to be an ongoing problem for many detailers. Replacing your OEM brake pads with low-dust after market pads will reduce the dust problem, but so far as I know there are no pads that will eliminate brake dust. This still leaves us with the problem of dealing the dust.
There are many special wheel cleaner products on the market, each with its own hype and its loyal band of followers. I don’t endorse nor recommend any of the special wheel cleaner products because I don’t think that they are needed and I haven’t used them for a long, long time.
I use a secret wheel treatment that allows me to clean off the brake dust usually using nothing more than a cotton towel and a spritz of distilled water - - only occasionally do I need to add a little car shampoo to the water - - and heavier pressure than lightly wiping is never needed.
A year or two ago all of the wildly differing suggestions/recommendations on this and other detailing forums led me to do some comparative experimenting. I started by doing a thorough cleaning and polishing of all four wheels, then applied one recommended product to the left side wheels and another product to the right side wheels. After driving for awhile I would then compare the dust accumulation on each side and the ease (or difficulty) of removal. Another thorough cleaning, the winning product on the opposite side and a new product on the other side.
It didn’t take long to realize that all of the carnauba waxes attracted a lot of dust and were difficult to clean without using a special cleaning product and/or a lot of scrubbing. Closer examination and a little experimenting showed that with even fairly light braking the wheels heated enough to soften even the best carnauba. The heat softened wax retains a great deal more dust than an unwaxed area! Quite a bit of the retained brake dust is trapped under the surface of the wax and cannot be removed without removing the wax.
Progressing on to the synthetic protectants showed a marked improvement - - much less dust retention and much easier cleaning. The “combination” synthetics such as
Blackfire and Platinum UPP did not do as well as the “pure” synthetics such as
Klasse and Zaino. Zaino attracted/retained slightly less dust than Klasse, but IMO Klasse was the product of choice because of its ease of application.
Recently I decided that it was time to compare my winners to some of the new (to me) products. As expected the carnaubas were poor perfomers, and the combination synthetics such as
NXT and
Wolfgang did not come up to the level of the pure synthetics.
Menzerna was as good or maybe slightly better that Klasse for dust retention, and was easier to clean that either Klasse or Zaino.
I think that I will continue to use Klasse on my wheels and not switch to Menzerna because if you’re not very careful when applying Menzerna it’s easy to leave too much product on the wheels - - and this can lead to pink stains that are very difficult to remove.
My
secret wheel treatment to to use a good quality synthetic.
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