Cleaning and applying dressings in tight wheel wells

[Bunky]

What applicators or techniques do people use to clean and apply dressing in tight wheel wells?



I have one car that has barely enough room to get a hand or brush in there let alone do much with it. It is impossible to spray a dressing.

[Legacy]

What applicators or techniques do people use to clean and apply dressing in tight wheel wells?



I have one car that has barely enough room to get a hand or brush in there let alone do much with it. It is impossible to spray a dressing.Did you try turning the wheel all the way?

[Bunky]

I wanted to do everything (wash, dress) the tires and wheel wells without having to do that but I was optimistic someone else had found something clever or unique.

[jesselyons2002]

Well for cleaning the wheel wells. I use the ez detail brush or a long handle brush with long bristle to clean the crud and then spray a aerosal tire spray(AA)

[Morris9982]

On my personal car (I am not a professional detailer), I just take the tires off once in a while and give it a good cleaning.

[Joseph K]

Turn the tires all the way left and you can get half of each well, then turn them all the way right, and you should be able to get the rest of it. That, or just put it on jack stands and take the wheels off.

[BlueLibby04]

Jacking the car up from its proper jack points will lower the tires also. More so if you jack up both sides at one time so that the sway bar isnt working against you.

[cajunfirehawk]

Garden pump gallon (or larger ) sprayer w/long wand, gets in those tight places, just tweak the tip to spay fine & wide.

[Bunky]

Garden pump gallon (or larger ) sprayer w/long wand, gets in those tight places, just tweak the tip to spay fine & wide.



I guess what I am looking for is a flexible brush (seen posts about toilet bowl brushes) and some way to spread a dressing. Getting out a floor jack seems to be the quickest way to get more working room.

[getcha]

I used to use a paint stick or a couple together. make a 1`` long slice about 1`` deep at the end of a sponge. glue or just slide the stick end in the sponge you can tape a dressing MF over the sponge and get way in there.



or you could use just an MF app on a couple paint sticks. These 2 things were stiff enough to apply yet soft enough to mold to curves.

[Accumulator]

Jacking the car up from its proper jack points...



Yep. I keep a pair of floorjacks in the wash bay for jobs like this, one for each side of the vehicle.

[JohnZ3MC]

I use the long handled toilet bowl brush and a strong apc for cleaning the wells and the combo works very well.

The dressing step includes angling the wheels then a mist, and that`s the key, a light misting or two of Armour All. I`ll usually do the light misting twice by going around the car twice. It`s a quick procedure and minimizes drippage of the dressing onto the concrete/asphalt.

The hardest part of the whole process was finding a container that would produce a mist fine enough for the purpose.

-John C.

[c6 cowboy]

`I use a low profile jack with a cross-beam adapter, lifts the whole front end in 30 seconds, no problem.\r\n\r\nHere\`s a link explaining how to set it up: \r\n\r\nCross beam adapter - Corvette Forum (http://forums.corvetteforum.com/showthread.php?t=1915583&highlight=cross+beam+adapter+northern+tool)\r\n\r\ n\r\njke :usa`

[Accumulator]

`I use a low profile jack with a cross-beam adapter..



I finally gave up trying to find the cross-beam adaptor that Vet posted about (I have the same AC/ESCO jacks); apparently there`s a supply problem with the importer...



But yeah, the basic idea is pretty good. Only problem (poor choice of wording :o ) is that the area obscured by the cross-beam will still have to be accessed somehow, just as the areas around the jacking points always need to be cleaned with the jack out of the way.



I was gonna use it on the rocker panel areas of my vehicles, lifting each side by spanning the jacking points (my Audis have different jacking points than `vettes).



Oh, and Welcome to Autopia C6Cowboy! [ex-`vette owner here, I used to have a Mallett-built C5]

[AP2TUDE]

The easiest way to apply dressing to tires that have no clearance is to do as much as you can, and just move the car forwards or backwards to expose the previously untouchable portions. That is considerably less work than breaking out the floor jack.



And just turn the wheel all the way to one side to clean half of the fender wells, then turn it all the way to the other to get the other half. You shouldn`t need any special brushes for that, I use one of my grout sponges since it pulls dirt from the fender lining really well.