Wheel Cleaning

[Jngrbrdman]

I think some of you have seen the wheel brush I use and know my process. I just wanted to show off some of the results since wheel cleaning is kind of a chore that none of us like to do. However, it is also the first thing I look at when buying a used car. If the wheels are pitted and corroded, then I can be pretty sure that the rest of the car was neglected as well. There is no reason to believe they took the time to clay and polish their car if they were content with brake dust coating their rims and eating them up. ;)



So this is a relatively new Audi Q5. Not a bad little vehicle really. The problem with nearly all German vehicles is the brake dust though, so I’d have to really have a good reason to buy an Audi, BMW, Mercedes, or Porsche. They are great cars and all, but if I have to scrape brake dust off every week, then I’m afraid that takes away from the sexiness for me. I’m not into high maintenance women and definitely not into high maintenance vehicles.



The first thing I did was spray them down with Eagle One A 2 Z. That is my favorite wheel cleaner. It does a great job of getting brake dust off tires and wheels. However, there is only so much that can do. What it did here was get the top layer off, but it still left a lot on it. I should have taken a before and after picture, but let’s just say not much came off. Mostly just the surface stuff from the past couple days and a lot of junk on the tires. The rest had to be scrubbed off.



http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y42/OCDetails/f7c3b242.jpg



Look at how black the inside of that rim is. It is just nasty. The whole thing is nasty. This product will get a lot of it off the spokes, but the lip and that ledge inside of it before you get to the inner part of the wheel is where the brake dust does the most damage. There was crap on this wheel which I was not going to spend all day scrubbing at just so it could be neglected again, but with a little extra elbow grease and a nice wheel brush, I got it looking like this:



http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y42/OCDetails/74d2da05.jpg



There isn`t any tire shine on any of these pictures, by the way. These are just wheel and tire cleaning instructions.



The magic there was not in relying on the wheel cleaner to do all my work for me. After I washed the rest of the car, I used the bucket of water to go to work on the wheels. Obviously you don’t want to do it before you wash the car or else you’d be doing it with black water. ;) So I took my handy dandy wheel brush I got from Autogeek at SEMA a couple years ago and went to town scrubbing.



Since the brake dust on these wheels hadn’t really had time to do serious damage, most of it came off pretty quick. I just jammed the brush in between the spokes and scrubbed the inside of the wheel. I treated it just like I was brushing teeth when it came to the lip. Scrub scrub scrub… rinse… repeat…. I use a combination of a couple brushes for this kind of thing. One is a Meguiar’s brush, but it works better for large flat faced wheels like the ones on my Corolla.



http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y42/OCDetails/CorollaDetail/DSC06925.jpg



For this job I used my Autogeek wheel brush. Here are some process pictures of it in use on my car from a detailing guide I put together a couple years ago.



http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y42/OCDetails/CorollaDetail/DSC06927.jpg



http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y42/OCDetails/CorollaDetail/DSC06928.jpg



http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y42/OCDetails/CorollaDetail/DSC06930.jpg



http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y42/OCDetails/CorollaDetail/DSC06932.jpg



http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y42/OCDetails/CorollaDetail/DSC06935.jpg



That brush does an awesome job and is totally safe on your wheels. The wire that the bristles attach to is wrapped in thick rubber and no metal touches your wheel. I’ve bent this thing back and forth so many times over the last two or three years that you’d think it would have broken by now, but it hasn’t. It is an awesome brush. There are a couple similar models out there on the shelves, but my problem with them has been that they don’t wrap the wire with rubber and they also break pretty easily. So just be picky when shopping for one.



On this particular Audi I want to show you what it looked like with just a quick scrubbing on the passenger side front wheel. The right side was just a quick scrubbing, but you can totally see how much better right side of the inner part of that wheel looks in comparison to the left side.



http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y42/OCDetails/4e07e884.jpg



http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y42/OCDetails/21ca7250.jpg



You can also see the parts which require a little more effort which are left, but that is what you get when you have a German car. Using the Meguiar’s brush worked out really well on those parts, so ultimately the wheels turned out pretty good.



So the bottom line is to get yourself a good wheel brush and stay on top of them if you have a lot of brake dust. I’ve found NOTHING which really keeps it off, but I can tell you that putting a sealant on them does help make them easier to clean. Waxing doesn’t really help because it just gets too hot and it vaporizes in a couple days. Wheel Waxes don’t really help either in my experience. Again, especially on German cars. I’ve used sprays, jellies, waxes, sealants, voodoo, and everything else I can think of. The only thing that works is cleaning them regularly. Let me know if you find anything else that really works because I’ve been stumped. Fortunately I don’t buy cars with this problem, so I haven’t had to deal with it much. I do still maintain my rims though because I know if I make judgments about car care based on their condition, then it is likely that others do as well. I do intend on selling my vehicles at some point, so keeping them looking good is a high priority for me. I`d never buy a vehicle with chewed up wheels if I had a choice, but that is just me.

[C. Charles Hahn]

Anthony, you do know the easy solution for German brake dust, don`t you? Aftermarket pads. ;)

[Nth Degree]

One of my regular customers put brake dust shields on his Mercedes shortly after the first time I cleaned his car. He was frustrated with how quickly they got dirty again. What a difference!



http://i1183.photobucket.com/albums/x471/nthdegreenc/DSC02178c.jpg





Not sure I would like the look on more open wheels or on high performance vehicle, but in this case it really disappears well behind the wheel. One downfall, though, is no access from the front to clean the barrels.

[tom p.]

Anthony, it certainly is nice to have you back again! It seems they`ve fitted dustless pads to some cars within the product line. There`s a shot of a front wheel on my `11 A4 car at 8k miles, even the brake components are still clean:



http://i1180.photobucket.com/albums/x414/billsouth/AW%20website/wheel5kmile.jpg



There`s a product from Armor All that`s been around for a year or so. It`s a brake dust repellant and does offer some relief from the Cherman brake dust. Have you seen it?

[mikenap]

Anthony, it certainly is nice to have you back again! It seems they`ve fitted dustless pads to some cars within the product line. There`s a shot of a front wheel on my `11 A4 car at 8k miles, even the brake components are still clean



Holy crap, they must have changed something. I`ve seen Audi wheels with only a couple hundred miles on them that look like they were painted black!

[tom p.]

Yeah, I can`t tell you how thrilled I was when I learned about this, Mike. And my wheel shot is a "dirty" wheel, probably with a couple hundred miles of my weekly travel.



From what we can tell, these pads are not being installed on the high-perf autos or on the SUVs. They began to appear on production cars in Dec 2010.

[Jngrbrdman]

There are some cars where it just doesn`t matter what pads you put on it it seems. I had a client with a 350Z and he tried everything. The last pads he tried were ceramic pads because he was told that would help, but they were still always black as ever. He just started ignoring them and telling people he had gunmetal wheels. lol



I`ve used the armor all product and wasn`t impressed. Doing half a wheel with it just showed me a week later that it didn`t really block that much dust. It was marginally better looking, but not something that you would be able to tell the difference on unless you had a half/half wheel shot. Fortunately I drive Hondas and Toyotas and don`t have this problem. :) And the wheels on my motorcycle are powdercoated black, so I couldn`t care less if they get brake and road dust on them (which they do), so I don`t really have a good test bed anymore.



I don`t know what year that Audi was that I did, but I`m sure it was only a year or two old. If they have come out with better brakes recently then that is definitely one of the greatest innovations to ever come out of Germany. lol That would be amazing if Mercedes, BMW, and Audi would stop dusting so bad. Why doesn`t VW and MINI have this problem? I`ve noticed they don`t have the torn up wheels as much.

[tom p.]

Yeah, the Q5 must be fairly new. I believe the first year for the vehicle (USA) was 2009.

[Lonnie]

The German car manufacturers and its engineers have a "function over form" mentality, meaning that brake dust and the resulting dirty wheel rims take a back seat to having that car stop as quickly and safely as possible, even in extreme conditions, like high-speed autobahns or mountain road decents, both with repeated brake applications. In other words, they design for the worst-case senarios; dusty brake pads are a not the most-important factor in brake design, but stopping quickly, efficiently, and safely are. How many times have you heard German-car owners complain about brake-pad squeal at low temperatures, like when driving the car after initial start-up? These are "minor" inconveniences to German-engineered car that out-brakes most cars on the road today, at least within the engineer`s mind. Car owners/drivers certainly have a much "different" opinion!!



Rawy Dawg, have you tried Sonax Full Effect Wheel Cleaner for cleaning rims? Very good, but very "pricey" cleaner.



I myself use Meg`s Detailer Line Wheel Brightener, largely from the experiences of professionals within this forum, but it must be diluted properly, and no it is NOT safe for uncoated or bare wheels, which means you better know your rim`s material BEFORE its application. I also, like you, have Eagle One A-to Z Wheel Cleaner, and use it regularly for my own vehicle`s wheel maintenance /cleaning because it works OK and its inexpensive.



As far as sealing/waxing a wheel rim, I still like Collinite 845 Insulator Wax, despite in not being so heat-resistant. In the winter, that`s not an issue; longevity and protection are. I also use Long Haul Truck Polish/Wax that is no longer available (this was an RV dealer close-out purchase long after it was gone from Big Lots!) because it cleans and protects in one easy application, but it`s more that this product has been "demoted` to wheel duty, but I still like it for that reason and will be sad when it`s gone.

[A.Bursell]

What did you use to scrub the "concave" part of the wheel lip-- just the brush? Seems like you would need something more moldable that you can really scrub with...? Or, maybe I`m not using the right type of brush?



Adam

[Accumulator]

Jngrbrdman- Ah, I`d wondered if the new, milder formula A-2-Z was still effective, apparently it is.



Looks like the wheel weights have been redone...is that weight adhesive showing in the, uhm...8th pic?



On the "OE vs. aftermarket pads" thing, the Hawk pads I put on the MPV were the messiest things I`ve ever had. FAR worse than anything on any of my German cars, far worse than any pads I`ve ever had. Sure did *really* improve the braking though, and eliminated both the rattling-pad noise and the constant deposit-vibration issue (incorrectly assumed to be warped rotors by most MPV owners ;) ) that the OE pads were prone to.

[Jngrbrdman]

Good eye there. I had the tires replaced not long before those pictures were taken and the adhesive was still there from when they had to rebalance them. I didn`t notice it either till later and then I scraped it off. That stuff is a paint to remove, that`s for sure. Still, it is better looking than having lip mounted weights. I`ve never liked how those look.

[Accumulator]

Good eye there. I had the tires replaced not long before those pictures were taken and the adhesive was still there from when they had to rebalance them. I didn`t notice it either till later and then I scraped it off. That stuff is a paint to remove, that`s for sure. Still, it is better looking than having lip mounted weights. I`ve never liked how those look.



Right, I always have mine done that way too.



And I haven`t removed the old adhesive from one of the Tahoe`s wheels that needed rebalanced after a puncture, figure I`ll just do it after a while when I put the winter wheels/tires on.

[DaVinci Detail]

I`m going to have to get one of thsoe wheel brushes. The toothbrush method doesn`t quite get all the nooks and crannies.



My knuckles have the scars to prove it.

[5.0GTCS]

That red brush is an autogeek brush or the Daytona Speed Brush????