Cleaning Tires And Rims 'First'?

Wheels and wheel arches first and only rinse for tires. Then the whole car. At the end, before the final rinsing, I wash thoroughly tires (APC and / or degreaser). Why? Because some products to remove metal particles and / or asphalt, tar, etc. leave a brown coating on the tires and washing them at the end prevents it.
 
Jeff U said:
I always do tires & wheels first.

Why?:

  • It takes time
  • I use a separate bucket of water to clean the wheels, tires, and lower areas first. Then I dump out that bucket and start with fresh water and soap before moving on to the rest of the car.
  • It is impossible to clean the wheels and tires without getting water on the near by panels
  • Water spots on tires and wheels are generally less of a worry so leaving them wet while washing the rest of the car is no big deal
  • So if I do them first, once done with the rest of the car, I can go straight to drying
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+1

Also no one like's to clean wheels when their fatigued from a long job. Knocking out the labor intensive stuff first really helps.

I always get splatter everywhere just because of the wheel tools I use. I have 2 drill attachments which are awesome an make mince meat out of pita area's such as drums and lug nuts. Ace Deep Wheel Brush + Griots Lug nut brush kill tons of time off my details.
 
every time i do the wheels and tires first i am angry with myself because i get some runoff from my ONR wash on them and have to wipe down again-but its also annoying to me to do them last because i feel like the tire dressing needs a little while to settle-or maybe im just using the wrong stuff

if i do a 'detail' on a new customers vehicle im using a water source and i will clean the wheels/tires first because i use foaming APC on the tires and wheel brushes-but this does take much longer even though i think it yields better results-but then i still have to go over them again from water runoff during the wash stage
 
Dispatch said:
Not to mention cleaning the tires first contaminates all of your cleaning equipment and water buckets.
As we all know tires can be real nasty dirty and obtain grease and oil that does not come out of the sheepskin mitt without machine washing, would you want to rub something like that across your beautiful paint?
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If your using the same buckets, brushes an mitts for your wheels as you are for your paint... I think your in the wrong forum.
 
512detail said:
every time i do the wheels and tires first i am angry with myself because i get some runoff from my ONR wash on them and have to wipe down again-but its also annoying to me to do them last because i feel like the tire dressing needs a little while to settle-or maybe im just using the wrong stuff

if i do a 'detail' on a new customers vehicle im using a water source and i will clean the wheels/tires first because i use foaming APC on the tires and wheel brushes-but this does take much longer even though i think it yields better results-but then i still have to go over them again from water runoff during the wash stage
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Clean first, Dress last... always.
 
The Driver said:
Clean first, Dress last... always.
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agreed

but my concern with dressing last is that im afraid they may want to drive it soon and i wouldn't want the dressing to sling onto their vehicle

guess i just need a better method...i use either megs hot tire foaming spray and then wipe it in with a tire dressing applicator

this may not be the best product to use but for less than $4/can i like the results it produces
 
512detail said:
agreed

but my concern with dressing last is that im afraid they may want to drive it soon and i wouldn't want the dressing to sling onto their vehicle

guess i just need a better method...i use either megs hot tire foaming spray and then wipe it in with a tire dressing applicator

this may not be the best product to use but for less than $4/can i like the results it produces
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try to let it sit, then wipe it before it gets moved

see if that works
 
512detail said:
agreed

but my concern with dressing last is that im afraid they may want to drive it soon and i wouldn't want the dressing to sling onto their vehicle

guess i just need a better method...i use either megs hot tire foaming spray and then wipe it in with a tire dressing applicator

this may not be the best product to use but for less than $4/can i like the results it produces
Click to expand...

I've used Opti-Bond and PERL with great success and only take 15 min to bond onto the tire and not sling.
 
I hate cleaning wheels so I do it first and get it out of the way. If I washed the whole car first, I would be dreading the wheel cleaning the whole wash.
 
I'm no profession detailer, however, I wash each side of car then do the wheels on that side. I use a dedicated wash mitt for wheels and never dip it back in the wash water that I'm using for washing car. I never let my auto get real dirty. I can imagine as professional detailers you must get a lot of real dirty cars to work on and you may have different techniques.

novaman
 
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