Rinsing wheels/wheel wells, rust concerns?

[Bobalude]

I'm concerned about rust but don't really know if its bad to rinse off the area after washing the wheels/wells w/ soap. There's a lot of car parts down there and I want to be cautious. Is it safe to spray down the wheels/wells directly w/ the hose to rinse off soap? Or is there some good proceedure to approach this?



-addition-

Even though parts get wet in the rain, I'm thinking some parts are shielded a lot from rain, but rinsing a wheel results in water directly being sprayed onto/into it. mainly brake rotors/calipers/lines and the pieces near that that normally get shielded by the wheel and the splash guard.

 

[imported_paradigm]

no concerns...left over soap would not only look bad and leave spotting, but also attract excess dirt. everything on the exterior of the car is subjected to water when it rains anyway...so no need to be afraid to give it the hose.

 

[Accumulator]

I'll even go so far as to say that it oughta *decrease* the chance of rusting!



No matter how well you wash, the rinse is gonna do some more cleaning and it'll rinse away the potentially sticky soap residue. Stuff that can harbor dirt and water is your enemy as it leads to retained moisture, and that leads to rust.



Don't worry about rust damage from the washing and rinsing, worry about rust damage from stuff that does *not* get cleaned out.



I wash/rinse/etc. the wheelwells/undercarriage of all our vehicles all the time, at almost every wash. No problems at all. When I work on other people's vehicles that don't get this treatment, they're always packed with accumulated [stuff] that's just bound to cause trouble. Clogged drain holes/passages are the norm, and sometimes I've scooped out [stuff] by the handful.



To get inside the wheelwells, I often jack the vehicles up a little (I even keep a pair of floorjacks, one on each side of the washbay, for just this purpose). But unless your vehicle is really low you can probably reach in there with something to clean (I like the Quickee Sponge Mops made for cleaning the inside of glassware) and with the right nozzle on your hose you can reach it up in there for both the initial rinsing (to get the worst dirt out) and also the final rinse. What I use for this is a plastic female quick disconnect. These are mushroom-shaped (small enough to get in there) and they have a shutoff built in to make them easy to use. Being plastic, it's not as risky with regard to causing damage if you bump into a painted surface.