Wheel Cleaners

[Lonnie]

As a parallel thread to brake dust wheel cleaners, here is an interesting thread about wheel brushes from February 2019:
https://www.autopia.org/forums/deta...heel-brush-opinion.html?highlight=wheel+brush

On my EZ Detail Mini Brush (I like the smaller size) I ripped the plastic tip that is used as a guard/protector on the twisted wire end on a sharp brake pad clip (my finger tips suffer the same treatment sometimes when waxing rims attached to a vehicle). I ended finding a similar plastic tip at a hardware store in the fastener department for a 1/4 diameter (I think; might have been 3/16") and epoxy-glued it on. It has not come off. The "replacement" tip is not as soft as the original black tip that came with the brush, but it will do, and it does not rip as easily.
I wish the manufacturer of EZ Detail brushes would include a replacement plastic tip with the brush when you buy it new.

 

[Desertnate]

Well, between Dan and Swanicyouth it sure sounds like my experience is, uhm....different. Hmm, wonder if the Griot`s is milder than it used to be, maybe like their Car Wash apparently is. Gotta say I haven`t bought any for ages so maybe an update slipped under my radar.

I`m with you on GG`s wheel cleaner and it working well. My wife`s SUV sees 30K miles a year in all weather conditions and on roads ranging from Interstate to narrow chip-and-tar rural county roads. The wheels get grimy fast and despite being a Toyota, the break dust is near German-car levels. At certain times of the year the wheels get really filthy and Griots has always worked like a charm. I`ve tried using a car shampoo solution, but it never cleans quite as well. They never look quite as clean and seem to still have a slight film on them compared to using a wheel cleaner which always left them feeling squeaky clean. This has been a similar experience across multiple vehicles to include a VW which only seemed to really dust heavily after track or autocross events. Very un-German like....

 

[Accumulator]

Desertnate- Is that with bare wheels or ones that`ve been LSPed? Reading "squeaky clean" makes me think the former, and in that case I`d sure expect the GG to work better.

With the Shampoo Mix, what dilution did you try?

E, I`m not trying to find a fix for a problem you don`t have, just curious...

My standard for LSPed wheels is probably my wife`s A8, which have had FK1000P for the last however many years. It gets driven a lot more than any of the others and can get pretty bad between washes.

 

[Desertnate]

Desertnate- Is that with bare wheels or ones that`ve been LSPed? Reading "squeaky clean" makes me think the former, and in that case I`d sure expect the GG to work better.

With the Shampoo Mix, what dilution did you try?

E, I`m not trying to find a fix for a problem you don`t have, just curious...

My standard for LSPed wheels is probably my wife`s A8, which have had FK1000P for the last however many years. It gets driven a lot more than any of the others and can get pretty bad between washes.

The wheels on my wife`s car are not LSP`d. I don`t have an opportunity to coat them since the vehicle is in use almost constantly, and other LSP`s like 845 only lasted a few months. I wash the car frequently enough to also make sure the wheels stay clean. Regardless of the vehicle, I`ve found every wheel cleaner except for P21S to eat through the road grime and brake dust better than simple car wash soap.

When using a shampoo mix, I`ll use whatever is recommended by the manufacturer. In my experience, making the solution stronger leads to it being harder to rinse off completely.

 

[Accumulator]

Desertnate- I sure relate to the "can`t coat, in daily use"! That`s a biggie with anything I do to my wife`s A8.

With nothing on them, the Wheel Cleaner is certainly the way to go IMO. And yeah, 845 was pretty shortlived on wheels for me too (476S wasn`t all that much better).

That`s interesting about the stronger shampoo mixes being (noticeably) harder to rinse. I expect a bit of that since, well..there`s more shampoo, but I bet I`m just really used to it by now. My soft water makes rinsing more of a chore anyhow, and not just for Detailing stuff (my wife actually dislikes it for that reason). When I`m using hard water, it sure does rinse off lickety-split by comparison!