Wheel cleaning between washes?

[camino70]

Is this sacrilege? My wife's SUV creates some major brake dust, aside from swapping pads, is there a good/preferred way of cleaning wheels between car washes? I was it often, but it's a garage queen.

TIA

Ron

 

[C. Charles Hahn]

What sort of wheels are we talking about? As long as we're not talking about a particularly delicate finish you can probably get away with spraying and wiping them down with a waterless wash or QD to get the light layer of brake dust off (assuming you keep them protected with a sealant or wax, or better yet if you Opti-Coat them).

 

[tom p.]

My wife's SUV creates some major brake dust, aside from swapping pads, is there a good/preferred way of cleaning wheels between car washes?

Ron, welcome aboard! I think there could be a couple strategies:

• wash/clean wheels only and use a great wheel cleaner
  
• Meguiar's makes an instant wheel detailer - - it works pretty well
  
• You could try one of the brake dust repellants, this may be the least amount of work while keeping the wheels looking good
  
• lo-dusting pads are the best solution
  

 

[Accumulator]

camino70- Welcome to Autopia!



I generally subscribe to a "don't touch it between washes!" approach, but on a few of my vehicles I do clean the wheels/tires between washes. There are a few methods that work OK for me:



- ONR (Optimum No Rinse) washes. Other than my usual concerns about ONR (wash-induced marring of delicate surfaces), my big gripe about it is that for some reason the wheels and tires seem to retain more dirt than usual following this procedure even when I follow up with a spritz of FK425 No, I don't know what and yeah, I know that "shouldn't" happen. Also, ONR isn't the greatest tire cleaner.



- Conventional wash with deionized water. I do my best to keep the DI water and soap/dirt/etc. off the rest of the vehicle, and it's not that tough if I use the right hose nozzle; the rubber "flex to flow" nozzles work pretty well for this. Downsides include the chance of getting soapy/dirty water on places where I don't want it.



- Conventional wash with regular water. Pretty much the same as with the DI water except that I have to be *MUCH* more careful to avoid messing up the rest of the vehicle.



Note that none of these approaches really work as well as dong a "proper" wheel wash (my version of proper is kinda extreme and takes a while to do), but when the rest of the vehicle looks great but the wheels are filthy...at least on SUVs the wheelwells usually provide enough space to make it easy enough to keep from making a mess.



I have mixed views about low dust pads. The best-performing brake pads I've used generate dust, the lowest-dusting pads didn't perform as well.



I haven't tried my dust repellant yet, somehow never get around to it One concern I have is how to keep it off the tires and how to avoid overspray in general; aerosols usually aren't my dispensing mode of choice in general, for those reasons.

 

[forrest@mothers]

I spray the wheel with wheel cleaner, then pour a bucket of water slowly from the top down.



The body doesn't get wet, and it takes just a few minutes.