Cleaning wheels

[bobsnicholson]

Never having owned a car with Chrome Wire wheels before i would be grateful for tips on "ease" of cleaning them??

[timhum]

After initial cleaning and polishing with Autosol metal polish I use Meguiars Ultimate All Wheel Cleaner. Spray it on to dry wheels, leave for a couple of minutes and then jet wash it off. The hard part is the first stage of cleaning and polishing, plenty of dusters, an old toothbrush and very sore fingers.

Tim

[malcolm]

Wire-wheel finger syndrome consists of arthritic bent fingers with sores on. I take the wheels off once a year for a really good polish, and thereafter use MWS cleaning spray, very similar to the stuff used by Tim.
I also spread a bit of carnauba wax on after to help repel dirt and make them easier to simply wipe clean.

[mgcjag]

Not too much grease on the splines..or it all comes out through the spokes...and more dust sticks.....Steve

[edriver]

To dry the wheels after spraying them with cleaner and rinsing with water, I have followed the recommendation of a fellow forum member and use a leaf blower. Works great!

[Gfhug]

In Victorian days we'd have used child labour and not worried about the consequences
Send them to the sub-continent and they probably do just that

[bobsnicholson]

Got most of the suggestions, arthritic fingers, wheel cleaner, tooth brush, (happy i saved the old ones after buying electric), leaf blower. Left the slave in Dubai when we retired.
Thanks guys going to spend an hour or several on them after lunch.

[max-it-out]

On a related subject , now that the warm,dry days of Summer are coming to an end ( at least here in the UK ) i , whats the best way of protecting wheels and all the other chrome bits from deteriorating over the Winter ?

When I had my 3.8 FHC , one year I smeared everything with waxoil . Worked a treat , no moisture could penetrate , but ...it was a real PITA to get off . So I won`t be doing that again.

My garage is fairly well insulated so not much condensation .

[Heuer]

WD-40

[SESH]

The guys that did my re-chroming said liberal amounts of car wax.

Mike

[bobsnicholson]

On my bikes chrome i use the very popular ACF 50.

[malcolm]

I use bullet carnauba wax. Dead easy to put on, and dead easy to buff off after winter.

[H7OB]

GT85 and ACF50 are the most useful random collection of numbers and letters in my garage!

[Simonpfhc]

+1 for GT85.

[malcolm]

excuse the ignorance, but what is GT85?

[mgcjag]

Malcolm...google is your friend

[Jeremy66]

I’ve tried Maguiars and Autoglym, both good but the Autoglym Custom Wheel Cleaner seems to work a little better for me.

I take the wheels off a couple of times per year, go over them with the cleaner and a fine soft brush, jet wash them and then blast dry with compressed air.

They do stay better for longer after a coat of polish but it’s about two hours per wheel.

[bobsnicholson]

20190927_101940.jpg (219.21 KiB) Viewed 3203 times

Quick clean.
Underbody is fine for now.

20190927_114341.jpg (223.53 KiB) Viewed 3203 times

[Barry]

My father taught me how to clean wire wheels in the 60’s on his various Jaguars. The basis for this was that if I did it properly, I could earn some pocket money! I still use the vert same long round bristle brush I used to clean father’s wheels. The secret is to wrap a cloth around the brush and slot in between the wires both front and back, and slot in between the wires from different angles. You get into a rhythm and probably takes no longer than half an hour for that stage of the cleaning process. As others have said, I do spray a cleaner (Swisswax) on first, then take of with water from a high pressure hose. But it does necessarily get all the brake dust off, which is why the brush is important. To finish off, I use Swisswax canuba which comes as part of their wheel cleaning kit. SNGB sell the long bristle brush, and so do MWS.

[politeperson]

I think the secret to cleaning wire wheels is a 3 phase jet washer.

No soap or anything else. Each wheel takes about one minute.

With stainless wheels they will take full pressure no problem.





I would not recommend full pressure on body panels however.