Best Wheel and Tire Cleaner

[214ryan]

What’s your go-to for that perfect look on the wheels and tires? I don’t have 22s, but still want the 21s to look really nice for date nights and stuff.

[GrussGott]

Originally Posted by 214ryan

What’s your go-to for that perfect look on the wheels and tires? I don’t have 22s, but still want the 21s to look really nice for date nights and stuff.

Tricky question depending on a lot of variables like whether you want to use an acid-based cleaner, etc.

(1.) Superior Products Rage/Dark Fury
Will clean & degrease anything.
It's alkaline and so a 4:1 dilution followed up with some Mequires acid-based will clean like magic ... but then you're using a lot of strong chemicals and Rage/Dark Fury can stain concrete if you don't fully rinse it off.

(2.) Any acid-based like Meguires
Works well, but you need a separate tire cleaner & acid-based is a bit more risky in the chemicals department

(3.) P&S Brake Buster
Non-acid, works on both wheels & tires, rust inhibitor, fairly light chemical that works well. This is my choice since it's so easy; spray on, let it dwell, clean, spray off.

For tools I use a flat Microfiber Madness wheel brush to do the barrels, a long handled boar's hair brush for the wheel faces, and a tire brush for the tires.

PROCESS
Basically I spray BB on the tires and scrub & rinse. For dirty tires you'll need to do this a few times until the foam stays white.

Then do the wheel barrels & face. I usually do a 2nd pass on the wheel faces with a MF to get into all nooks & crannies and get the calipers really good. Then I rinse the wheels and apply turtle wax flax wax. This helps cleaning in the future tremendously & gets them super glossy. Then I apply tire dressing (I use car pro Perl)

[Mo2002]

I use Iron X on my wheels and ReTyre for my tires.

[GrussGott]

Originally Posted by Mo2002

I use Iron X on my wheels and ReTyre for my tires.

I used to use Iron Buster, dwell, then Brake Buster; but found that just Brake Buster works equally as well and the Iron removers are spendy whereas Brake Buster is cheap enough to buy by the gallon.

[Chas8283]

Originally Posted by GrussGott

For tools I use a flat Microfiber Madness wheel brush to do the barrels, a long handled boar's hair brush for the wheel faces, and a tire brush for the tires.

Wheel brush looks nice but question: does it slide in between the caliper and wheel? I have griot's garage brush and it's fine except definitely will not clean wheel near caliper.

[GrussGott]

Originally Posted by Chas8283

Wheel brush looks nice but question: does it slide in between the caliper and wheel? I have griot's garage brush and it's fine except definitely will not clean wheel near caliper.

For the X5M, the flat MM version will *mostly* fit, i.e., it'll get 95% inbetween the caliper & barrel, but there's one spot in the center-top you have to come at from below and then above - this leaves a triangle I usually just use a MF wrapped around a detail brush to get.

I actually just did my wheels & tires today - they were originally washed & coated with Turtle Wax Flex Wax (TWFW) when the car was new, I washed them once, then put on about 800 miles for a road trip and finally got around to do a full re-wash & protect today.

I was surprised! Most of the brake dust came off with a spray (like a black stream of it!) but there was still a decent amount:





In the close-up you can actually still see some good protection on there pushing though

Anyway, for those interested, the process was:

PART 1

(1.) Spray off with a power washer (I use a hydroshot)
(2.) Spray on brake buster full strength
(3.) Scrubbed the tires - only took one pass
(4.) Barrels with the MM flat brush
(5.) Face & spokes with a boar's hair brush
(6.) Detail brush for lug holes, grooves, nooks & crannies incl the caliper
(7.) MF towel (TRC Miner) for the backs of the spokes, hub, and gnarly stuff (1 per wheel)
(8.) Rinse off well & move to the next wheel

PART 2 - Start back with wheel #1

(1.) Spray on McKee's N-917 rinseless wash and go over everything with a clean damp MF: nooks, crannies, grooves, & full wheel barrel - there should be very little dirt & grime now
(2.) Spray a MF applicator pad w/ TWFW and wipe down the entire wheel: spokes front & back, barrel, caliper, hub, etc
(3.) Buff dry w another TRC Miner
(4.) Coat the tires with Car Pro Perl full strength

I forgot to get an after picture so here's one about an hour later and with 15 miles ... the barrels were shiny gloss black without a spec of grime but you can already see brake dust in the barrel now



On the rears you can see the barrels got the full wash-n-shine:



Took about 45 min total. If it had just been doing a maintenance wash I'd have put Brake Buster 10:1 in a Marolex foamer and done roughly the same process, probably skipping the tire dressing & possibly skipping the protection depending on how clean they got in Part #1.

Tomorrow I'm going to RW the exterior - the bottom half needs some road film removal so I'll use Road Warrior for that.

[Chas8283]

Looks great. For tire care I'll put in a plug for Aero Cosmetics Wash All followed by Rubber Care. I personally prefer the look of no tire dressing and that combo gives the tires a brand new look without any dressing shine.

Shot is from our 40i this past fall before lease turn in. I haven't given the M tires any love as I only ran the summers for a few weeks before switching to winters, and since then have just been giving it basic washes every week or two to keep the snow and salt off. This thread has me looking forward to the wheels-off clean when the winters come off.

Also +1 for TW on wheels. I did that to our winter wheels after reading an earlier post from GrussGott and definitely saw an improvement on dust removal this winter as compared to without TW on the wheels on our 40i.