How to Clean Your Wheels
In this blog post I’ll teach you how to clean wheels. There’s 3 levels of cleaning wheels to be aware of. A quick clean, a medium level cleaning, and an in depth cleaning.
For mobile detailing and washing, we deal with the 1st and 2nd levels more often than not. The most in depth levels of cleaning usually require a shop to be able to remove the wheels and clean them one by one.
What You’ll Need:
Chemical Guys Professional Microfiber Towels
Boar’s hair Brush
Chemical Guys Microfiber Wash Mitt
3D Citrus Deagreaser Soap
A shaded area is preferred but not necessary if you work fast enough. Do not let acidic cleaners dry on the wheel under any circumstance.
The first level of cleaning: Quick Clean (2-5 minutes per wheel)
In a quick clean of a wheel we are mainly focused on cleaning the face of the wheel and the actual tire. This will give a properly maintained vehicle a great refresh of the wheel in 5 minutes or less. You want to start off by spraying the face of the wheel with 3D Citrus Deagreaser Soap and cleaning the face of the wheel with a short handle brush like this one from Chemical Guys:
Short Handle Brush
You get into the spokes really easily with this brush.
After this you respray the face of the wheel and clean the lug nuts with the boar’s hair brush linked above and then reclean the rest of the wheel with the boar’s hair brush to get into small crevices. The circular brush arrangement allows you to reach deep into the lug nuts and crevices. You then spray the wheel with DI water (deionized water) until there isn’t any more soap on the wheel.
With this level of cleaning, we can clean most break dust off of a wheel. Although we don’t clean the wheel barrels, they will be cleaned by being sprayed and rinsed off.
The second level of cleaning: Medium Clean (4-7 minutes per wheel)
Just to preface the naming I’m coming up with is arbitrary. All levels will clean the wheel, just with a focus on different levels pertaining to the level of service you purchase or amount of time you want to spend cleaning your wheel.
Medium cleaning is everything in the Quick Clean, but instead with this service you clean the wheel barrels, and brake calipers. This is where we use a long wheel barrel cleaning brush and the microfiber towels. You can use the long brush for cleaning deep into the wheel well and the towels for capturing all dirt from the wheel wells and brake calipers
You can also spray the inner wheel barrel with wheel brightener (acidic solution) and then let it sit and eat the dirt for about 1 minute and then spray it down. I recommend cleaning with the citrus degreaser first, and then moving to the wheel brightener if there is a lot of buildup.
The most crucial step with this cleaning step is to wear protection as when you clean with acid it can spray on your hands, eyes, and you can breath it in which is not good!
Wear eye protection, gloves, and a respirator of your choice.
The highest level of cleaning: Deep Clean (30 minutes wheel)
This level of cleaning is where you take the entire wheel off and clean the entire wheel well and brake calipers to perfection. This is suitable for a shop location where you can perform mechanic -esque work without disturbing anyone in the surrounding area. This is where I refer to a shop of professionalism like Chicago Auto Pro’s.
Final tips:
always double check your work
Work in 3’s. Make sure to clean each area 3 times to make sure you get the most efficient and effective cleaning.
Wheels can be some of the most difficult areas to clean on a vehicle. Matte wheels can hold on to dirt a lot more than clearcoated wheels and so it’s important to double check your work and it’s important to make sure you see the wheel when its dry to double check effectively.
That’s about it! This is how we clean wheels and we hope this helps you. Stay Shining San Diego!