A few of you may remember me complaining about all the greaswe on the middle of my very hard to clean rims, just cuz there are so many little wholes.

Well I bought this Triple action Armor ALl wheel cleaner, and let me just say...best 5 dollars I spent in my life. These rims are 14 years old, and they look like they are within the first 2 years of their life. They have their original sparkle, and all the corrosion is gone. I was going to take some before after pictures, but I didn't have access to a camera.

I believe THIS...http://www.motorcarsltd.com/item.wws...p;sku=IS302304
Is my wheel, and believe me it is even harder to clean then it looks, because each of those teardrops is about one inch deep.

 

Be careful with wheel cleaners some will get your wheels looking nice but there may be long term damage.I used ro use Wonder Wheels and withing a year the paint on the beautiful looking wheels started to coorode.This was caused by harmful acid in the wheel cleaner.Thats why now I only use P21s (see pic in refurbing your alloys FAQ)which is safe, or if you cant get itZymol is effective and safe to ise too.

 

Will it damage alloy wheels, I didn't know they had paint on there.

The thing is this isn't something I'm going to be using a lot, I just needed to get the corrosion out of the inner most part of evrey tear drop on the rim

 

Wheels are an area you really want to be careful of. Acid in wheel cleaners designed for a chrome or polished wheel will damage a coated or painted wheel. We have a Buick Regal with a mag wheels that were coated and were damaged by an acid based wheel cleaner leaving white streaks on the wheel that can not be removed. How to tell if you have a coated or polished wheel? Run it with a clean cloth, if black is transfered to the cloth, you have a polished rim, if no black, it is coated. The coating is a sprayed on laquer and with our 1986 Mustang the wheels were looking cloudy, A trip to the auto part store and some laquer remover and we took all the coating off leaving a set of pristine polished rims that were easier to maintain with a little polish. The wheels on Most Jags I've seen seem to be either coated, or painted as with my 93 XJ40. As a former detailer, I'd recomend you check out Car Brites web site. They have a step by step wheel cleaning process and some excellent tips on reconditioning.

 

I'm pretty sure my xj40 isnt coated or painted. If i do run a cloth on a dirty wheel the cloth gets black on it, and the stuff I used worked great and there were no streaks or anything. Maybe it;s different with the non us version of xj40s tho

 

XJ's right.......wheels are an area that need treated with care. I've saw too many alloys go bad with acidic wheel cleaning products.
You can say whatever you like, but there's absolutely no substitute for regular wheel cleaning. I clean mine anywhere between 2 + 4 times a week. Because I wash them so regularly there's very little time for the brake dust n grime to eat into them and so they are very easy to maintain.

Jim

 

Yea but it's different when you buy a used car with 13.5 years of corrosion on the wheels. I have spent 5 months trying to clean those wheels with everything. Nothing took out the corrosion except the wheel cleaner.

Plus Jim I'm pretty sure it was you a while ago who recomended me to buy a wheel decreaser, which is what the product I used was

 

Have to take your word on that one 93.....I honestly can't remember.
Obviously on 13 year old wheels that haven't been looked after you're gonna have your work cut out for you. I'm just saying from the point of view from new, an if you wanna keep em that way, wash em regular to avoid heavy build up of brake dust deposits n grime.
Have you any before n after shots of your wheels 93?
Lets see em

Jim

 

Nah I tried but I couldn't find my camera that day. I have an after shot, but no before.
That aws a day after I sprayed the wheel, so there is some grime on the outside of the wheel, but as you can see the little tear drops all look brand new and the whole rim looks pretty new, you can't tell it's 14 years old. There was so much grime built up in every single one of those tear drops, i thought it was rusting.

[IMG]local://upfiles/1193/29579D584D6941028372799D2EF6186B.jpg[/IMG]

 

Man they look really good for 14 year old rims 93.
Such a shame that you didn't think to take before shots though to show the difference.
One comment though, don't take it personal as I had this convo with a mate of mine the other day too.
Rims look great, car looks fab too......but why oh why oh why, has someone put balancing wights on the outside of your rims? Should only ever be on the inside. It totally takes away from the look, I'm assuning the other 3 are the same?
Take some advice and get them rebalanced with the weights on the inside 93, makes for a better cleaner finish. Also the weights if left there for long enough and are taken off put on etc etc, you will end up with damage to your rims in a visible area. You won't have that problem if you get them on the inside bro

Jim

 

and you should ask for the stick on weights, not the ones they hammer on to the wheel[:@]. always leaves a permanant mark on the wheel, i know cos i worked for a tire place. saw some nice rims with weights on the outside, ouch. the dealer weights are usually good as they are a clip kind of weight, so no damage with a hammer hit weight.

 

What are those weights exactly, I know what you are pointing out but idk what that's for.

 

Wheel balancing
Wheels that are not balanced or are out of balance generally produce a vibration that is uncomfortable to drive in and results in premature wearing of suspension and steering components, rotating parts and tyres.
Correctly balanced wheels help to eliminate vibration and avoid premature wear caused by an imbalance in the rotating wheel and tyre assembly.
The first sign that your wheels may be out of balance is when your steering wheel starts to wobble above a certain speed. The light weight of modern cars means that they don't dampen down the vibrations caused by spinning wheels in the way that older, heavier vehicles could.
A driver may not always sense an imbalance at the steering wheel. It could be present with but dampened by the vehicle weight. This is why balancing is equally important for both front and rear wheels.
Wheels are balanced on a wheel balancing machine. The machine rotates the tyre and wheel assembly and automatically calculates the weight and location of the balance counter weight. Click here to view a wheel weight.
As a result of wheel balancing, you should notice a smoother ride and better wear from your tyres, again saving you time and money.

Jim

 

Kinda hard to get rust on an alloy wheel...

Seriously though my 93's rims are pretty grungy, they look the same as yours, so I might try the ol armor all wheel cleaner. BTW are your centres plastic? I think mine are and painted, so we'll need to read the directions. But as thename implies, "all wheel cleaner" should be safe to use on any type of wheel.

 

I apologize, consider me ignorant in the wheels department, but how does this demonstrate if it is coated? Isn't that black film just brake dust???

I dunno. I'm pretty sure the wheels on my car are polished. I used turtlewax chrome polisher on my wheels and my mother's X-type w/o any of the white streaking/residue.

 

Sorry I never noticed ur question xj40, but I don't think my wheels were plastic anywhere.

 

The middle should be a plastic cap...it covers your lug nuts and keeps you from seeing the the lug nuts and rest of the ugly stuff behind there...