I generally clean my wheels with those specially designed wheel brushes and regular car wash soap when I wash my Jaguar. I have a bottle of Meguiars Ultimate All Wheel Cleaner that is marked "Acid Free, Safe For All Wheels" but I am hesitant to use it on my F Type. I used it on my Mazda CX 5 which has non-painted calipers (or maybe they were just painted metallic silver ?) and it looks like it discolored the calipers.

Meguiars generally makes good products but I don't know about this stuff. Anyway, the red calipers on my F Type are accumulating some black brake dust and I want to detail clean them. Can anyone suggest a good cleaner that will do the trick and be safe for the painted calipers ? Thanks

 

Why don't you try what has worked for me - ye olde faithful and trusty WD40!
Gets the brake dust off real easy and doesn't harm the paint/finish.

 

Thanks OzXFR, I'll try WD40. I always have a couple of cans of that stuff around. Did you mask off or protect the surrounding areas so you don't get the WD40 on the rotors for example ? Or did you just wash with soap and water after getting as much brake dust off with the WD40 as you could ?

 

Ceramic coat your calipers and you won't have issues wirh anything

 

I use Sonax wheel cleaner with good effect, but I don't obsess over wheel cleanliness. The very first drive they're dirty again. I'm more particular about the paint, but my threshold of "good enough" is lower for the wheels (and calipers).

If using WD40 be sure to not spray directly on brake parts. You don't want it on any of the friction surfaces (rotors/pads).

 

Didn' t work for me.I'm going to different front pads this winter.

 

No masking off or washing, I just spray it directly on the wheels and wipe clean with a microfibre cloth.
If I'm feeling lazy that is all I do, if I'm feeling not so lazy I then go over them again with my go-to quick detailer, Dodo Juice Detailing Spray. In fact I can't remember the last time I ever used water to clean the car, 99% of the time I just do a waterless wash with the Dodo Juice and a couple/three MF cloths. The Dodo Juice detailer has a bit of wax in it so it cleans, washes and waxes all at the same time.
I don't bother to take care with not getting any WD40 on the brake rotors (but I don't go crazy with it either!) and I've never had a problem with the brakes.

 

Thanks for this information. Great to know there's a little tolerance there. I was taught to be pretty meticulous about keeping anything oily off the brakes.

That reminds me of one of my more odd repair jobs, way back when. A tanker truck of salad oil crashed in the Bay Bridge tunnel westbound. That's the upper deck. Oil ran through onto the lower deck roadway. One of my customers (Saab 96, near the end of the model run) hit that and did several complete spins but managed to not hit anything. The wheel wells just needed a little garlic to complete the aroma, but it was new brakes all around. At least the exhaust wasn't smoking anymore by the time she got to the shop.