After I bought my car I did a DIY detail and during it I removed and cleaned and polished my wheels. I've put on 7K miles since I have owned the car and washed it a few times and don't seem to get a lot of brake dust. One of the kids had a Audi A4 (2009) and the brake dust was horrendous just after a few hundred miles. But they had been know for that issue. With my 2012 it doesn't seem to be a major issue and just hosing the wheels down cleans them up. I assume they are not ceramic pads so what is the brake material used on the later model cars. As an example I can take a 200 mile drive and unless you give the wheel a finger test you can't see any brake dust. What are you guys seeing.

 

Mine are pretty grimy, but so's the rest of the car. They do get a steady buildup of grey.

 

On my 2002 XKR, the wheels go from silver to dark charcoal every day that I drive it, and I will clean them every morning after I've driven the car. When I bought my 2010 XKR, the wheels needed refinishing. Although I am not a great fan of black wheels, at the last minute I chose to have them painted gloss black figuring that after a day of driving, the excessive brake dust would make them look matte black so I could skip cleaning them to every other day instead of daily. And that's pretty much what happens. Jagtoes, I don't know what kind of pads you've got, but every Jag I've owned sheds tremendous amounts of brake dust.

I do find a 50/50 mix of Simple Green and water and a rag will take the dust of pretty easily.

 

My wheels which are dished type and polished face with stainless lips are quite easy to keep clean. Think having spacers helps too as the wheels are further from the brake pads. On dry days there is a bit of dust build up, but i carry a small hand feathered bristle duster the just brush the dust of, It is great for this. When i wash and polish the rims if its wet weather, i dry them off and give them a coat of baby oil on a cloth, the baby oil leaves a film and the dirt just washes of easy during the next wash.

 

IMHO, no other pads produce more brake dust faster than the OEM Alcons with 6-piston front and 4-piston rear calipers that were available on 2008 and 2009 XKR Portfolio models. That's the trade-off for superior braking performance.

It takes me 5 minutes to clean all 4 wheels with my electric power washer. A minor inconvenience.

 

Change the pads and get some EBC Redstuff fitted - the dust will go away.

 

Here is the front wheel after about 300 miles. You can see where I did a finger swipe on the lower right side. It usually gets this way after a few weeks of driving.

 

That's less dust in a "few weeks" of driving than I get in the first 5 minutes!

 

my 08xk and 12xkr with oem pads turn black within a week.

 

these wheels get very dusty. like others, I wipe down the wheels several times per week. I hate brake dust.


I try to keep my distance from traffic and time stop lights so I do not have to use my brakes hard thus keeping the wheels a bit cleaner longer.

 

At the trade off off of stopping power...

As an aggressive driver, ceramics just don't cut it for my needs. I'll take dust and stopping power over clean rims any day.

Vince

Try Sonax Full Effect some time.... you'll love the stuff for cleaning brake dust.

 

Nice wheels jagtoes probably one of my favourite rims in the entire jaguar range

 

I bought some this week , along with a pressure washer, but haven't had the chance to try it out.

 

In that case - you are using the wrong grade of ceramic pad.

 

I used Sonax yesterday, the horror... Here are some before, during and after photos Imgur: The most awesome images on the Internet

The after photo was just after spraying the wheels with no scrubbign or anything so there are still some spots but maybe with more regular use it would work great to maintain the wheels.

It worked pretty well but not perfect. It totally makes wheel cleaning much much easier than scrubbing forever though. I'll be buying bottles of the stuff in the future.