How To Clean Your Alloy Wheels & Make Them Look New Again
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Between the scheduled oil changes, routine maintenance checkups andcarefully undertaken cleaning sessions, taking proper care of your car, truck, or SUV can sometimes feel like a never-ending job. But when it comes right down to it, ensuring that your vehicle receives that level of care is the best way to ensure not only its longevity but also its resale value.
Of course, if you’re primarily concerned with keeping up the vehicle’s looks, you likely spend a little more time touching it up with a soapy, wet sponge. But it seems like no matter whatessential car cleaning toolsyou use, there are certain areas, like the undercarriage, that are all but impossible to keep clean. Along with a vehicle’s undercarriage, its tires and wheels are also particularly susceptible to collecting hard-to-clean coats of dirt, grime and muck from the road, as well as accumulating contaminating dust from its brakes.
Alloy wheels, in particular, are tough to keep clean, and since that style of wheel has become exceedingly popular for most modern vehicles, we’d wager many of you have struggled to keep your shiny new alloys looking like shiny new alloys. Fear not, as we’re here with a few handy tips that you might want to employ the next time you set aboutsoaping up your wheels in the drivewayor at the local car wash. Here’s how to clean your alloy wheels and get them back to looking like new.
Steps to clean the Alloy wheels on your vehicle
To properly clean your vehicle’s alloy wheels, you’ll need a few items on hand to do the job right, including a bucket of soapy water and a sponge, a soft-bristled wheel brush, and some sort of alloy-approved cleaner likeSONAX Wheel Cleaner Full Effect, orMeguiar’s Aluminum Wheel Cleaner. A detailing brush or a lug nut brush will also prove handy for those pesky nooks and crannies. With that in mind, follow these steps to get your alloy wheels back to looking like new:
Some detailers also recommend you clean your vehicle’s wheels and tires first to prevent spraying brake dust and metal shavings from the brake rotor onto the rest of the car.
How to clay your alloy wheels
You may not be able to remove all the dirt, grime, and brake dust accumulated on your alloy wheels with just soapy water and wheel cleaner scrubbing. As is the case with your vehicle’s paint,using a clay bar to detail your alloys will go a long way in scrubbing away all that caked-in buildup. The good news is that claying your alloys is a relatively easy process that won’t add too much time to your car-cleaning regimen. Before you get started, you’ll need a clay bar cleaner likethe ones made by Wontolf, a quick detailing lubricant likeGriot’s Garage Speed Shine, and a microfiber towel. Now that you’ve got the necessary materials at hand, this is how to clay bar clean your alloy wheels:
Auto detailers recommend that you clay clean your alloy wheels before you polish them. Likewise, it’s vital that you use a different bit of clay bar to detail your wheels than the one you use on the car’s paint to avoid any sort of damaging cross-contamination.
Polishing your alloy wheels
No proper detailing job for your alloy wheels is complete without a good coat of polish. But before you set to polishing your alloys, it’s wise to determine whether they have any sort of clear coat protectant or not, as this may affect which polish best suits your needs. Once you’ve selected a polish suitable to the alloy wheels on your car, you will also need non-abrasive polishing pads or towels and, if possible, a buffing device likeBauer’s Short-Throw Random Orbit DA Polisher. Once you’ve selected the appropriate wheel-polishing tools, here’s a quick and easy way to polish up your alloy wheels to get them back to looking like new:
If you like, once you’ve got your wheels polished,you can finish off the detailing job by applying a sealing coat of wax using essentially the same steps. For a professionally detailed look, hitting your tires with a water-based tire dressing can also provide a bit of new tire shine to compliment your like-new-looking alloy wheels.
