Wheels-Off Detail

[J Henderson]

Lovely sunny weather this past weekend, so of course some detailing of the Lexus was in order.  Ideally I would've liked to have put a coat or 2 of wax on my car, but I felt it was a bit too blustery for that since, a), I don't have a garage, and b), a large tree overhangs most of my driveway. Throw in some neighbours doing various DIY projects and who knows what kind of crap would be landing on my car whilst I was working. So, instead I focused my attention on my wheels since I could remove them and safely wax them from the confines of my shed, plus I was motivated by having a bunch of new products to try out on them.

Before

OK, so not exactly filthy. I tend to keep my car pretty clean and the wheels have only been on my car for about 6 weeks and they were freshly-refurbed before I bought them, so no months & years worth of baked-on brake dust, sticker residue etc.

Nevertheless, Having been seriously impressed by the quality of their Rapid Detailer spray, I splashed out on a few more of Infinity Wax's wares over the Easter weekend when they were on offer at bargain prices, and intended to use a few of them to fully decontaminate and seal my wheels with a few months worth of protection.

Step 1 was to hit the wheels with a strong dilution of Power Maxed TFR and then thoroughly rinse a few minutes later with a pressure washer. This removed a lot of the dirt present, but not all, so this was followed by a 2BM seeing-to of bodywork shampoo, delivered by some newly-acquired Wheel Woolies (sadly this was not pictured).

After rinsing, a liberal soaking of Incinerate Wheel Foam was then agitated with a soft detail brush to remove anything that might still be present.

The wheels were then hit with a dose of Liquid Fire, but this step proved to be quite unnecessary as only a minute amount of contamination was still present (so, not worth picturing). Still, at least this particular bleeding fallout remover has a bearable scent compared to others I have tried (Bilt-Hamber Korrosol, I am looking at you) which smell absolutely awful.

At this point, I was prepared to clay and polish the wheels but deemed it unnecessary so dried them off using Sonax BSD as a drying aid and applying a coat of it in the process.

Next up, an application of high-temp wheel wax. This was really easy to apply, and remove later once dried to a haze. It's said to be good for 2 months of protection.

Applied

Buffed

Then my attention turned towards dressing the tyres...

Rubber Wax applied to the inner-facing sidewall to see what type of finish it provides.

Hmm, and then the outside...

I quite like the idea of using a proper wax on the tyres instead of the usual sticky products, and this leaves a really neat and clean-looking finish but against really dark wheels I didn't think it stood out very well. I also tried it out on the radiator top hose and that came up a treat, so I can see me being a fan of Rubber Wax, just not for my tyres as I prefer a bit more of a sheen on my sidewalls.

So, out came the Megs Endurance...

Job done. 

[Farqui]

Nice write up with good results and protection for a few months 

I'd have much rather been cleaning my alloys, instead we ripped out the back fence. Which did my back in, NOT so happy days 

[TigerFish]

nice job. I use Sonax BSD and the endurance tyre gel, both really good stuff.

[rayaans]

Very nicely done however....

If you were going through the effort of removing wheels, why not put a ceramic wheel coating on instead of something mediocre that only lasts 2 months? Something like TDG raspberry wheel seal lasts that long and doesn't require any effort i.e. spray onto a wheel, spread around and voila! Heck, if you wanted to stick a wax on Collinite would last longer than 2 months!