Winter Detailing – Rinseless Wash Your Wheels
Winter can be a very trying time when it comes to detailing your car. This becomes especially true when you’re trying to clean your wheels. For this post, I will be demonstrating our technique for performing a(n almost) rinseless wash on your wheels. This technique uses all of your basic wheel cleaning tools, your wheel bucket, and a few other specific items.
The Tools
5 Gallon Bucket with Grit Guard filled with fresh water
Detail Brushes (like this or these)
Wheel Woolies (or the Woolie Caliper Brush – 18″ or 12″)
Pressure Sprayer (or two) filled with water for rinsing and Rinseless Wash diluted at 1:16 w/w presoaking
The Technique
Once you’ve gathered all of your tools together and filled your bucket with fresh water, add two ounces of your APC and one ounce of your Rinseless Wash and place your tools and brushes into the bucket, giving the solution a stir. Using your Pressure Sprayer or spray bottle with diluted Rinseless Wash, give the wheel a quick mist to begin loosening the dirt. If you prefer and have it available, give the wheel a mist with Wheel Cleaner. I prefer to not use a reactive, iron removing wheel cleaner in this situation as it is typically more difficult to completely rinse off.
Allow the Wheel Cleaner or pretreatment spray to work while you begin to scrub the wheel well and tire down using your Fender Brush and Tire Scrub brush. Once this is complete, you can start cleaning the wheel.
Using your preferred wheel face and lug tool, scrub every nook and cranny as you would normally, dipping and rinsing your brush frequently to get new solution.
Wheel Face Technique
I have a specific method for cleaning wheel faces, especially when using a rinseless wash technique. As with washing the car’s body, I work from cleanest to dirtiest. This method is used such that the dirt that is released from the wheel flows down onto the the still dirty part helping to prevent it resettling in the crevices of the wheels.
The first step is to brush the entirety of rim of the wheel. Dip and clean the brush in your bucket then clean the face portion of the wheel, the part that is pointing outwards from the car. Dip the brush again and begin working on the spokes. If you imagine the wheel as though it’s a clock, I first clean the spokes between 12 and 3 o’clock. Then, I clean the spokes between 12 and 9 o’clock. Finally, I clean 3 to 6 o’clock followed 9 to 6 o’clock. Immediately after you finishing cleaning the face of the wheel, thoroughly rinse the wheel with your pressure sprayer filled with water.
Cleaning the Barrels
When it comes to cleaning the barrels of your wheels, the method is quite simple using the same method as above, working around the wheel from top to bottom. Clean one quarter of the barrel at a time using your Wheel Woolies then dip and thoroughly rinse the dirt before moving on to the next segment. Take care to get behind the calipers. If your tools are too large to fit, roll the car a few feet and clean any areas that were missed. Now that you’re certain the entire wheel, tire, and wheel well is clean, thoroughly rinse the wheel using your pressure sprayer.
Ta-Da! All clean and ready to face the rest of winter.