What's the best way to get those pieces of hard-as-rocks tar that look like little pebbles stuck to the inside surface of wheels, and all the other grime, off the wheel surface? I've tried spraying the inside of the wheel with WD40 and then scraping the little tar pieces off, but there's usually always little spots left behind.

 

i used a regular wheel cleaner some of the *****. some are like superglued and wont come off easily.
wtf is that? the prev owner had torn axle boots and let all the grease sit there for years

 

I've seen PandaMan use #0000 steel wool in some of his threads, especially the R34 GT-R detail with the nasty HRE wheels. Wonder if that would work with some Meguiar's APC to get that crap off.

 

There are certain products that will melt that crap if you let it dwell long enough. like stoners tarminator, and other Tar removers. also claybar or #0000 steel wool with lube.

I would start by letting tarminator dwell and then take a plastic razor blade to scrape off the worst part, then clay or scrub the left over stuff and then wax or seal the wheels when finished.

 

Ah gotcha. I actually found what looks to be a pretty good how-to that also mentions the Tarminator stuff. I haven't seen that but I'll definitely look for it at local retailers.

http://www.properautocare.com/cowhtiwhwecl.html

 

Well I picked up a can of the Tarminator today. Let me just say this... WOW! The stuff is simply amazing.

I sprayed a bit on the lower front passenger door of our Corolla that had some stubborn tar on it that's been on there for years. I've never been able to get it off with WD40, even scrubbing with one of those "bug" sponges. So I spray on the Tarminator, let it dwell, and the stuff just wipes right off with a paper towel. I could hardly believe it, the stuff really is that good.

 

Used some Tarminator along with a couple other products on my fenderwells today, before swapping over to my other wheels with new tires. Finished it off with 303. Looks pretty amazing. I didn't get a before pic but the green areas were pretty much black with dirt before.

 

tarminator is apparently good stuff, i've seen it mentioned a lot.

my wife's '07 Si, she's got 70k on it. she has had the car since new - i wasn't aware of detailing inner wheels at the time she got the car (like i did when i got my '08 MS3 in '08) and have never cleaned the barrels other than getting in them with the ez brush when washing it. she's only had one set of tires on this car other than the OE ones, but there were several areas with wheel weights and/or wheel weight adhesive. that's because the second set of tires she had were TERRIBLE and in an effort to try to quiet them down and compensate for the terrible construction i had them rebalanced at least once.

the time has finally come for new tires - no more torture with these noisy vibrating piece of crap Kumho ASTs. Yokohama envigor avids are going on. so in prep for the new tires, i wanted to finally attack the barrels of these wheels.

passenger side -


driver side -


i apologize for the HORRENDOUS pictures - i had to use my phone because my wife took my camera for a show tonight. the lighting was rough and i was rushing so i could get back to cleaning them. oh and of course i didn't take befores. trust me, they were bad. i didn't pay too much attention to the back of the spokes except where they meet the barrel as this area is somewhat visible from the front.

the process was to lift/scrape the weights off with a plastic scraper. then take a toothbrush and brush mineral spirits on the adhesive, wait a little, then scrape. after each cycle of this, when there was just the minimal adhesive residue on there, i'd wipe it with prep all (bootleg version of prep sol) adhesive remover on a paper towel until it was gone.

then, i'd spray both sides with p21s gel and let dwell for several minutes, like 10-15 or more. i had a bucket with hot water and dawn, and a long handle synthetic green bristle brush, a boar's hair lug brush and the ez detail brush (old version of the daytona). i'd scrub the wheels with the green brush, making sure the bristles hit the bases of each spoke. there was massive amounts of stuck-on little rocks and asphalt like you asked about so at this time i picked that off with my nails. i brushed the tires and wheel faces, hits the lug holes, stem hole, and used the ez brush on the spokes.

where there were still pieces of black from the stuck pieces, i hit them with mineral spirits and rubbed them away with paper towels. the bases of the back of the spokes didn't come out too easily so i sprayed each spot with duragloss wheel cleaner. it's slightly acid and when agitated is pretty aggressive. i used the lug brush for that agitation.

then i hit the wheels with optimum power clean, full strength, and let it dwell a bit, then sprayed down with warm water.

i let the water run off, and dried the barrels with paper towels. sounds crazy but it works just fine.

i then used optimum compound on a wolfgang "german" oval pad, on the yellow firm side, and rubbed the barrels well. a lot came up from this process...the foam was dark gray when i was done (cleaned up perfectly though with dawn, back to bright yellow).

i then wiped down the barrels with 50/50 IPA and then applied opti-seal with the other side of the wolfgang pad.

it was A LOT of work but they appear to be almost 100% perfect from the outside when installed on thre car. it took me, all in all, about 3.5 hours to remove them, clean them, and reinstall. i probably could have cut off an hour by not being so exacting with them but i never detail anything half-assed. that is why i only detail exotics aside from my personal vehicles - i can't operate at anything less than 100%.

btw the ez detail brush has been replaced by the daytona for wheel use - http://www.autogeek.net/daytona-special.html

 

Holy crap $25 for a brush... looks like it does an awesome job, though.

 

yeah, it's expensive. i can't recall what i paid for my orignal version, but it has been extremely useful. i look at it like this: it took me almost 4 hours to restore the inner barrels of those wheels because as mentioned i didn't know about doing this back when she got this car, so if the brush keeps me from having to do that on every new vehicle i have come through, then it is well worth it. it's amazing what an open spoke wheel with clean barrels does for the overall look of a wheel!

 

The thing about my Rota wheels, though, is that the barrels are more like rough cast aluminum with a painted surface. It's not a smooth, clearcoat painted finish. That makes it harder to clean all the junk off IMHO.

I did hit some areas with some 0000 steel wool which seemed to help get some of the stubborn spots off. Unfortunately I didn't get a good pic of the cleaned wheels before I mounted them up.

I'll probably give my stock wheels (sitting on a shelf) a good cleaning sometime soon and will take some pics. They need it badly. I might even repaint the wheel faces... again.

 

gonna have to get some tarminator. my Kosei's have the tar chips on them as well as stains and such that 3:1 megs. APC wont even take off after dwelling for nearly 10 mins.