The local car wash near my office put too much tire shine on my tire and they ended up staining my wheels. I've tried the standard foam wheel cleaner from Pep Boys, Eagle 1 Nevr Dull, Meg's Ultimate Compound and Sonax Full Effect Wheel cleaner and I don't see any difference in the stains.

All four wheels have stains in varying degrees and the picture below shows the worst one.

I've run out of ideas of anything short of getting the wheels refinished or powdercoated, but I can't afford to have my car out of commission for several days since I work full time while studying.

Any ideas?

 

ick

your going to need to use a polish and not anything corrosive (wheel cleaners and things like that)

The polish has a light abrasive in it that will probably remove the stains from the clear coat. Hopefully it hasn't harmed the clear coat or else you'll be looking at refinishing the wheels.

Try a few different steps of polish on one of the wheels and see how aggressive you need to go. Work the polish in really well (start less aggressive and work your way up)

Worst case, pull the wheels off and get them painted a new colour!

 

Thanks for the input! Any products I should try?

 

If you want it from your local pep boys or whatever, Meguiars is decent stuff. If you can find it zymol is pretty solid.

Meguiars is easy because it shows you the aggressiveness of the polish right on the front label. Someone else can chime in with other polishes, I don't do much store bought stuff.

If you wanna buy it off the internet.

USA
http://www.detailedimage.com/

Canada
http://www.eshine.ca/

 

Are you sure the stains are from tire shine? Car washes are notorious for using acidic wheel cleaners that ruin the finish of your wheels. I've heard of excessive tire shine slinging up onto the fenders but never onto the wheel...unless of course they sprayed it directly onto the wheel instead of an applicator.

If it is in fact tire shine, those stains look very similar to the stains in this thread:
https://g35driver.com/forums/care-de...detailing.html

Maybe try to use the products he used to remove the gunk.

 

After looking at the pictures I'm afraid Nick is correct. It looks like you have the dreaded etching the penetrates the clear coat and discolors the metal of the wheels. OEM wheels are infamous for this issue and there is nothing that can be done to fix them outside of having them refinished. It's frustrating because you can't feel any difference in the smoothness of the finish but the stains just seem to appear and won't go away.

 

Why can't you go back to the car wash place and demand a payment for refinishing job? (unless of course, they had a sign up in bold that they do not cover these things).

 

Yeah the finish feels smooth with no difference in the areas that are stained. From everyone's input, I'm probably going to live with it until I need new tires and get them powdercoated or get new wheels.

 

That's....^....a "Great"
Gary

 

autoglym

 

update:

I got my wheels powdercoated link and they turned out looking great. I went back to the car wash just to see if they would pay for repairs but didn't expect anything. I did get a few free car washes out of it though.

Learn from my mistake: always specify no acid wheel cleaner when you go to a car wash

 

reason number XXX why i always wash my own car. the refinished wheels look good, tho.

 

+1, straight soap and water at that

 

^^ I learned my lesson the hard way

Might use those free car wash coupons though or I'll put them up on CL

 

Car washes/dealerships can be a nightmare as shown with the etching on these wheels. If you need to use a carwash you gotta make sure they're not using anything but soap/water on your wheels. The carwash should be responsable since they're using a cleaner that's too strong to use on wheels that come in hot, very hot!
Gary