How To Clean Your Alloy Wheels & Make Them Look New Again

Between the scheduled oil changes, routine maintenance checkups and carefully 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 what essential car cleaning tools you 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 about soaping up your wheels in the driveway or at the local car wash. Here's how to clean your alloy wheels and get them back to looking like new. 

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 like SONAX Wheel Cleaner Full Effect, or Meguiar'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:

1. Loosen and remove as much dirt as possible by rinsing the wheels thoroughly using a heavy stream from the hose and, if necessary, a wet sponge.
2. Spray each of the vehicle's wheels individually with the alloy-approved cleaner of your choice.
3. Using your soft bristle brush, scrub away any remaining dirt and grime from the wheel. If you can, gently reach the brush through the spokes to clean the wheel back and front.
4. If you have a lug nut brush like those made by Griot's handy, go ahead and scrub up that hard-to-clean area as well.
5. Using your sponge or a heavy scrub brush, clean the vehicle's wheel wells, too. Do not use your wheel brush here, however, as the soft bristles will likely be ineffective on the surface.
6. Rinse the wheel and wheel well thoroughly, then dry them with a microfiber towel. 

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.

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 like the ones made by Wontolf, a quick detailing lubricant like Griot'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:

1. Spray your alloy wheel liberally with the lubricant of your choice.
2. Flatten about 1/4 of the clay bar out and rub it over the wheel, ensuring you get between every spoke.
3. As the clay becomes soiled, you'll want to fold it over to a clean side and continue to avoid simply spreading dirt around as you clean.
4. After you've scrubbed the whole wheel, reapply the lubricant and use a microfiber cloth to wipe away any remaining residue.
5. Repeat this process for all four 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.

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 like Bauer'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:

1. With your alloy wheels dry and clean, coat the entire wheel with your chosen metal polish.
2. If you have a buffer or polishing machine, use a slow setting to spread the polish over the entire wheel, gradually increasing the speed as the polish dries and dissipates. 
3. This can also be achieved without using a buffer, but hand polishing will take longer, and you will likely spread the polish less evenly.
4. Once you've finished, use your microfiber towel to wipe the remaining polish off of the wheel.
5. Repeat the process for all of the remaining wheels. 

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.