Best Way to Restore Rims & Winter Prep

on today's episode we're going to be talking about how to properly clean your rims and your wheel wells in anticipation for winter and after winter I'm talking like crazy person clean that and a lot more coming up on this episode of driving protect in so it takes it on top of each other Oh touch-up paint on okay here okay before we get started there's some obvious things I need to point out one you need to lift the car up and you know use a jack stand or in this case I'm using my my fancy quick Jack system so normal Jack you've seen me do a thousand times you just got to make sure everything is flat put up jack stand all the safety things you're supposed to say do that in this case it's pretty cold outside so I'm working indoors and we're going to talk a little bit about that later I want to point out something kind of cool if you see the quick jack system you see how it actually when it folds down and folds up there's a there's a you know an angle to it so it angles angles forward or angles backwards and now in this case yeah I had to spend a little bit of time when I was putting this together and using it on the car itself sometimes the wheel when the wheels on pretend the wheels on would actually hit the spot right here and I couldn't get the wheel off and the reason was I needed to swap sides so you can go diagonal and you can take one of these and switch the other side only thing you need to make sure you keep in mind can you see this here the safety bar you have to keep the safety bar towards the outside so just bear that in mind if you're using quick jack if you're using a normal jack stand just forget about that part but I did run into some issues with that so what I want to say before we get started with the actual steps is I use this technique for a couple different things one I'm going to a car show and I want it to be like crazy clean or slash I just want to clean my car because it's Sunday and you got whatever reason this is when I would use this technique put that to the side more importantly I use it I have to use it before winter and after winter so what does that mean I want to clean all this stuff out I want to be able to see anything that may be leaking or may be exposed or potentially rust etc before winter plus I'm going to show you how to you know give it a fighting chance let's put it that way so that'll be a little bit later I do that on the front in the back so it's very important to take the wheels off having said that if you can't take all four off the only difference between taking all four off and keeping and doing one at a time like I used to do in the past is it's just it's not any any better or ineffective it just takes more time so this is more efficient hopefully that makes sense so that's a little bit of a you know a little bit of homework or due diligence before we actually get started with the steps but I want to make that clear do everything safe and the reason we're doing this is obviously to clean it and make you feel good and all those kind of things but even more importantly you know prep for a concours which is fun but really prep for winter this is very very important so before winter and after winter very key all right so let's get into the steps all right so I filled up my bucket with some warm water and Brut and I have all my tools and now I pulled the wheels outside now if you're already outside well then you just solve that problem but it's super cold here and I want to work inside most of the time but if I'm doing this kind of stuff it's it's easier out here so first thing you want to do is not rinse them down a lot of people take a power washer and rinse them down immediately that's logical in most cases for this particular type of clean you want to let the cleaner do the work what I mean by that well oh it's windy and cold what I mean by that is the the cleaner is going to be fighting against the water so you're actually diluting the cleaner in this particular case I don't usually like to do if I'm washing in the and the wheels are on the car fine power wash it use a regular hose I'm just giving you a little tip here so I'll basically do two rims at a time is you don't want to let this sit for too long because you will be spending some time again this is the preliminary wash we're going to pull it back inside so I don't freeze to death after this part and then we're going to go you know bananas and I'll show you the next couple steps so for all intensive purposes you're going to use whatever you cleaner this is a mold plum and it come in here spray down whoo it's cold really kind of get in there and obviously the backside look how gross this backside is and you're going to let it sit just for a little bit of time but not too much maybe a you know a minute or two again you're working in steps here once the undiluted cleaner has had a chance to work the baked-on break dust then I first use my wheel brush to agitate all the tight areas before using my wilmut on the larger surfaces afterwards I like to quickly brush the tread for two reasons first is to check for any lodged rocks uneven wear or obvious nails etc the second is with the soap on the tread a non obvious slow leak will bubble up let you know where it is the truth is I'm not sure if this is a good habit or just my obsessive behavior but nonetheless I always take an extra second and inspect the tread then I give it a healthy rinse and move it inside okay now the wheels are clean you bring them inside you notice they're still wet the next step is going to be to clay them but all right so you're going to take a clay bar and inside this little container here I have old pieces of clay this is an old piece of clay when you're working on a wheel you are going to be using an old piece of clay if it is if it happens to be new meaning you don't have an old one sitting around it's going to be old after that so do not use it on the paint so anything that touches the wheels does not touch the paint same thing with the wheel bucket in the in the paint bucket for soap for washing that sort of thing same idea so you can use spray wax I start with the outside first meaning the part that you see because typically that's not as bad why because you know we're crazy and we know we clean it up better than we do the inside so just do this very quickly on the outside that the meet potatoes is going to be on the inner set on the you know the inside of the rim so work this one wheel at a time and I'll show you what the inside looks like I spent about 10 15 minutes playing it and I have to say it's pretty therapeutic and fun but it did pull up just a huge amount of gunk and it's looking pretty good I'm very happy with it but before we take it over to the bench and go really nuts on it the next thing is use compressed air if you have it use a leaf flowe or whatever it is that you have because we really want to get this thing dry take an old microfiber towel this is never going to be used on the paint again obviously this is just a wheel towel and go through this and dry everything off and then we're going to take this now that's been freshly claimed meeting all those surface contaminants everything that's on the server just like your paint has been removed and it's pretty smooth is it perfect right now no but I'll show you the next step to make it perfect after this thing is dried okay this is where things start to take a little bit of a turn for the crazy so now I've put this up on my bench so I have nice access to it we've washed it we've scrubbed it really really well so as a difference between washing and scrubbing as far as I'm concerned then we clade it and that brought out a lot of junk but there's stop when you clay like when you clay your paint and this is just goes onto a different thing when you're playing your paint you're basically think of it like those Biore strips you know teenagers use and they peel them off their nose and has a little blackheads in it that's the same ideas collect clays peeling up stuff that embedded into the paint got it when you're polishing or you're compounding you're using an abrasive you're actually grinding what I call leveling the paint so the kind of two different philosophies so clay is not going to take out scratches so keep that in mind what we're going to do next is a little bit nuts and like I said before this is like once or twice a year or if you're insane do it before a car show or concours we're going to take a three inch with a three inch microfiber cutting pad and if you notice you can see that is that the grossest pad you've ever seen yes well first of all they've discontinued these so big heads up on that not exactly sure why that happened but nonetheless that is a gross pad that's good because this pad is never going to be used on the paint it's only to be used for junky stuff pretty much I'm throwing this away the you know fibers here not the fibers the foam is going bad anyway so this is junk so I don't really care what it looks like we're going to take because it's going to get dirty in two seconds we're going to take either 205 and in this case I'm going to take D 300 it's a little bit more a little bit more cut than 205 and I just what you want to do is that this is not going to be pretty by the way and I definitely don't care we are going to exfoliate but in a different kind of way the paint in here so the clay could only get so much right it peeled off all the nasty stuff like the blackheads this is going to get into the paint and really kind of scrub and get all this crap out but having said that I'm going to ruin this pad so just be heads up on that so this is where it takes a turn for the loonie I'm going to put on three or four what can you see L see I'll do it okay so I stopped that early because it's taking off a lot of the black stuff so a bunch of times it's what I've Clayton years past sometimes black spots come off with the clay and sometimes I don't pretty much 99% of spots like that like rubber or some weird you know stuff in the wheels that you can't get off usually comes off with a microfiber cutting pad now I'd done that on a race car years ago one of my first youtube videos on a yellow Mustang from my buddy Matt and I showed you how to take off sticker residue it's the same kind of idea anyways I'm gonna pull the camera in cuz this is too cool it's taking off all this black stuff so the next step is spend some time and you're going to use a three-inch microfiber pad and go crazy on these so let's do that and then I'll show you the next app when you're all finished it's going to look pretty amazing and actually quite shiny a lot of you're going to be asking all right why did you not do it to the outside you mean the part where people see of the rim the difference is it's two different philosophies the answer is you can do it but you're if you're going to compound or use d300 or something like 105 something that's got a strong abrasive in it you're then gonna have to polish it and it's just like doing you know kind of the paint for lack of a better word you know it's the same thing here my philosophy in cleaning these was just to get the junk out so when you're using D 300 or 105 I like 3t 300 for this specifically a lot of Lube lubrication in there I use the microfiber cutting pad just to kind of get beneath everything so basically it's another cleaning method as opposed to a polishing method by default I mean it looks pretty ridiculously shiny right now for a you know a car that goes to the track and the whole thing I'm I'm pleased with this is it perfect no but it's very clean there are some stains or some damage in there that totally makes sense but in terms of cleanliness you can eat off this thing right now so the next step is where to go is to take a wheel wax this case obviously I'm using mine it's July it's supposed to be jelly so a lot of people say oh it doesn't feel like wax it doesn't look like wax well it's look it's it's goopy it's you know it's July you know it's jelly so basically you take a couple gobs of it like this put in your hands again jump a little bit you can put it on a you can put on a rag or a foam applicator as well but essentially get it into every nook and cranny as they say the big thing in with this is you want to just lay it on I mean really put it on as thick as you can in some cases in some cases I'll actually leave a light layer on we're going to do two or three coats of this but I'll leave a light layer on before I'm done you know for winter purposes because you can't really see in there it depends on the style rim and how crazy you are but if you leave a thin coat on here and not take it off it helps you'll see when you put water in there and break though I mean it really comes off especially for winter so you're going to do this a few times and really get that in there and then you're going to do all four rims you can do all four rims put this all in there and then let it sit for awhile so once they're sitting so all four rims will be sitting here they're done they're perfect now you're putting on the protection man this is kind of addicting too in a fun way you got to put protection on it and then let it sit now we're going to go play with the undercarriage which is going to be super fun okay now we're over here at the suspension while the wheels are sitting back on the bench and they're drying with the jala wheel wax on there give it some time let it do its thing focus on this now a lot of you were saying hey why don't you wash it when you're outside that's a great idea I would have probably washed it outside if it wasn't so cold plus you know I'm inside and it's nice and warm now and I have my garage it's not a big deal so I'll show you how to wash it you basically just get a little pan take it like that setting underneath and now you can wash it and anything sits in there you can you know throw it away properly so I have my wheel bucket here and a lot of you might be asking hey why don't you just go crazy with with plumb the truthful answer is it's you can do it you can absolutely do it but I'm also trying to think of you know put myself in your shoes like the way I was before I started manufacturing my own stuff you know I've I use like a quarter of it on all the wheels it's a lot of stuff I don't to go through a whole bottle on one that seems great thank you if you do but you know that I don't think that that's necessarily fair so I'll give a few squirts of plumb here it is safe if you have Carbon ceramics you know that don't do any of this on carbon ceramics you know check with your owner's manual it's a whole other ball of wax you can use just regular car soap and you'd be fine but you're not going to get any of this brake dust with those carbon ceramic so anyways for the rest of us the rest of the ninety-nine percent who have steel rotors you can use this technique so what I'll do is I'll take a little bit of plum and the other thing is when you when you power wash them down a lot of this junk will come off but same time it's wet and so it kind of deceives the eye as well so there's some pluses and minuses I would never say don't power wash it and you know clean the rims while the welts on the car you can do that and that's totally makes sense for 99% of the time but not in this one I don't think so I'll take a little bit of plum just just to touch let it sit there while it's doing this thing so while it's doing this thing let's have a conversation this is a that's kind of cool this is a bottle of water so what I do let's take it out now I take wheel soap which got it you know a lot of power to it take the wheel soap pour it into you see that I'll try to get a close-up of that then you take this guy just take it in and you can give it a shake and obviously it'll turn sudsy so this is the water that I'll use while I'm cleaning and I'll show you the technique wow this thing's turning crazy purple so let me pull the camera in and show you and look it's dripping right in the bucket pretty easy so this is kind of the the quick little technique of how to do that so let me pull the camera and show you this cool little thing turning blue out okay the way this technique works is you take in your left hand if you're writing you're going to find a little brush I like use my I have a little one and a big one it will use a little one and then you're going to squirt at the same time as you're washing whoo baby so the pressure from the little squirter is actually helping you as you're using this little brush to get in all the little spots here now with breaks I'm always a little bit more I have to tell you this is like the most satisfying thing in the whole way I'm gonna take my my brute go here with my wheel bucket clean my suspension house that was really dirty do that and the wheel well itself I have a lot of these cool q-tips that have a bit of like a cotton ball on the end for like and put a word where I can get into these tight areas I'll show you on my on my desk II sort of like a fancy toothpick but it's for the automotive industry it's really kind of it's very useful to get into these tiny spots that even my my tiny brushes can't get into use them in conjunction I'm gonna get loops I get that guy in there like this okay once you feel like you've cleaned it enough or your your psychosis has taken over and you want to be done with it you can take a little hose like I have here just a little bit and spray it down again it's all being caught right now now granted I'm doing this because it's freezing outside but obviously if you did this in the driveway if you're allowed to do that it would make a whole lot more sense but this is easy enough anything drips on the floor it's easy just kind of clean it off because of the new floor another great reason to have this thing anyways a quick rinse like this then we're going to use compressed air and yeah dry it off and I'll show you the next step okay so we're all set this thing looks absolutely spectacular it's a huge before and after and I'm very happy but you can probably hear my voice I of course found something you know I'm telling you guys a make sure you look and you know all the things I'm telling you and turn off my own words come back to me but you see this spot right here I saw this before but I don't think it was this bad it's just starting to oxidize a little bit so that's concerning to me so I think I'm going to do my one percent sure I may either repaint this spot like literally with with touch-up and it's not going to be very pretty battle carrots right here and I'll explain what happened or I might reenter code it because this you know all this you know rubbery stuff comes from the factory and I burned it off and the reason I burned it off is back when I have my 18s hmm wasn't the 18th there's either the 18s or my slicks because my slicks are pretty wide when you turn the wheel on a racetrack you ever drive a like a real race car not you know a street race car the steering wheel only turns this much and the reason it doesn't do that is because you know the fenders yeah the big massive tires more rubber you have on there you know the better anyways I scratched you know I hit that on the track and I could smell rubber that's why we had to you know roll these fenders as well anyways sorry my brain is going a while on camera so the next step that you're going to do pretend that's addressed right now because I'm have to play with that later as you take a ton of Tyre dressing you take a ton of Tyre dressing and you're going to massage it in and you're going to do all the plastics and all these areas here now if it was a I'll do the rest at a minute if it was a concours event you'd say yeah that makes sense because there's a lot of contrast and I'll show you the before and after it's gonna look crazy but the other reason is in winter if you keep up with this and you put a lot on it and let it sit overnight and I'm gonna let this whole thing dry just because you know I'm digging my new garage here a lot of the sand and salt and all the junk that happens during winter is going to hit here and there's usually a little bit of water involved with the snow and I'll crap this on the ground it hits there and it rolls off because it's a going to be very hydrophobic in there now if you have that carpet I've heard of people doing this I'm not recommending this I've heard of people doing this where they put something like something like wd-40 or some sort of penetrating oil or something that's hydrophobic to water and oil-based something and they spray it into those little fibers the reason those fibers are there by the way that wood carpet is to reduce the road noise like an Escalade and things like that but you have to hit it it's a pain in the butt to clean out believe me we've all been there so yeah you can do that as well but this is old-school and it has that has the plastic and whatnot so I'll show you a little bit before and after and the depth and the color and the all the shine that comes out especially after the wheels are all set so let's finish this I have one little tiny step before we put the wheels on and then are done but it should take you a good afternoon and it's very healthy to do specifically because you find things that the guy who is on the camera and preaches to you oh I actually found anyways I found one live on camera which is fun but yeah let's finish this and I'll show you the last little crazy psycho step and you're good good to go passing yourself what else could you possibly clean with the wheels and of course the brakes well there's the lug nuts of course five of them right here now in the past what I used to do is put them in this pickles jar and by the way if you don't like pickles on your sandwich crazy but the it's all wearing off but I used to put them all in at once take them all out and put it back on seems pretty reasonable right the problem is I wouldn't I wasn't able to keep track of which lug nuts went where and I think maybe it's superstition but maybe not I I think they fit better on the wheels that they're supposed to go on that makes sense so anyways I have this other little way of cleaning them as I put them in their own you know I used er meaning driver rear driver front PR passenger rear and passenger front the one that we're working on right now so what I end up doing is taking a little bit of that cleaner that we played with before so this is water and Brut so I fill it up a little bit and put these in together like such a matter of fact I take me all day doing it this way I pour them out and fill this thing up to let them soak cuz there's not a whole lot of scrubbing you can do to these things but I'm gonna have to take this cardboard off at some point so I put the little top on and I give a shake and this you know things got little holes in it or whatever but I'll leave them in here as you can see that where's the name there's the name so this is the passenger side front so when I'm all done I take them make sure that they're on the same exact area but anyways I fill up all these things I'll let them sit there and I usually let them sit there when I'm doing the when I'm doing the tire so anyways that is how I clean the lug nuts and you can kind of come in here with your little brushes afterwards and really go crazy but I don't like to go too nuts on these because once they're once they're good you know just kind of leave Malone but I do like to clean up a lot of the excess boogers that are on there you know my word and boogers alright so while these are sitting here let's go back take the wax off this guy and because we put two coats on it the other one off-camera put two coats on and then mount them we're good to go for winter all right well we're finished check this out the before and after is nuts this thing is so clean and this one is obviously really really gross I had a blast shooting this on a side note some of my favorite things about detailing cars is vacuuming I have no idea why and the second favorite thing I love to do is cleaning wheels and suspension it's like a kind of geek out moment there's so many there's really look at that it's just it's like a piece of artwork okay so let me go over a couple of quick points and then we'll get out of here first when you're putting plumb on the tire my suggestion to you is to not wet the wheel down in this kind of crazy scenario that we're talking about right now don't wet the wheel down why because the water dilutes the cleaner in this case you want the cleaner really kind of get in there but you need to keep an eye on it don't let it go too long so keep that in mind number two when you're climbing the paint laying the wheel you're gonna get out a lot of that bureau example that black heads you're gonna get a lot of that stuff out but you won't get all of it out to get it all out like I did in this video I use a microfiber cutting pad Oh keep in mind I think I may have said it but McGuire's is discontinuing their three-inch microfiber cutting pad so keep that in mind I'm not going to throw mine out I'll clean it and keep it for just wheels because once you use it on the wheels you can't use it on the paint and in that case I use d300 so it's kind of like a little bit heavier than a Polish but not a full compound so again keep that in mind next I put jala on the rims there's my knee going bad right now July on the rims I did two coats and then because this is a light-colored rim I left a little bit on there so you can't even see it you see you can't even see because light-colored now this is a black rim you might see a little bit of it because it dries white does that make sense so I left it on there is like an extra little layer that's just a little tip view mud you put mud on the the wheel wells in there the reason you do that and you put on pretty thick and I'm going to do a second coat that's why I'm not putting the wheels on just yet is to have the water and the salt and all the crap that you're going to get in winter it'll flush out much much better lug nuts I don't like to separate them into like or I mean I like to separate them I don't put them all into one because then I forget which one went layer I let them soak in Brut and then just dry them off with you know a towel or some air before you put them on lastly I didn't as you notice here I put tire shine on here the reason I didn't put tire shine on is I'm gonna mount them in a few minutes and I don't need to film me mounting em you guys it seems people mount tires before but if you put them on obviously you can be greasing you be sliding all over the place and I touch things and touch the paint like don't do that if you're going to leave them overnight out and leave the car like this overnight totally cool put dressing on there let it penetrate and in the morning you can put it on no sweat so anyways very much appreciate you guys watching this is super exciting of course you have any questions to me email Larry and amo NYC comm or visit my website ammo and Westie comm for more insane crazy people videos but the before and after is like it's kind of bonkers anyways I had a blast shooting this I'll talk to you guys soon have a go you

Channel: AMMO NYC

Views: 1,904,259

Keywords: Scratch removal, Top Detailing Tips, Larry Kosilla Detailing, AMMO Detailing Products, AMMO Products, AMMO Detailing, How to remove a scratch, AMMOnyc, AMMONYC.con, AMMO Car Care Products, How to clean rims the right way, How best to restore your rims, Best trick to washing your rims, How to clean wheels properly, Best trick for cleaning wheels, Best Way to restore rims and winter prep, How to clean my rims, How to detailing my wheels, larry kosilla, car care, auto detailing

Id: _18VlRvxTsk

Length: 26min 30sec (1590 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 16 2016

Reddit Comments

[u/carmasterzaib]

This video make me wanna lift my car, take the wheels off and clean them....at 2 am

[u/emdotdee]

Though I understand his reasons for not washing the wheels first surely he could have used the pressure washer to get rid of the grime and then blasted the water away with his air compressor (which he used later on).

Would have meant less scrubbing and less waste of the cleaning product.

[u/Matt_95]

If your a car person and you watch any of Larry's videos you love his passion. Its so obvious the way he talks about anything he does. You automatically have passion for what he's doing. And for this we love you larry!

[u/Seppic]

That quick jack system is so awesome.

[u/Absentmindedfool]

Fantastic video, great point about not wetting down before using the wheel cleaner.

[u/xHaZxMaTx]

Kinda off-topic, but what's with the suspension at around 16 minutes? Never seen loose springs like that.