Wheel Wax Experiment

2404 Views 4 Replies 3 Participants Last post by SStoST, Jan 9, 2016

SStoST

Discussion Starter · Dec 26, 2015

Today I decided to do a bit of an experiment. I'm getting sick of the brake dust that the stock pads put out and I've heard that special wheel wax can be a great way to prevent so much of it building up. So my experiment was to clean all of the wheels today and apply the wax to the wheels on the driver's side. I figure this way I tell several things. First, how long do the wheels stay clean (wax vs. no wax). Second, how does this wheel wax stand up to the front brakes vs. the rear brakes. Lastly, once the wheels do need to be cleaned, how much easier is it to clean the waxed wheels vs. non-waxed wheels.

Here are starting pictures for reference:
Driver Front -

Land vehicle Alloy wheel Vehicle Car Tire

Driver Rear -

Land vehicle Alloy wheel Vehicle Car Wheel

Forgot to take pictures of the passenger side before cleaning but they were almost exactly the same level of dusty.

I bought some "Diamond Edge" wheel wax that said it should be good for exactly what I need. It also said on the bottle that this wax has been specially designed to stand up to the heat from the brakes and such.

First, I jacked up the drivers side and used jack stands so I could take my time cleaning without worrying about the scissor jack failing. Took off both wheels and thoroughly cleaned each, dried them, and applied the wax according to the directions on the bottle.

Land vehicle Vehicle Car Motor vehicle Transport

Alloy wheel Tire Wheel Vehicle Automotive tire

Once they were all cleaned up and waxed I put them back on and cleaned the passenger side wheels. As these ones didn't need any wax application I just did my typical cleaning, reaching between the spokes to get the inside of the rim as best I can.

Land vehicle Alloy wheel Vehicle Tire Wheel

Now that all four wheels are basically the same level of clean and the driver's side are waxed, I am going to drive as I normally do for a week or two without cleaning the wheels at all. I plan to take pictures every few days in order to document the differences. Finally, once my wheels get too dusty to stand again, the second part of my experiment will be to see how much easier the waxed wheels are to clean compared to the wheels that I just cleaned normally.

P.S. - Here's a picture of the scissor jack that comes with the car in it's original location/orientation. It was in there a very specific way so I took a picture in order to be able to get it back the same way. Figured one of you might be able to benefit from this in the same way.

Triangle Metal Titanium Spoke Bicycle part

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SStoST

Discussion Starter · #4 · Dec 28, 2015

It's been raining the past few days so I'm not too sure how that will affect dust. Either way, I'll be updating here either tonight or tomorrow with pictures of how the wheels are looking so far.
May not see much change but it's in the name of science right?

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SStoST

Discussion Starter · #5 · Jan 9, 2016

After two weeks of driving around without cleaning, here's how the wheels looked.

Left Front (wax), Right Front (no wax), Left Rear (wax), Right Rear (no wax)

Alloy wheel Tire Wheel Automotive tire Vehicle

As you can see, there's not really too much of a difference between either side. Both are pretty much equally covered in dust. So all that was really left was to see if the wax made it any easier to clean.

*A bit of a disclaimer here, when cleaning the right front wheel (no wax), I noticed that the axle must be slinging grease because the inside of that wheel had some grease inside it. I've already set up an appointment to have it checked out/fixed by the dealer. I need them to check on a few other things anyways...

Because of the grease, I'll be excluding the inside of the rims when I consider how it was to clean each wheel. Obviously, the inside of the right front wheel was tough to clean because of all the grease. Also, the right front was the last wheel I cleaned so my greasy sponge didn't affect how easy it was to clean the other wheels. I did notice that the waxed wheels were slightly easier to clean in general. Wiping them down with a wet sponge seemed to get the dust right off while the face of the non-waxed wheels took a bit more scrubbing to get them clean.

Cleaned Left Front (wax), Cleaned Right Front (no wax, grease inside wheel)

Alloy wheel Tire Wheel Rim Automotive tire

Since the results are probably a bit off due to the grease situation, I may need to keep at this. Once the dealership fixes the axle boot or whatever is slinging grease I'll probably start this process back up. I just wanted to get round one of this process done with today, before they do their thing at the dealership.

As of now, here are my results:

Wheel wax is pretty easy to apply. It's just a bit of a process taking the wheels off to get the inside. (Maybe several layers would help with doing this less frequently)
The wheel wax I used did not seem to prevent dust from accumulating. Both sides had about the same amount of dust building at the same rate each day.
The wheel wax I used did make it a bit easier to clean the wheels when the time comes. I had a good amount of grease on the inside of the un-waxed front wheel. This messed up my test a little bit so I only considered how easy it was to clean the face of each wheel.

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