# Autobrite acidic very cherry wheel cleaner



## Bmwjc (Apr 2, 2012)

Has anyone any experience of this wheel cleaner? I know its acid but mine are bad. Really bad. My bilberry wheel cleaner isnt touching it. Bilberry i think is more of a maintenance wash.


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## ollienoclue (Jan 30, 2017)

I would not not use acid at all.

Get yourself a can of BH wheel cleaner and a reasonable wheel brush.


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## Bmwjc (Apr 2, 2012)

Ive got wheel brushes coming coming out my ears wheel woolies etc. Just cannot get the wheels cleaned with the products i have. The alloys have been neglected big time. Hold my hands up ive failed them.


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## tosh (Dec 30, 2005)

You've got three options 

Acid
Alkaline
Neutral/Fallout remover

If it's one set of wheels just get enough to do the job:

Acid - Wonder Wheels original
Alkaline - bilberry 
Fallout - BH Autowheel

If the wheels aren't damaged in any way, acid is fine. If they're diamond cut or delicate, I wouldn't risk it. 

I was very surprised at what Autosmart G101 did at 4:1 on a grubby set of wheels, so don't just grab the strongest thing you have!

I thought the g101 was doing nothing, but after really scrubbing the inner wheel with a cheap stiff dish brush the muck eventually parted. 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro


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## Alexbmwx5 (Jul 11, 2017)

I've just cleaned my X5 diamond cut alloys that had what seemed like 5 years of the previous owners caked on brake dust stuck to them.

BH Autowheel a few times over with a decent bit of scrubbing has brought them back to good as new. Finished off with natty's alloy sealant they now look the business.

No need for acid or alkaline as far as I'm concerned.


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## steelghost (Aug 20, 2015)

It's worth mentioning that Auto Wheel, whilst neutral in the bottle, does develop a very low (ie, acidic) pH when it comes in contact with an iron particle.


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## Bmwjc (Apr 2, 2012)

Cheers for the advice. I think i will try the BH autowheel as it seems a good choice. Hope to have the alloys back to a good condition soon!!


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## great gonzo (Nov 4, 2010)

I use an acidic wheel cleaner on bad wheels, as long as you are sensible with it no need to worry it's great stuff. 


Gonz.


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## steelghost (Aug 20, 2015)

Ben Gum said:


> I've had this pressed at me multiple times. We have taken a beaker of bleeding cleaner, stirrer and pH meter in place. When we immerse a heavily rusted piece or iron it turns massively purple. But the pH does not change. Similarly, there is no measurable temperature change.


"Bleeding" fallout removers make use of a reaction that was first developed to detect iron - as such, the colouration it produces is very intense, and it doesn't take much actual product to turn clear water purple.

Water has a very high specific heat capacity ie it takes a lot of energy to change the temperature of it. That doesn't change the fact that there will be a change of enthalpy associated with the reactions going on. The fact that you observed no change is down to the fact that there was too little energy released (or absorbed*) to change the temperature of the water, according to the precision of the instrument you used.

Neither would you necessarily expect to observe a pH change in the bulk solution given that fallout removers are are buffered against such change by the presence of both acids and alkalis in the solution. Doesn't mean that on a very local scale ie on the surface of the iron being reacted on, hydrogen ions are not being released into or removed from solution.

All of this is to back up the point I made earlier in the thread which is that "bleeding" iron removers do not work by magic. They may be pH neutral in the bottle (or a lot closer to it than the strong acid and alkali cleaners that are available), but in order to do the job they do, they do use complex chemistries (including, from what I can tell developing acidic conditions on a local scale).

*I'm fairly sure the reaction is exothermic overall, but it's been a while (~20 years) since I've worked out enthalpies of reaction like this. We can be pretty sure that it isn't energy neutral though.

All that said, I couldn't agree more with this point:



> Basically extreme pH is risky and 'non acid' is absolutely not a guarantee of a safer product.


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## ollienoclue (Jan 30, 2017)

I'm not interested in another chemical cat fight, TBH.

Use BH autowheel, leave it enough time to react and then use a brush to gently agitate it. You will be surprised at what it will remove. I've cleaned off some serious brake grime and general hideousness with it before and I did not expect it to.


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