Looking In All The Wrong Places

[cutlasguy]

I looked far and wide for white wall tires to replace the ones on my 89 Caprice Classic before finding them at Cole Muffler under the Mavis brand. Only problem was that I couldn't get the whitewalls white! I tried Bleche White, Steel Wool, Spray Nine, even wet sanding with fine sandpaper. Nothing worked! Still yellow! Then, after driving back from Chryslers at Carlisle, my windshield was plastered with bugs! I scrubbed and scrubbed, trying to get it streak free before digging out my Rainex and reapplying. I looked at the rag afterwards and it was filled with gunk. Then it hit me! Maybe if it got my windshield so clean, could it possibly work on whitewalls as well? I tried it, and the first application took off piles of gunk. Could it be happening? My whitewall got whiter with every subsequent application. I began with only one tire, lest something catastrophic happen. A week later, still sparkling white and smooth! Hey, maybe a new product! Rainex for tires!

[victorialynn2]

I could be wrong, but it seems like I remember my father using a gentle application of sos pads on his white walls occasionally. Thanks for the Rainex tip. 

Edited August 1, 2017 by victorialynn2 (see edit history)

[cheezestaak2000]

BACK IN THE 60'S, US POOR KIDS WOULD BUY WHITEWALL TIRE PAINT AT PEP BOYS. I'M NOT SURE THEY MAKE IT ANYMORE, OR IF THEY DO, WHERE TO FIND IT, BUT AS A LAST RESORT?

ooops, sorry about those caps.

[Digger914]

A can of no name oven cleaner from the dollar store works great for cleaning white walls and lettering. Spray it on and scrub it a bit with a soft brush then rinse it off. Also does a good job of cleaning crud from chrome wire and alloy wheels. 

[CarlLaFong]

2 hours ago, Digger914 said:

A can of no name oven cleaner from the dollar store works great for cleaning white walls and lettering. Spray it on and scrub it a bit with a soft brush then rinse it off. Also does a good job of cleaning crud from chrome wire and alloy wheels. 

NO NO HELL NO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Do not use oven cleaner on alloy wheels. Aluminum alloy and lye don't play well together. I had a customer spray oven cleaner on the wheels of his Jensen Interceptor. All 4 had to be sent out and repolished. An expensive lesson

[DLynskey]

4 hours ago, victorialynn2 said:

I could be wrong, but it seems like I remember my father using a gentle application of sos pads on his white walls occasionally. Thanks for the Rainex tip. 

 

SOS Pads were the answer in the 50's and 60's.

 

Don

[Digger914]

1 hour ago, CarlLaFong said:

NO NO HELL NO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Do not use oven cleaner on alloy wheels. Aluminum alloy and lye don't play well together. I had a customer spray oven cleaner on the wheels of his Jensen Interceptor. All 4 had to be sent out and repolished. An expensive lesson

 

Of course you polish them afterwards, why bother to clean if you're not going to make them shine. What you don't do is leave the stuff on long enough to dry. Even if you need to do this several times it's spritz, scrub and rinse.

[CarlLaFong]

37 minutes ago, Digger914 said:

 

Of course you polish them afterwards, why bother to clean if you're not going to make them shine. What you don't do is leave the stuff on long enough to dry. Even if you need to do this several times it's spritz, scrub and rinse.

I think you misundertood my post The Jensen wheels had to be removed, the tires dismounted and sent out. A bit of Blue Magic or Simichrome wouldn't do. There are much less caustic cleaners that you can use on alloy. I have polished alloy wheels on my bike. A couple of shots of Gunk Orange Cleaner removes all of the crud safely.

[JACK M]

19 hours ago, DLynskey said:

 

SOS Pads were the answer in the 50's and 60's.

 

Don

 

Still is.

I bought a set of WWs a couple of weeks ago from a tire dealer friend. They looked like crap as the blue tape residue wouldn't budge.

We got into an argument and he pulled them and told me to go somewhere else. I talked to his wife/secretary about this and she told me he was having a bad day for other reasons and to forgive him.

Well I got online to search out a solution and came up with SOS pads. I bought some and went and picked up the worst tire. Took it home and it did indeed clean up.

I cleaned them all and they put them back on.

If my friends incompetent lackey worked for me he would be looking for another job. He refused to put in any effort.

By the way we are all good now.

 

To expand on this, these were the largest 14 inch tires available on the local market and they are not big enough for my car, I cant afford to shop the specialty dealers so I now have decided to go back to larger wheels. (I wanted to put the original hub caps on) These tires look OK but they throw my speedo way off and I don't want to rack up unnecessary mileage.

So I have a set of 215/75 14 tires id anybody needs. They have about 30 miles on them.

[Bill Harmatuk]

Comet or Ajax and a stiff brush.

[Doug Novak]

I've had a lot of luck using Mr. Clean Scuff Pads. They also are great for cleaning the Wheels and easy to use.

OT...if you have white interior doors in your house they make them look like new freshly painted. I think they are safe to use on just about everything.

[victorialynn2]

I wonder how magic sponges would work. Might be less abrasive then some of the other ideas and they work great on many things. 

[PFitz]

You'd be amazed at how fast (and how little "elbow grease" is needed)  using a roll of paper towels and a can of fast lacquer thinner can quickly turn "brown walls" into white walls.   Good idea to wear Nitrile gloves to protect your hands.

 

Paul

Edited August 2, 2017 by PFitz (see edit history)

[Mark Simmons]

Bon-Ami or Bartenders-Friend works well or at least has for me over the years. It's inexpensive and you can find it almost anywhere.

[Digger914]

21 hours ago, CarlLaFong said:

I think you misundertood my post The Jensen wheels had to be removed, the tires dismounted and sent out. A bit of Blue Magic or Simichrome wouldn't do. There are much less caustic cleaners that you can use on alloy. I have polished alloy wheels on my bike. A couple of shots of Gunk Orange Cleaner removes all of the crud safely.

 

Plenty of less and non caustic cleaners that will eventually get the job done and if it's only light cleaning a caustic is overkill.

 

I didn't misunderstand your posting, if you do this right you polish, if you do this the way your customer did, you refinish. Oven cleaner comes with the instructions for cleaning ovens printed on the can, when it comes to using oven cleaner on wheels and whites, there must be a hundred U-Tubes on how to use oven cleaner on whites and wheels. and you don't have to read any instructions. I guarantee your customer didn't watch even one how to video, to make the kind of mess you describe, your customer followed the oven cleaning instructions and alloy wheels are not ovens.

 

With a high speed buffer you can quickly make a car shine like new by removing the micron thin layer of surface oxidation and if you stay to long in one spot, the car will shine like new after it gets repainted.  Oven cleaner is caustic, you don't want to breath it, you don't want to get it on your skin and you sure don't want to get any in your eyes, but if you use it right, nothing works faster, easier and cheaper to clean yellowed raised letters and ten years of un-scrubbed brake dust that shows through your alloy wheel spokes like a bad job of undercoating.

[CarlLaFong]

All he needed was a time machine so he could have watched these YouTube videos, as Al Gore had not invented the internet in 1975, so yes, I can also guarantee that he didn't watch any DIY videos. You can spray all of the caustic goop on your car that pleases you. I will err on the side of discretion.

Edited August 2, 2017 by CarlLaFong (see edit history)

[Bloo]

No, Carl has it right here. There are many different kinds of wheels, some of which will tolerate caustic cleaners and some which will not. The trouble with aluminum is that what works on one piece might not work on another.

 

I had a friend who restored a Triumph Bonneville. He got some acid from some other British bike restorer. It made short work out of removing the corrosion from the engine castings, then he finish-polished them with something... I think Simmichrome. This was work, but done much faster than I thought possible. I bought some of this "aluminum acid" too. I don't know what was in the bottle. Probably some common acid. On some kinds of aluminum it works great. Years later I tried it on some Japanese engine casting, probably a thermostat neck or a valve cover. It turned black. As it turns out the acid eats away the aluminum, leaving whatever else was in the alloy on the surface, probably silicon. Whatever it was, it was black.

 

In the days before alloy wheels were coated, there was acid-based mag wheel cleaner. It worked great on old bare slot mags. By the late 1980s, it came with a huge warning not to use on anything except "bare uncoated open-pore aluminum wheels". There was a different formula for the coated wheels that were common by then.

 

As for oven cleaner, that is caustic soda, the same chemical used in a hot tank. Aluminum dissolves and disappears in a hot tank. Caustic soda makes great paint remover, too. It removes nearly everything, including your flesh. Many years ago I have cleaned whole American engines down to bare pristine cast iron with this stuff. You just spray it on thick and then bag it so it can't evaporate. Check it every day and spray on more where necessary and bag it back up. After about 3 days, It can be washed off with a strong hose nozzle or a pressure washer. Its super-effective. Everything comes off, grease, paint, gasket residue, that baked on carbon by the exhaust port that the machine shop can never seem to get off when you get your valves ground. Gone, all gone. Clean enough for new paint. I am not advocating anyone do this today, I only bring it up because it illustrates how chemically active this stuff is. I would not allow it anywhere near a nice set of wheels. To each his own.

Edited August 3, 2017 by Bloo
typo (see edit history)