"signintoburnerlol" (signintoburnerlol)
05/22/2014 at 22:00 • Filed to: None
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"signintoburnerlol" (signintoburnerlol)
05/22/2014 at 22:00 • Filed to: None | 4
| 4 |
Arguably one of the most popular detailing products on the market. This wheel cleaner essentially changes color, that alone might give you enough reason to buy it. Starting off as a green liquid once pumped from the bottle, it then turns purple/red in a matter of 3-5 minutes. What causes this black magic product to purple/redish color is the fact that the chemicals are attacking the sintered iron from brake dust. Sonax claims this product to be p-H neutral with no acid whatsoever, essentially safe to use on polished and chromed wheels. Disregard the "lemon fragrance", this stuff still smells like death .
Let's talk about the worst thing about this product, the spray angle. When it comes to a cleaning product with a nozzle, if you're attacking a wide area, you'll want a spray angle that gives a wide spray so you have an even distribution of product, without the need to go for a second spray.
What the Sonax Wheel Cleaner has, is a spray width that focuses primarily in the middle, whether from the top to bottom or left to right, you'll be using a lot of product. I'm not stating they did this on purpose so you have to spray the wheel eight times to get the product evenly distributed, I just find that the spray angle gives a bad theoretical coverage (see picture above!). Buying one of the wheel cleaners at Auto Zone, on an average 17-20 inch wheel, I'm able get the product even layered on the wheel, with around 3-4 sprays. You could step back and spray at a farther distance to get it sprayed more evenly, but then the distance causes the product to become a mist in the air.
To go into more detail, here is a picture of the spray on cardboard.
You can see a lot of the product is in the middle, this is after two sprays.
Here's another wheel cleaner product, I do own other products with better spray angles, but sadly I was all out at the moment.
See how the product is a bit more evenly distributed? This was on a longer piece of cardboard as well, same width, two sprays as well.
Enough with the nerdy stuff, how does this stuff work?
Here's a picture beforehand.
Next step, I sprayed on the product and waited 5 minutes. I then rinsed off the product as advised. Since there was still brake dust on the wheel, I applied product again.
You can see the wheel looks a lot better, but even after applying product again and rinsing it a second time, you still need to go on your knees and brush it all off. None of the products you could buy at Autozone would be able to do this just by spraying it on and cleaning it, this products is fairly expensive, though it might be a bit overkill.
Wheel cleaner is never good by its self, some would argue it's not even needed since you should be using a bucket of water with soap when you wash the wheels with brushes. I've always found that wheel cleaner helps take off the caked on brake dust, especially with German cars that have crazy amounts of OEM brake dust.
The wheel after being fully scrubbed down.
Is Sonax worth it to be used by its self? No. Is Sonax worth it with to be used with your scrubbing? Possibly.
Sonax Wheel Cleaner isn't cheap, it goes for around $16 on most detailing websites. It does come with a good amount of product, 16.9 FL. OZ. to be exact. The bottle is attractive and the grip for the sprayer is good ( Edit : A friend with larger fingers argued the grip for the sprayer is awkward to hold and use.) This stuff is made in Germany, so you are buying a premium detailing product. That might explain the deathly smell...
Unless you're really worried about using the wrong wheel cleaner that might damage your HRE's or your vintage SSR's, then go for these. If not, then the products at an Autozone or Walmart are good enough for majority of wheel cleaning applications. Unless you're that type of guy who just lets brake dust get caked on for years...time for a Dremel.
Rico
> signintoburnerlol
05/22/2014 at 22:09 |
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The fancy nozzle fooled me too. That being said it definitely gets the job done but I may look for something just as effective but cheaper or at least offers more for the money.
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signintoburnerlol
> Rico
05/22/2014 at 22:12 |
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It's very fancy, also quite cool to see the inner workings for the spray head. Though it's something 99% people using this that'll just glance right over it.
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Rico
> signintoburnerlol
05/23/2014 at 09:20 |
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What kind of car do you have? RS4? After your post (which I think you should share to Oppo again for the day crew) I did a little Google-fu and found that Sonax is the cheapest among the more effective wheel cleaners but something like Griot's Garage Heavy Duty Wheel Cleaner will work if you don't let brake dust cake up for months on end it just requires a little more elbow grease than Sonax which is fine.
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signintoburnerlol
> Rico
05/23/2014 at 09:31 |
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It's an RS7, i wrote an Oppo review on it about a month ago. I don't know how to bump topics so it just stays in the nether. I have yet to try Griots wheel cleaner, that's next on the list.