~Get Clean Wheels with Autoglym!~
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Autoglym Clean Wheels is a car care product from the trusted and popular Autoglym range which I bought to help keep my alloy wheels clean and break dust free. I mostly use Meguiar's care care products as I find them to be of a good quality, however I decided to try this Autoglym product instead as it was recommended to me. All Autoglym products including this one come in simple white plastic product containers with the Autoglym brand name in large letters on the front, which made it easy for me to pick out the product I was looking for on the in store display stand.

The product pack contains either 500mls or 1 litre of Clean Wheels, which gave me the chance to pay a little less and opt for the smaller sized container, as I was unsure as to exactly how well the product would work at the time of purchase. The style of the product container means that it is easy to work with as you simply spray as much or as little of the cleaner onto your alloy wheels where needed. I found it best to use the product with care so as not to get any of it onto the other surfaces of the car such as the paint work, so I took a little more time when applying the product. Clean Wheels is a phosphoric acid based cleaning formula which is meant to be able to be used on chrome and painted finishes, although I have not tested this out.

I found that once I got the hang of using the trigger spray, Clean Wheels was fairly quick and easy to spray on. With this being an acidic cleaner I didn't use this on brand new alloys, as I had been told that doing so may damage the finish of them, so following this advice I only tried this product once my car was more than a year old. This product is a spray, brush and wash off cleaner that needs a short time on each alloy wheel in order to help dissolve dirt, grease, brake dust and other contaminants from alloy wheels. It has been approved for use with chrome, painted and plastic trimmed wheels although I cannot comment on how well it works with other materials I found it did a fairly good job on standard soft sheen effect silver alloy wheels when I used it.

I like to make sure that my alloy wheels look fresh and neat when the car is freshly washed and waxed but feel that there are more than purely cosmetic reasons for keeping your wheels clean. During colder weather the roads are gritted and the combination of road salt, traffic film/ spray ad brake dust are not a very healthy mix to have hanging around on a nice set of alloy wheels in my opinion. This is why I opted for Clean Wheels, as I wanted a reliable way to remove any build up from the wheels that wouldn't damage anything. It is not advisable to use Clean Wheels or any similar wheel cleaner on warm or hot wheels, so if you have been driving the car it is best to let everything cool down before applying the product, following the directions given with the product.

As I hadn't used this product before I made sure to only apply the product to one wheel at a time so that I could see exactly what was going on and allow myself plenty of time clean one wheel, then rinse off with clean water after the recommended one minute contact time. I found this was the best way to make sure that I was able to keep an eye on the progress of the product. I took care when applying the spray, left it for just under a minute then brushed around the alloys with a small tyre and wheel trim brush. Even though I used the product sparingly I still found that it dripped downwards towards the bottom of the car tyres upon application, which in my opinion is almost unavoidable when using these types of products.

I found that the cleaner worked as it should to help remove any build up on the main body of the wheels as well as in the edges and corners of the alloy wheel design, leaving them looking quite clean and fresh. The cleaner removed loose brake dust as well as general road dirt and spray which I was pleased about. Any baked on stains are harder to remove and may take more than one careful application of the product to fully disappear. I find it is best to clean alloys before they get to the baked on grime stage as this makes a general clean much quicker and easier to carry out.


~Product rating/ price~
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The cost of this product varies depending on the bottle size with the 500ml being available from £6.99. Prices are around £11.50 for a larger 1 litre sized bottle that will last twice as long. The larger size does offer best value although I would recommend buying a smaller bottle initially just to make sure that the product suits your requirements and is compatible with the materials used to make the car wheels you want to clean. I found that the product was easy to apply and remove which is why I feel it deserves a 4 star product rating.