Thanks. Just bought a local pepper white 2006 R53 from the original owner with only 43K miles on it. Overall the car is in great shape and runs well. The R84 V-Spoke wheels need some serious elbow grease to get back into presentable shape. Major brake dust stains. Also need to address light surface rust on the passenger side door sill and tiny bit under the rear tail light. Let me know if anyone else has wheels they'd like to sell.
I have a few tips to clean your really dirty wheels. First take them off the car so they are easier to clean and work on. Spray them off with soap and water to remove the easy top crud. Next soak one wheel at a time with something like Simple Green or Miguires all purpose cleaner and scrub them with a basic blue SOS sponge with the ligher blue scratch-less pad on one side. You can buy the SOS sponges at any supermarket in the dish soap isle. Now for the deep burn it iron crud you will need a chemical that can extract it. For this I use Dodo Juice Ferrous Dueller Iron Remover which is an acid-free cleaner. You can buy it here. Dodo Juice Ferrous Dueller Iron Remover, paint decontamination I like this product best and have tried everything because I am OCD about my car and rims being clean. Also because it works very well and does not have that rancid smell like Sonex wheel cleaner. I spray down the inner barrel of the rim first and scrub it with the SOS pad first and let it sit until it turns very dark purple from neon lime green. ( 5-10 Min.) Then I rinse it down and if I missed a few spots I do the juice process again. Once the inner barrel is clean then I follow the same process for the front of the rim one wheel at a time then rise very well after each wheel is cleaned and let them air dry. After all 4 are clean I coat them down, Inner barrel and front face with Rain-X again one wheel at a time. Rain-X make it harder for tar, brake dust also iron from your rotors to stick to your rims. After that step I seal the wheel with a chemical paint sealant. I use Blackfire wet diamond paint sealant because it bonds very well with Rain-X. Blackfire WD link BLACKFIRE Wet Diamond All Finish Paint Protection, paint sealant, synthetic sealant, blackfire sealant I do not use wheel wax or any wax on rims because it dose not hold up to the heat or temps your wheels sees. Also wax really only protects from UV and it holds other contaminants where good sealants do not allow them to bond at all. After all this is done your wheel cleaning for the next year should only require soap and water and a little brush to get to get behind the spokes to keep the inside barrels clean. Hope that helps you out and saves you some time and money on wheel cleaning products.
You know you can go to MAG MINI and have them take care of the rust for free! I had rust on my 04 R50 and It took a week for MAG to get the OK but they had me go to Pristine auto body and it looks great! They even did the rust on my door which was from user error around German Village. The curbs are so tall that I can never get my passenger side door open.
Nice to meet a fellow detailing nut! Great ideas. Here is what I did last weekend. I didn't have a lot of time but I took one wheel off. Cleaned it with Optimum Power Clean. There was still lots of baked on brake dust left over. I then sprayed it down with Iron-X spray. This stuff works wonders! Smells absolutely horrible but man does it work. Let it sit about 5 minutes then scrubbed. This got rid of 95% of it. There is still a bit of staining in some corners. I've ordered some Iron-X paste to try on those spots. It is supposed to stay put to really dissolve the bad spots (the spray is watery). I also experimented a bit with rubbing compound. It works but is slower and requires more effort. I also needed to order some Tarminator to get rid of a lot of little tar specks on the inner barrels.
I've been debating taking the car to MAG vs just fixing it myself. My worry is I'm not the original owner and I've read that you are supposed to have the car inspected every 2 years for the rust warranty to be honored. Also what incentive does MAG have to help me since I didn't buy the car there. I've attached a few photos of the drivers side tail light and the passenger side door sill. I need to check the other tail light and probably should remove the chrome boot handle thing to check under there as I've read that is another common spot for rust. As you can see in the photos the rust is not bad. Is this enough that MAG / MINI would approve a fix? Can you tell me a little bit more about your experience getting the rust fixed? Where was it? How bad? Who is Pristine Auto Body?
Nope, as long as it has not been painted or a previous repair BMW will fix it under warranty. But hurry time will run out.
Iron-X is good stuff but like you found out it smells horrible. That why I switched to Dodo Juice because it does the same thing but does not smell horrible. For stuck on tar and stains I just use lacquer thinner. I just put it on a towel and rub it lightly and quickly and its gone. You don't need to press hard and remove the paint just enough to remove the tar. I do this when I be badge others cars to remove the glue before I wool polish and buff the car before I wax it.
I am still the D in OCD. I like detailing my car because it's relaxing and you can unwind and think while working. The best part is the car never talks back.
I emailed the service manager at MAG yesterday with several photos showing the rust areas. He replied back this morning that he forwarded it on to the MINI area manager. He's going to contact me once he hears back from MINI.
Well after nearly 3 months of delaying an "inspection" and making me drive to 2 body shops for estimates MAG came back and said MINI denied coverage. Once they could finally get me in for the "inspection" all they did was take photos and send them to MINI. I sent them detailed photos when I first made contact with them back in April. They could have just sent them in then or told me they were not going to help me get coverage. Instead they had me waste several hours on this and dragged it out for nearly 3 months. Wonderful customer service at MAG! :mad2: