Sonax Wheel Cleaner Review

I recently picked up a bottle of Sonax Wheel Cleaner from Phil at Detailers Domain and decided to try it on my newly purchased 2006 Dodge Ram 1500 pickup. The car was in clean shape by dealership standards but I have been working on it to bring it up to my standards Stay tuned for a more detailed writeup.

This past weekend I decided to tackle the 20 inch wheels and rims by removing them form the truck and cleaning the suspension, painting the brake calipers and hubs, and giving the wheels a serious clean up in the inner barrels. I figure it was a good test for Sonax Wheel Cleaner.

The Dodge Ram Hemi wheels are not a true chrome wheel but are a chrome glad that is more of a plastic. I was worried about using something very aggressive that might leach onto to the chrome clad portion of the wheel and stain it. As you can see in this picture the worse part of the wheel was directly behind the spokes.



The wheels were washed and then sprayed with Sonax Wheel Cleaner and let to sit for about 5 minutes while I was cleaning the suspension and brake calipers.



As you can see in this pic the Sonax is working it's magic and turns red as it reacts with the ferrous oxides.




Here is the end result. The inner spokes are just to hammered from neglect and fortunately you can't see them when they are on the truck. Fortunately the wheel barrels came out excellent. I thought of using something stronger like Megs Wheel Brightner but decided not to chance it. These wheels sell for around $800 each. Unreal considering they are not even true chrome.




End result. Polished with Mothers Power Metal and inner wheels and wheel sealed with Collonite 476.



All finished. Hubs painted silver and calipers painted black with Duplicolor Caliper Paint.

All in all I found Sonax to be an extremely effective and safe wheel cleaner

 

cool review pat. did you try spraying the sonax onto a dry wheel? i havent tried it on a wet wheel yet, as the instructions state to apply to a dry wheel. just curious if you tried both. oh and im looking forward to seeing the rest of the new truck all tidied up!

 

Bill....I didn't apply it to a dry wheel. I will have to give that try next time. Thanks for the words about the truck. It is coming along nicely. Can't wait to do a full paint correction on it. It's going to need it.

 

I wasn't all that impressed with it at first, until I realized to just apply it to the wheel dry, without a pre-spray. Boy did that make a difference.

Also, I'm sure with some agitation those spokes should look a lot better.

 

Dry wheel is a must for best results