How To Prevent Brake Dust Buildup On Your Car's Rims

Making sure your vehicle is properly maintained during its lifespan can be frustrating at times, especially for recurring issues such as dirty wheels due to brake dust. While seemingly innocuous, if not removed, brake dust can do harm to the wheel surface. Besides the damage, it can just look bad when there are clearly areas of a vehicle that have not been cleaned.

Brake dust builds up on your wheels during normal driving. Whenever you use your brakes, the brake pads are pressing onto the rotors, which in turn slows the wheels and the vehicle as a whole. During that time when the brake pads and rotors are touching, extremely fine particles will wear off from the brake pads and can attach themselves to the wheel.

The easiest way to prevent brake dust buildup is to make sure you're using ceramic or low-dust brake pads instead of organic brake pads. Organic brake pads are typically made of carbon, Kevlar, glass, and rubber, mixed together, bonded, and pressed into a brake pad. Because of that combination of materials, organic brake pads tend to produce more brake dust than ceramic.

After the switch to ceramic pads, make sure to use protective wheel sealant on your rim. This will help stop brake dust particles from sticking. Lastly, in order to keep your rims clean of brake dust, make sure you're cleaning your rims routinely. This will help make them look clean and help prevent harm to the wheels themselves.

While the idea of cleaning brake dust off wheels can sound simple, the process can actually be slightly more complicated than you'd expect. The first step in cleaning off brake dust from your wheels is to make sure you have the right equipment, including a soft wheel brush, wheel cleaner that won't damage the clear coat, a sponge, a hose, a bucket, and some microfiber towels.

After ensuring you have all the supplies you need, be sure to let the brakes and tires cool before cleaning them. If you just finished driving back home from picking up the previous supplies, it's best to wait a bit before starting the cleaning.

You'll want to rinse the wheels with a hose to clear out any loose dust or dirt. If you need to, you can also run a wet sponge over the wheels. Next, spray each of the wheels with the wheel cleaner, making sure to follow any special directions on the bottle. From there, you'll use your soft wheel brush to scrub any hard-to-reach or particularly stubborn areas of brake dust.

After you've completed scrubbing, use a sponge to clear out the wheel wells. Once the wheel wells are clean and the dust has been scrubbed from your rims, grab the hose and spray down your wheels again. After, use your microfiber towel to clean the wheels.

By adding wheel cleaning to your routine maintenance, you can ensure your wheels will last longer, and you'll also make your car look better.