I have had torq thrust 2's on my car for almost 6 months now and the quality i feel is very poor. it looks as if the aluminum is oxidizing. it has got a whole bunch of white spots on them that i can not get off with the 3 wheel cleaners i have. am i an idiot or is this a common issue with these?

 

polished alum. is a metal that is gonna take a lot of care to upkeep to have that shine you want... i am guessing that you are just cleaning them with like armor all wheel cleaner or something like that, and my best advice to give you is- just clean them with the same soap that you use when you wash your car, and when you are done and either let them dry on their own or chamois them to take a mag and alum. polish and go to town... polished aluminum is a bitch to clean, but when its clean you cant beat the shine... but i spent about 5 hours polishing my wheels a couple weeks ago and im about ready to take them off and put the stockers back on to do a really good cleaning with them off, but they look pretty good right now besides the fact that we've had like 12'' of rain in the past week... but i have found that mothers billet polish works very well but is very expensive (like $14 for a small can), and also i just used something called hot rims by meguiars (like $7 for a big can)... it worked really well also... but just spraying them with a cleaner every time you wash wont cut it with polished aluminum... and i did all of mine by hand firstto make sure that i got a good shine to them, wiped all the residue off, and then went back over them a couple times with one of those mothers mini ***** with the mothers billet polish again... but i would recommend not trying to take the easy way out and trying to mother ball them because that is a finishing product, not a do it all tool if ya know what i mean...

make sure you have a bunch of old rags to do this though because you will dirty them quickly and the polish starts to get really hard to take off when the rag keeps getting caked with it... i used one rag to put the polish on, quite a few to take the majority of the polish off, and then one more rag to go back over the wheel after i got most of the polish off to make sure it was all off...

also, you may try to use some of that eagle one never dull wadding polish, but i tried on mine that were all kinds of messed up (my friend thought that bleache white was a wheel cleaner, and bleache white + uncoated polished alum. is a disaster)...

but good luck tryin to get them clean!

 

Chances are that something has gotten on the wheel that doesn't agree with the finish. IMO, you should never use a wheel cleaner on them. I used to always use soap & water or sometimes glass cleaner on my TT2s then put a layer of Zaino polish on them and I never had a problem with them. I'd never put something on my wheels that I wouldn't put on my paint.

It's not the quality of the wheel that's the problem.

 

After a darn good cleaning are we able to get them clear coated or anything to help prevent this?

 

well i have heard of people doing it, but i dont think i would... just for the fact that if they arent completely spotless and flawless and i would put clear on them that the imperfections would be there for as long as the clear lasts... but i do know a lot of people use something called zoop seal or zoops seal or somethin like that... and its supposedly a sealant that would sorta act as a clear coat that keeps the wheels very clean for like 6 months at a time and basically after ya put it on all ya have to do is spray your wheels off and they look good as new... but i dunno about the clear coating... and i think that zoop seal is like $100 for a little bottle or somethin like that...basically this whole deal is the downside to having polished aluminum, but once they are clean you cant beat the shine

and yeah, i wouldnt use anything to clean my wheels that wouldnt be safe on my car's paint... i would just stick to the old soap and water for cleaning them

but yeah do a search for zoop seal... its all over on here and from what i hear it does wonders

 

anyone else have input?

 

+1 on Mother's Billet polish

 

yeah def. just take a day out to work on them... and mothers billet polish is expensive, but when i have to do it again i will def. buy another can... but just use some elbow grease and go to town on them and they will look like new... and basically after you do it and make them look all nice and shiny make sure to keep them clean... wash them off like every day or two and they should stay in good shape for a while... or if you want you could buy that zoopseal and not even have to worry about washing them but like every time you wash your car just spray them down... but elbow grease and a little bit of hard work is gonna be the only way of cleaning them up id say... or ill trade ya my cleaned up eagle alloys for your tt2's and we'll call it a day haha

 

My girlfriend loves to clean up/detail cars - so one day she decided she was going to clean up the camaro that I just put brand new TT2's on less than a month earlier. I never gave it a thought. Well, long story short - she used Westleys Bleach White to clean the tires as she always does on her CTS and the pickup. She sprayed all four tires/wheels - then went back and cleaned them and rinsed them off. She got done with the car, I moved it and let it dry off. About an hour later, I went over and was checking out how awesome it looked and saw something on the wheels - it kind of looked like the afterspray after putting the tire shine on. I went to wipe it off - negative, it wouldn't come off! After inspection - anywhere the Bleach White ran down the rim or splattered on the rim - was white.
I was a little disappointed, but it's just a set of wheels - but she was SICK over it. She offered to buy new wheels, take them to get professionally cleaned, etc etc etc. I told her to calm down, we'd polish them up and see how that looked first. I ended up using a Mothers mini-powerball and mothers polishing compound and everything polished back up just fine. If you look REALLY REALLY close, you can still see a little bit of oxidation or whatever it is - but I'm guessing with another good polishing session, that will be gone too.

No more Westley's Bleach White.....

 

Those are water spots.To prevent that, don't let them air dry.Dry them off with a chamois or something. I usually blow them off with compressed air. You also have to keep a good wax on them.But the up side with polished aluminum is you can always polish out most of the problems.