As many of you probably know, the Westley's Bleach White product that was great for many years no longer is as the formula has been changed. The product now seems to be worthless. Does anyone have a go to product for cleaning white walls and getting them bright white? I have tried just about everything and nothing seems to work anymore.
I use Brakleen when cleaning my Whitewalls.
I spray the Brakleen onto a clean piece of cloth, and only wipe the actual white portion, in a circumferential pattern, making sure that I don't touch the black of the tyre.
Touch the black, and it will mark the white when going back to the white.
Bruce. >:D
I still use Bleech White and it still works well. I am going to try adding just a little bit of real bleach to boost the cleaning power and see what happens.
Spray Nine is also a great cleaner and sometimes you can use a Brillo pad along with any of these cleaners.
Brake Kleen is carbon tetrachloride which is cleaning fluid like what dry cleaners use. It's solvent based, like lacquer thinner and in my opinion a little too strong for whitewalls. You don't want to eat into the white rubber and damage the surface. I fairly fine scrubbing pad or nylon bristle brush with the Bleech White should work well.
Does anyone know what they took out of Bleech White?
Brian
Brillo pads.
Regards,
Matt CLC#18621
Just as a "caution" I would not recommend adding
"real bleach" AKA Clorox or a generic version thereof.
Despite the name, Bleche-Wite does not contain chlorine
bleach. Chlorine is actually bad news for rubber products
and causes cracking and loss of elasticity.
Bleche-Wite did contain a very strong detergent (sodium
metasilicate) that safely cleaned the white wall. However,
since this is a strong eye irritatant, the product was
reformulated and the amount of this item was reduced
or eliminated.
Simple Green works well by itself or with a Brillo / SOS
pad if your whitewalls are badly stained.
Mike
For those that don't think westleys works anymore I'm curious if you let it freeze? I had some that seemed to work fine last year. A few days ago I grabbed it off the shelf and tried to use it on the same car as last year and it didn't seem to work as good. Should be the same 'dirt' and everything as last year, new brake pads were 3 years ago and tires 4. Only change I can think of is I'm sure it froze in the garage over the winter.
FWIW, Diamond Back Classic only approves of soap and water with a gentle brush on their white walls.
The use of Simple Green with a scrubby sponge is authorized for tougher stains.
\m/
Laurie
I use diluted Simple Green on a rag or sponge, with a green scotch-brite pad on the tough spots.
Quote from: 76eldo on June 18, 2019, 10:10:05 PM
Brake Kleen is carbon tetrachloride which is cleaning fluid like what dry cleaners use. It's solvent based, like lacquer thinner and in my opinion a little too strong for whitewalls. You don't want to eat into the white rubber and damage the surface. ..... Brian
The number of times I clean my whitewalls, I am never going to have a problem with damaging the surface. They might get cleaned three times in any one year.
Bruce. >:D
PS. I hate having to clean whitewalls, but I must admit that my Elo does look good with the 1" whitewalls.
I’ll echo Matt’s suggestion in naming Brillo pads for cleaning white walls. With a little elbow grease they work just fine.
TJ may be onto something. I have DB's on my car and just last week bought a new bottle of Westley's. It works like it always did for me. I make sure I spray it on a dry tire, hit it lightly with a plastic bristle scrub brush and rinse it off. With 4 wheel disc brakes, and the humidity here, they get dingy looking in a hurry.
Quote from: Cape Cod Fleetwood on June 18, 2019, 11:22:12 PM
FWIW, Diamond Back Classic only approves of soap and water with a gentle brush on their white walls.
The use of Simple Green with a scrubby sponge is authorized for tougher stains.
\m/
Laurie
Thanks, I guess that gallon jug of Simple Green I bought will have more uses now.
Quote from: Big Fins on June 19, 2019, 06:50:57 AM
TJ may be onto something. I have DB's on my car and just last week bought a new bottle of Westley's. It works like it always did for me. I make sure I spray it on a dry tire, hit it lightly with a plastic bristle scrub brush and rinse it off. With 4 wheel disc brakes, and the humidity here, they get dingy looking in a hurry.
Diamond Back discourages the use of that product on their tires. YMMV.
\m/
Laurie
"SPRAY NINE" is the best cleaner of them all by far including for seat belts too, in my opinion!. EAM
Diamond Back discourages the use of everything. I've been using Westley's for many, many years with no bad results.
I used the Spray Nine only once on the tires, because I didn't have any Westley's. Same result. Perfectly bright white sidewalls.
I use Scrubbing Bubbles.
Shake it but don't break it, cause... you know who is barely even around anymore. Spray it on, let it work, wipe & rinse. Only use something stronger if marked or stained. Take longer to get the skirts off than anything.
Well all my current rides including 2001 ETC all have black walls.
Currently, when I clean the ETC’s black walls and chrome wheels, I spray Lysol bathroom foam cleaner (same as scrubbing bubbles) and use a heavy duty scrub brush on the Michelin’s walls before dressing the tyres.
When I had my 67 Fleetwood Eldorado and 78 Power T-Top Biarritz, I would spray with bathroom foam cleaner ($2.49) on tyres and either use Brillo or SOS pads ($1.99).
Consistent with the Eldorado’s leather interiors, I dressed my wheels with Pledge orange furniture polish ($3.49) which smells great and lasted just as long or longer than Armor All. Also, the Pledge sticks much better and does not fly off the wheels like the Armor All et al. products.
Best regards,
Matt CLC#18621
Since the product line was bought by Black Magic, about all I notice is you can not get the gallon refill jugs anymore. They make you pay more for a spray bottle. I guess to make the merger pay. I've used it over 50 years, and don't see much difference. A repeat spray, if needed, but if you stay on top each wash, no issue. It is quite irritating if you inhale the overspray. Avoid eye contact. I use a spray head that can be adjusted to coarse/stream for what I'm spraying. i bought a dozen or so online as reusing the home use ones don't last.
You can get a 55 gallon drum of sodium metasilicate soap grade fairly cheap from a chemical supply house and dilute your own. But who uses that much? If you want it blue, add a little bluing. Bluing promotes optical whiteness by cancelling out yellow.
I bought a bunch from a door to door peddler as a clean "all", a few years ago, and still have a supply. It's colorless/undyed and works the same.
PS: SAFETY WARNING: Be careful if you add bleach to anything. You're just lucky this is a basic material. If you add bleach - 5% sodium hypochlorite, to acid, it will instantly liberate chlorine gas. Many janitorial workers have been injured or killed mixing bleach with cleaners.
pps;We used to use brillo on scuffed WWs back in the day. Also "cleans" chrome that's pitted/rusty.
NIH study on inhalation attached.
For the Aussies, use Joel's White Wall Cleaner..... easy to use, looks great.
Available from Parry Road Performance in Brisbane.
I have always used Simple green for years but was advised by the manufacturer of my WW’s to never use Simple Green because it contains saline, and saline damages the WW. Reason being is because I have cracks in my WW’s and I would always use Simple Green which works great BTW, but the saline causes premature cracks and ruins them.
They told me plain dawn dish soap, water and a scrub brush will prevent cracking.
Just as a side note... some of the newer wide whitewalls aren't the same rubber as the old ones. I have a set on my motorcycle that are more plastic-like than the old rubber ones used to be (China made, of course) and the old style cleaners don't seem to work at all.
I was wondering if there were difference in white walls. Say Cooker vs Diamondback vs Hankook?
I use 409 and a scrub pad and have done so for many years without incident. It doesn't seem to dry out the rubber. I believe that Coker or Diamondback had advised me to use the 409 a long time ago, but my memory may be off on this point...
I use "Mr. Clean" Magic Eraser pads. Wet the tire and pad, scrub and rinse. Works very well on my Hankook tires. Hugh Dean
PS: SAFETY WARNING:" Be careful if you add bleach to anything. You're just lucky this is a basic material. If you add bleach - 5% sodium hypochlorite, to acid, it will instantly liberate chlorine gas. Many janitorial workers have been injured or killed mixing bleach with cleaners." quote: Fishinjim.
How true!
Back when I was a kid at age 64....I decided to really clean the floor of my aircraft hangar. So I mixed up a concoction of bleach, ammonia, simple green, Pinesol and everything else I could think of that would "clean".
With the hangar doors wide open and a gentle breeze flowing through..... I began to wash and scrub. Within a couple of minutes I darned near died. Gasping for breath and running to fresh air....I vomited, wheezed, coughed and doubled over. After 4 or 5 minutes I recovered.
The last time I had experienced anything like that was in the Army when they put us in a closed room....turned on the "gas' and made us inhale a few breaths. That was shear panic in 1969.
The part of my floor that I scrubbed was really clean.
What a dumb A**
Bob R.
Bleach and ammonia is a particularly toxic combination. Unfortunately it sounds like (and may be) a great cleaner, but it creates chlorine gas. Lots of incidents where people combine these in an enclosed space (i.e., cleaning a toilet) with very bad results.
Yep -- chlorine gas will kill you.
It was used in WW I along with other lethal gasses.
Chlorine gas is heavier than air, so for trench warfare
it was ideal since it sank right into the trenches.
Mike
Is that the same stuff you get when brake clean goes through a flame?
It is a different chemical vs. chlorine gas but the end
result is the same when people are exposed to it.
The older type brake cleaners the so called "chlorinated"
ones contained methylene chloride. It is a very hazardous
chemical. It is also a component in paint removers.
It has been eliminated from most products by now. If
methylene chloride is sprayed into an open flame it
converts mainly to two other chemicals: phosgene and
hydrochloric acid. Phosgene is a highly toxic gas that
was unfortunately also used in WW I and accounted for
about 75% of all gas deaths. It causes fluid to
accumulate in the lungs and death by suffocation.
Mike
Also, methylene chloride is metabolized to carbon monoxide in the body, and we all know what the end result of that is! Many deaths have been caused by using it as a paint stripper in a closed space.
Shout degreaser with the orange cap works great.
I also used AJAX cleanser and a stiff "scrub" brush for many years. Not as effective as the bleche white in my opinion but all we had growing up. I think the bluing and bleach in the cleanser helped make them white. Bias tires didn't last all that long(20-30K miles), like they do now >40k, so I don't think cleaners were a factor in tire life like it is now.
ps: synthetic rubbers have changed too. The original "gum" rubber(white) was derived from rubber tree sap (latex). Real early tires were all white. Carbon black makes it black and was crosslinked (Goodyear aka vulcanized) with sulfur to make tires.
Today the "rubber" comes from a variety of sources and each layer has a different composition. Butyl rubber(poly BD) comes from butadiene(BD), neoprene(from chloroprene), etc. There are different polymers and chemicals used to make the layers have different properties like bond to the cords/belts and be more or less "tacky" for wet grip, impact, cold flow, etc. A whole supply industry surrounds tires. We sold polymers into the tire market.
Advice by my wife was to use regular Cif. It works quite well.
For Diamondback and Coker's I recommend only a mild soap & water and elbow grease (scrubbing)....
for everything else a product available at Wal-Mart in a purple bottle called "Super Clean" does pretty well. The sad reality is that white walls being made to day are rarer and rarer.. THUS the production runs are shorter and shorter..so the product made gets alot of the "mold" release grease imbedded in the white wall.. as that bleaches out over time it stains the tires tan/brown.
SureTrac Power touring which looks best on 70's Cadillacs (matches the original mid to late 70's 1.5" whitewall the best) are prone to needing cleaned the first year VERY often.. at least every month. After a year or so of cleanings they do stay white. (I have several sets on many of my cars).
Cooper Trendsetters require just an occasional cleaning with "Super Clean" in the purple bottle..they do tend to stay clean pretty easily.
The worst tire I've had problems with is the Venezia brand.....just awful..they turn tan no matter what you clean them with. I've tried oven cleaner, Super Clean, and as a last resort a PUMICE stone alternating with a BRILLO pad... they will clean up to a mild cream (Venezia) but it is a chore.
There are products sold for white wall cleaning that require the tire to be unmounted and left directly in the sun for days but that is just too much work for me. LOL good luck!
I've used Simple Green on my whitewalls for five years now, and have seen no cracks in the whitewalls. My impression is that Simple Green is not caustic. It is safe on the rubber and on the wheel covers. But more time may prove me wrong...
John Emerson
Hi,
I use also simple green, and if they are pretty dirty after a long trip I use glass cleaner and a green sponge. Never had any issues, they are bright as they have to be.
Greetings, Richard
For us in Europe some of these products that are mentioned are not available.
I had a go this morning with first a magic sponge where you only add water. It was cleaning them but sponge fell to bits ! was only $1 for 4 so no great loss.
2nd, I used Cif outdoor cleaner cream, for use on plastics aluminium and so forth , not the bathroom type, which may still be ok ! Anyhoo, put some on one of those pot scourers, sponge and course layer type. Went round and round a few times course side then sponge to wash it off with water. Result ! removed lots of yellowing, oily looking stuff and I'd say they are probably back to as new.
$2 for pack of 8 sponges, only used 1, and a bottle of the Cif which will last for years ! Might be called Jif in USA which it was here years ago.
Seen WW cleaner at $25 and can't believe it would have worked any better.