hey guys Sandra here from car craft Auto Detailing in Melbourne in today's video I'll be going through the steps products and methods I undertake when cleaning restoring and protecting car wheel arches or wells to the highest level firstly I'll say that this isn't something that is done for every job but more reserved for clients that want that extra level of the work as well as something I like to do for my own personal vehicles every year or two I will however be honest in saying that it's been well over three years since I last gave my Alfa Brera 's wheel wells a good decontamination and a new layer of protection so it should make for a good video and hopefully let you guys see the results that can be realistically achieved of something like a ten-year-old daily driver there is perhaps no other area on a vehicle that gets as much abuse from the elements as the wheel wells so giving them a good scrub down each time you wash your car is a great way of limiting the many contaminants such as mud dirt iron and car deposits from permanently bonding to the inner wheel wells however with the vehicle's wheels on you are somewhat limited in the areas you can access or effectively clean so as a yearly or even second yearly process removing the wheels to give the inner arches a thorough clean and lay down some protection is a great way of maintaining and preserving them as if more than a few years past without giving them a thorough clean and some sort of protection you will struggle to restore or remove the excess build-up that tends to bond permanently to the inner arches accelerating the deterioration there is also perhaps no other concentrated area on a vehicle with so many different materials such as a large variety of bare encoded or painted metals plastics and rubber so unlike dealing with your car paint trims or ends you need to appreciate that although these components and materials are generally quite resilient they also are quite diverse and have many varying levels of sensitivity to cleaning chemicals and techniques I've touched them my personal philosophy on detailing in past videos which is more or less about using the least aggressive method to obtain the desired results however there is no getting around that this takes a lot more time to achieve so I do understand in my methods and for everyone and for certain jobs I'm not always able to do things exactly as I'd like simply for the fact that the time equals cost and I do try to work with people's budgets and this to a point where it doesn't entirely compromise my philosophy and level of work so what I found works best for me is attacking the inner wheel wells with certain stages of somewhat mould cleaning and there contamination bit by bit that begins to break down the many layers of grime rather than hitting them with one aggressive stage of cleaning the can cause additional damage from the dirt mud car and brake metal shavings all abrading the finish or overly strong chemicals stripping the material surface but as with all aspects of detailing a vehicle knowing when to stop and accept that this is as far as you can go without compromising the paint or surface is just as important as trying to achieve the perfect finish so with the wheel wells in particular trying to get them 100% perfect in general it's quite unrealistic unless the car is a trailing showpiece my goal with my ten-year-old Brera with over 100,000 kilometres on the road is to realistically get the inner wheel arches looking about 80 to 90 percent perfect and I know they're given enough time and work I can achieve this without further damaging the finish so after the rim has been removed I start by giving the area a good pre-soak with an all-purpose cleaner or degrees are to begin breaking down the top layer of dirt and grime usually my product of choice is McGuire super degreaser and a 1/2 for water dilution but I've been trialing Optimum's power clean or purpose cleaner the last month or so with good results however I found that it really does need to be used undiluted for exterior use which does make it quite a bit more expensive than the Maguire's but just a touch on the greases and all-purpose cleaners in general there is a lot of difference in strength and safety of them in relation to not damaging the surface overall your car cleaning specific the greases tend to be a lot more mild and safe on most car surfaces compared to the general household detergents and all-purpose cleaners even more so when you compare them to the more mechanic based era sold the greases the really do strip and sometimes harm the surface so once the product has had a few minutes to work I then give the inner wheel wells a good thorough pressure rinse to blast off as much of that grime as possible you can start with the pressure washer first but the water will further dilute the chemical strength so it may be best to allow it to somewhat dry before applying your chemical personally I found that the torna door is one of the greatest tools are cleaning wheel wells it's the action of the strong air pressure together with the chemical injection that works so well and not only loosening and dislodging the grime but also doing it in a safe non physical contact manner that preserves the integrity of the surfaces a steamer is another great option that I have and do use as well but overall the Toronado is perhaps a little quicker with the added bonus of dispersing more of the APC to continue breaking down the contaminants as you work so at this stage I've removed the majority of the grime without actually making any direct contact with the surfaces which is ideal in limiting the abrading and scratching once I do make contact with the surfaces one thing I'll also mention is that you don't want any chemicals drying on the surfaces so reapplying them or rinsing them down is vital to prevent staining and streaking on the finish as you can hopefully see the area is already looking much cleaner but the heavier bonded grime is going to require some physical scrubbing to achieve a better result so a selection of brushes is needed to physically access and remove more of that grime I've filled the wash bucket with water detergent and some all-purpose cleaner with a grit guard in the bottom and with the use of specific brushes and another application of all-purpose cleaner I'm basically going to go over each area and component to try and remove the next layer of grime this is then followed up by another blast with the tornado which is going to further help dislodge and loosen more of that gunk that the brushes didn't fully remove once again I give the entire wheel well a thorough pressure rinse to remove both the loosened grime and the cleaner to get ready for applying a tire and iron remover the area is given a couple of minutes to let the majority of the water run out as I don't want to apply this chemical on a very wet surface as it will reduce its effectiveness I'm using car pro tricks which is a combination of tar and iron deposit removers but you can also use separate tar and iron removal products if you wish I apply a nice even coat to the whole area and give it about five minutes or so to do its magic of dissolving both iron entire particles the reason I use this product after I've thoroughly cleaned the area is that it now only needs to treat the more stubborn on the contaminants whereas if I use that at the beginning it would have to fight through the lesser grime in order to reach the stronger grime so its effectiveness would be largely reduced after about five minutes of letting tricks do its job I give the area another quick coat of the product and then use a microfiber cloth to work for tire and iron remover in a little further spread it and wipe it around to aid increasing its overall effectiveness I allow it to sit for a couple more minutes and then the wheel well is given a final thorough pressure rinse this could be the final stage if you really are just interested in cleaning the inner wheel arches but as this is quite a time-consuming job that I don't want to be doing anytime soon I'm going to be adding a durable protective coating that should last a good year or two in the form of sequence deluxe the key to having any durable protection lasts for as long as possible starts with the proper preparation of the surface so for the inner wheel well I use the tone of those air to blow out the majority of the water and then I give the whole area a wipe down with some wax and grease remover or prep Sol this is really about making sure that there is a bare clean surface that will allow the coating to successfully bond and last and although you can usually achieve this with an alcohol-based IPA cleaner on most areas the wheel wells are just such a badly contaminated area that really is a good idea to use something just a little more capable of prepping the surface I then go on to give the whole area an IPA wipe down using car pro eraser as I want to ensure that there is no wax and grease remover residue remaining on the surface and it also makes a good final inspection to evaluate if the surface is truly clean and decontaminated as your microfiber cloth should be clean after you've done this final wipe and not picking up any more grime in which case the surface isn't ready for coating and you should continue cleaning until it is or the coating simply won't last I've gone through deluxe and sequence coatings in my previous videos the Giulietta QV video series in particular so I'll keep a brief here but basically the coding is added to a micro suede applicator and then in the most uniform manner as possible it's applied to the surface ensuring you have a full even coverage to achieve this on such intricate areas you will need to remove the micro suede cloth from the backing foam applicator to access and apply the product in those tighter spaces as I've mentioned in past videos you don't always need to wipe down de luxe when it's applied to certain plastics in particular as the wipe down is all about achieving a flat uniform finish so if the finish looks fine on these particular plastics and creams just leave it to cure and you will actually be producing a thicker layer of coating I've also mentioned in the past that I generally always add two coats - most coating jobs as it will increase the durability of the coating and really doesn't take that much more time to do however just note that the curing time for applying a second coat over the first will be slightly increased if you're not wiping or leveling down the finish you for me on this surface and on this day it took about an hour and a half to let the first coat cure so that it was ready for the second coat to be applied and it took a further three hours or so for both coats secure enough to then apply car pro reload as a top layer of protection and to seal the finish but like I said I covered this process more thoroughly in my Julieta detailing series so if you have more questions about it maybe take a look at that series first so to sum up apart from the waiting times to allow the coating to cure this process took about two hours of work for the wheel well to be complete so really a good eight hours or so is what it take to do or fall inner arches I don't know before you guys are the same but for me my cars just seem to feel and drive better when they're given a little more pampering and attention I hope this video was useful to some of you out there please like comment and subscribe to show your support thanks for watching and I'll see you in the next video you