Rust on My Cars Aluminum Rims Where Its From and How To Clean It Off

I don't know, this doesn't look like it's dirt. Almost looks like rust. Why would there be rust on my aluminum wheel? Let's try this. Oh wow. Yeah, that's coming right up. That's definitely rust. Great.

Hey friends, it's Len here from 1A Auto. So I was walking around my vehicle earlier and I noticed that one of my rims is discolored. I tried to bring it down with some water and it didn't come off. Let's figure it out. Now, obviously, aluminum doesn't rust, it just doesn't. Steel would rust. But these are aluminum wheels. I tried to stick a magnet to it, nothing. Shouldn't have rust on it, but this one does. Let's get behind it to figure out what's going on.

Now, behind the wheel, you're typically going to have a steel rotor or a brake drum of some sort, but they're almost always going to be steel. You can go ahead and stick a magnet right to it, and it's going to hold right on there. Of course, steel is going to rust. Moisture sits on it, especially if you're not driving the truck around or your vehicle around very much. It's going to just accumulate on there, and it's going to cause a lot of rust on the rotor. Other than that, you also have brake pads, or even brake shoes. A lot of times, brake pads are going to have different types of materials in them. Sometimes you'll have a ceramic pad, sometimes you might have a semi-metallic pad, or even you might even just have a metallic pad. The metallic pads are typically going to have a lot of chunks of metal inside of them. They're going to last a little bit longer, they're going to be a little bit noisy, and of course, the brake dust that comes from them is going to have a lot of metal in it.

So as you're driving down the road, especially if you happen to step on the brakes, the pads are going to be hitting right up against your rotor. That's gonna, of course, grind down some of that material on the pad, and of course, a little bit on the rotor. You might not even see that though, to be honest. Overall, though, typically, what it's gonna come down to is the pad material itself. So every time you brake, a little bit of friction is going to, of course, wipe off some of that material and it's going to dissipate. It's going to go flying around all over the place because of the air that's getting circulated. So here's a look at a semi-metallic pad right here. As you can tell, while I wiggle it around, you can see a whole bunch of light reflecting off of the inner pad here. That's, of course, because of all the metal flakes inside there. That's going to help with heat dissipation, and of course, it's going to make sure that the pads last a little bit longer. You could of course get some ceramic pads. Looking at this one, you can see that there's no reflection from the light on this one. I can go ahead and take a magnet, it doesn't stick at all. I can stick it right to this pad though, easy-peasy.

Now there are a couple other types of pads that have different types of materials in them, such as glass, fiber, rubber, or even Kevlar. Those are a little less common. Most commonly in cars, you're gonna find semi-metallic or even ceramic. So that's pretty much what we're going to talk about right now. Now let's talk about what could happen behind your caliper here. I'm just going to go ahead and slide this right off. And we can look right here and we find our caliper piston. Now this is the muscle of your brakes. Essentially, every time you step on the brake pedal, it's going to force fluid down through your flex hose, and then go ahead and force it out through this piston right here. It's gonna go ahead and try to press this together. When you do that, it's going to press on the pads, cause friction, and of course, the friction is what's going to make you stop. Now with these pistons right here, what can commonly happen is they get seized up. If the boot rots or breaks like this one right here, there's always the possibility moisture can make its way in there. And if that happens, it might just seize up. By seizing up, I mean you can try to push this in and you can press with all your might with whatever type of tool you want to use, and it just will never go in. Also for your caliper, you're going to have a couple of sliders. And these are very important because every time that caliper is going to be squeezing and then releasing, squeezing and releasing, these are going to be moving as well. If for some reason one of them is frozen inside like this, your caliper goes ahead and tries to release, but it won't. The pads are still holding on to the rotor. That's going to cause excessive friction, and of course, more heat. As this is happening, a lot of that friction material or pad material is going to get sprayed out all inside your wheel and inside the wheel well here and it's going to accumulate somewhere.

Now your brake pads are supposed to be able to move around inside your bracket very freely. This one right here isn't moving at all. This one, I can move around a little bit, so it's fair. But this one right here can cause a big issue because like I said before, I step on the brake, the caliper squeezes this. Soon as I release, the caliper releases a little bit and it's supposed to release the rotor. When that happens, if this pad is stuck on there like I said before, it's gonna cause constant friction and it's gonna cause an issue. If this happens for an extended period of time, it's gonna keep wearing that power away. Your brakes are under a tremendous amount of pressure every time you step on that brake pedal. So of course, the pad might not be able to move out and away from the rotor on its own. But with all that pressure that's coming from your caliper, it's going to get pressed right up against the rotor. Now when this happens, if the pad's stuck inside the bracket and it can't release like I said, it's going to cause the friction, it's going to cause the heat, it's also going to cause the dust. Other than that, if you have some 10s like this that come across your brake caliper bracket, obviously if that's hitting up against the rotor, it's gonna cause an issue. Your backing plate right here, this one hitting up against the rotor gonna cause an issue as well. More than likely with these two things, you're probably going to hear a loud squealing noise, so it's going to tell you to kind of pull over and make sure everything's safe. But with the other stuff such as maybe the pad being stuck in the bracket or something else, commonly, you're really not going to probably feel anything except for maybe a little bit of a brake pull, especially if it's in the front where, of course, you'll start feeling it in the steering wheel.

And lastly, you definitely want to remember that your rotor is going to be made out of steel. Steel, of course, with moisture sitting on it for a long period of time is going to rust. Your pads, if you have semi-metallic, that also has the little metal flakes inside there. So if I was to leave this in a nice puddle of water for a little while, I'm gonna see a whole bunch of little brown flakes all over it. And that's just the rust that's starting to pile up. Now, if I park this out in the parking lot for a while, because maybe I have a couple cars, or maybe this one just isn't really my favorite, is more of like an off-roader or whatever the case may be, of course, as soon as I get in it and I start driving, when you go to step on that brake, more than likely, you're going to hear like a...noise. That's going to be coming from the pads rubbing up against that rotor, especially if you have a lot of brake rod on it. So if I look along this one, I can see that I have a little bit of rust coming across here. I'm more likely going to get some noise from looking at all these lines. I'll definitely have a pulsation. But anyways, I'll definitely have some noise coming from that, and of course, if I had it on the pads as well. Like I said before, semi-metallic pads, or even the metal from the rotor here getting splayed all around and then of course left on the wheels for an extended period of time, especially in a humid type situation, you're going to end up getting rust that comes out on your wheels, even if you have aluminum wheels. Oh, and if you're one of those people that likes to go a little bit long on replacing your brakes, especially after you get the little warning indicator, the little squeal noise, that you start getting a little...and it just gradually gets louder and louder. And maybe you'll get to it someday. Well, of course, that's going to cause all that dust. And of course, metal particles to get shot up into the air here and that's going to all accumulate on your rims as well.

Now I got to tell you, there's a big difference between leaving a little bit of brake dust on your wheels maybe after you go for a nice drive and you just don't feel like cleaning it down at the end of the day, or of course, leaving metal particles on your wheels. Now if your wheel looks like this, you're gonna try pretty much anything to try to get it off. You might try some household things. You got a little glass cleaner and maybe a degreaser, some parts cleaner. You could try any of these and they might get some of it off. So what I did here is I went ahead and sprayed this down with some penetrant. Over here, I used a little bit of glass cleaner, I wanted to see if that would work. Degreaser, right here I used brake cleaner because well, why not, of course. And of course some wipes right here, some disinfectant wipes. Those probably aren't gonna do anything, but I figured I'd give it a try. Now the next thing I want to do is use something that looks like this. It's a little rough, it's not necessarily going to scratch up the rims, but this one's from the kitchen, and I don't want to get in any trouble. So I'm gonna set that aside, and I'm just gonna go ahead and use a couple of rags here. Let's try the penetrant first. You know, I don't know, I think I see a little something there.

I bet you if I tried that a couple times, especially if I had the sponge, that might work. I wouldn't say that it's the best. I'm not going to win any car shows. But I'd say it's fairly decent. Let's swap out the rag and try this one over here. Now this one's the glass cleaner. I'm gonna go ahead and wipe it down. Wow. Okay. I like it. Len likes. Okay, so that looks pretty great right there. I guess I would probably go ahead and do the whole rest of the rim like that. But let's just keep moving along. I'm gonna move along to the degreaser right here. Oh, here we go. Come on. You've got to really put some elbow grease into it. Get your game face on. Not bad. Look at me. Moving along, we've got our parts cleaner or brake cleaner. Considering it's a mess from the brakes, come on. Nope. Okay, moving along to where I use the disinfectant wipe. I don't feel like this is doing much of anything. I can still feel the grip. Oh, yeah, I got a little bit of it. Let's go ahead and hit it with some degreaser and see if that works. Maybe this stuff is just adhered on there a little bit better. It's looking a little better. I bet you if I let that soak for a little bit and use the back of that sponge, get myself in a little trouble, probably come right off of there. Now I went into the deep dark crevices here. I wanted to try to get out the gunk. I went ahead and used the degreaser right along this area. As you can tell, that's really thick right there. Over here, we use the glass cleaner again. I want to see which one's going to work a little better here. Let's try to get this off of here. Well, I don't know if it's because I can't get a good grip inside there. I'm definitely getting off a lot of the gunk here but it's very thick. That was the degreaser. Let's move along to where the glass cleaner was. Once again, it's fair, but I wouldn't say it's great.

So let's get these out of the way. And people are more likely to try something that looks a little bit like this. You've got a nice brush, you're gonna go ahead and try to rub it right on your wheel right there. Of course, that's going to cause some mental issues itself. It's going to scuff up the coating that's supposed to be on the wheel and supposed to protect it. Something like this, I would consider. Well, not the last resort at all, it's not a good resort at all. Something like this is more for like grinding down metal if you're dealing with brakes or something the like. The way that I would go about fixing this would be break down the wheel. Essentially, I want to take the tire right off of it. After that, I'm going to gently sand everything down so it's nice and smooth, no color on it, of course. And then I'm going to recoat it with something that I like. But on a truck like this, I'm really not that worried about it.

Okay, friends, so that's pretty much what I've got for you. If you happen to see that there's rust on aluminum wheels, why did it happen? Well, now you know. Maybe you've been in a parking lot or you've been just walking around, you happen to see a car that looks like it has a gold wheel and a chrome wheel or any other color, why is that? More likely it's because of particles adhering to the rim and of course moisture adhering to that and causing rust. If you leave it on there for too long, you're gonna have a major issue. I hope you liked the video. I hope you learned a little something. If you did and you want to talk about it, leave it in the comment section below because I always love to hear from you. If you liked the video, smash on the like button for me, it'll mean the world. While you're at it, go ahead and subscribe and ring the bell that way there you can be kept up with all of our latest content. Thanks.