Technical Is there a Westley's Bleche White Alternative?

I use brake fluid to clean whitewalls. Put it on with a clean rag and start buffing. As the rag turns black the whitewalls turn pure white, because the dead rubber sloughs off. Keep putting on the fluid, and rubbing with a clean spot of rag. Used fluid will work fine too if it's not filthy.

Don't let it dry before rubbing off though. You must rub it 'til clean and dry.

This cleans the rubber pure white, by removing the dead, dirty rubber. It's more work than Bleache White, but I think it does a a better job. It cleans the black part too. & looks better than Armor All because it doesn't gloss, plus it's good for the rubber.

Bleach of any kind ages the rubber.

 

OMG Really?

That's pretty amazing. How does it not destroy the brake hoses? Or the cups and boots?
Is the rubber that different? From what I've seen it removes the dead, UV burnt layer of rubber, and leaves the remaining live rubber surface pretty nice.

I've never actually had a set of whitewalls sit around longer than it takes me to wear out a set of tires, & I commute daily, so perhaps I've just never had tires long enough to see this happen.

 

Not all rubber is created equal.

 

SOS Pads for me.

 

Clearly, but this new data demands an experiment.



Also, rubber has changed a lot in the 40+ years since I started doing this, so I'm going to try some new and old samples both.

I've got an unused bias ply tire that was mounted as a spare in 1973, and it was a recap on a three-stripe whitewall. It's been in the sun, inflated, on the tail of the Scout since then, but never been on the road. 41 years.

It's the crummiest, most rotten decomposing thing you can imagine, that would still hold air.

So this will be a torture test of the rubber like no other.

I should be able to make it disintegrate, which would save me the disposal & recycling fee.

 

No such thing as too much data.

 

If you animals would wash your heaps more often you wouldnt need all these weird concoctions, a little soap and water would suffice. What a bunch of lousy, cl***less slobs Hot Rodders are.

 

Take a dip in the wifes kitchen kabinett Own Cleaner works great

/K

..................................
Taildragger&fenderless

 

Wow, this is an amazing amount of information. I should probably go through all the posts and compile a list.

Regarding brake fluid: I don't know when it started, but some people like glossy tires. (you know, like they are soaked in brake fluid from a leaky wheel cylinder - I know I love that look - don't you?)

So a whole bunch of glossy tire slickums showed up. It even progressed to interiors ( (my neighbor's kid was always cherrying out his ride and he offered to go over my 98 Z28 convertible for $50. So I let him. So he puts this high gloss finish on the dash! Do you know how vast that dash is? You have to uses a long handled took to clean the bottom of the windshield. So when I drove in the daytime, the sun was reflecting off the dash into my eyes.

Where do these people acquire these preferences?

But I digress.

Always a fan of WBW but I also like putting Original Armorall on clean tires. In fact, I have a set of G78-14 Univoyals on my 63 Studebaker that were installed around 1974 and now it is 2014 and there are absolutely no cracks in the rubber! Probably a combination of superior rubber, no exposure to sunlight, and Armorall.

Thinking of cross industry products, I would be interesting to see how Platen Cleaner/Rubber Rejuvinator would work on tires. This stuff is used on printer/typewriter (yeah, funny huh?) rubber rollers that get hard with age and no longer have good traction on paper. Your cleaning cloth will get black with "stuff" from the roller.

Also, have used Greased-Lightning (had a small spray bottle of it and didn't realize it was that cleaner) and it did not do well at all. Super Clean was far superior.
___________

A moment of silence for dearly departed TSP...

 

Wow! I'd always heard that Armor All will accelerate cracking.
I don't much care for it myself.

I expect that a lot of anecdotal evidence on this stuff has collected due to different chemistry of different elastomers.

But I was always told that brake fluid was good for rubber, and it was the only thing you could use to clean or lube hydraulic brake parts.

That being said, I never tried to just soak a tire in it to see what happens. I always wipe it off after a couple seconds and it takes the tire surface down to a satin finish. Not glossy like that awful Meguiar's tire shine stuff.

 

Dawn and a scrub brush for me.

 

Hydrogen peroxide with comet cleanser.

 

Brake fluid?,,it's a carcinogenic and I certainly wouldn't use it as a whitewall cleaner.

It will over time eat rubber,,cut a flexible brake hose and you will see how the inside has deteriorated,,heck,you already know i you get it on your paint it's like paint & garnish remover.

I'll stick to bio degradable products for white wall cleaning and a still nylon bristle brush. HRP

 

Find a natural laundry powder that is mostly soda ash. I use Nellies, it works great. Natural, biodegradable, won't stain or harm anything.

 

The Coker WWs on BGII are the first WWs I've had in maybe 40 years, and when I got it roadworthy I went to Advance and bought some Blech White that doesn't seem to work like it once did. Now I know why!
I remember in the 50s all the service stations that washed cars, and I worked in some of them, used a sort of off white, jellied stuff that came in a gallon can, like a paint can. Haven't seen any of that stuff in years, but it worked good also.
Another thing we used was a flat, br*** bristled wire brush on the WW part only, and I can't find those either, using a grill brush.
One of my friends who has a roadster also ('16 T) is using a cleaner he bought at a dollar store and his WWs look really white, but sort of flat, where my Cokers seem to have a bit of gloss to the white. I think I'll try the Super Clean next time I buy.

 

OK so how do you clean tires that have "browned" ? Most things I have tried it comes right back.

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'Browned' tires have to be cleaned initially with something like lacquer thinner, then 'dressed'. (lacquer thinner will dry out the rubber)

Brake fluid on whitewalls??? Not this kid...I can just see my steel wheel rims' paint blistering at the edges, and melted paint pigments running down those Coker white sidewalls...

I used to dress my blackwalls with Black Shinola. (and I know sh*t from)

 

The guys at Michelin say to initially clean them with Naphtha,that will stop the browning.

 

Thanks guys!

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I just use the same soap and water that I washed the car with. My WW's are only about 4 years old but they still look like new.

 

You can still buy Westleys, if you can't find it in your local NAPA get a Whitney Catalog.

Or we used to use SOS pads.

 

Where does the brake fluid end up when you're done?

 

On a dirty rag where it evaporates. You don't need gallons. Just moisten a clean rag & start wiping.

It's funny, but I've done this for 40 years now. I never had a tire that seemed to suffer from it.

 

And that's better than the brake fluid?

Brake fluid will remove the brown rubber and leave it black. Just keep using a clean spot on the rag.

I sure wouldn't put lacquer thinner near the wheels if they're painted.

 

This may sound odd, but I use a combination of Dow foaming bathroom cleaner and Mr. Clean magic eraser on my whitewalls.

(I avoid "Bleche White" and other highly toxic agents at ALL costs due to my clumsiness!)

(The foaming bathroom cleaner also works wonders on carpet stains; however the paralegal in me adds the disclaimer: "test on an incon****uous spot first!")

 

Oh... I was just looking at the last 10cc of original BW, I still have. If I had lots of $$$, I'd have it ****yzed so I could make my own.

(Forget tires, BW was the only thing that took the "s***" off white fluorescent light reflectors.)​

But my use for BW was cleaning up terribly old, skungy tires with curbed white walls. And never had alloys back in The Day so that wasn't an issue (definitely a Big Issue now.) Man it worked. Then I would always Armor All (original formula) them.

I have a set of Uniroyals on my 63 Super Lark that I purchased in 1974 and they are in perfect condition to this very day! And WILL NOT wear away so I can get some smaller diameters that dont scrub my fender openings! What Bad Luck, huh?​

The Magic Eraser sounds interesting.

I did notice that while working on some really hasty tires, that solvent like carb cleaner and MEK actually took dead rubber off.

 

I've never tried it on whitewalls, but Arm & Hammer makes a product called Super Washing Soda that's a surprisingly potent cleaner. However, they do warn to NOT use it on aluminum. Doesn't foam up or make suds and rinses off easily.

Even after they removed TSP from most detergents, it was still available at most hardware and paint stores. Though it might not be as potent as it used to be.