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Well, if you're like me, the Corona rims on your Brick have been a source of constant frustration, as they are absolute magnets from ever-present brake dust. Today, I sat down in my driveway for three hours (while my dad cleaned both the outside and inside of the car) and cleaned these infernal wheels.
Entire wheel.
Closeup of 15-gram weights.
Closeup of rims.
I cleaned using some sort of Armor-All rim spray stuff, a disposable toothbrush, and a screwdriver. I'd spray on the Armor-All, let it sit for a second, then attack the groove with the toothbrush. Once I got the light residue off (the grease and new brake dust), there were just a few little pockets of caked-on brake pad residue left in there. I scraped that off with the screwdriver, using a hose to wash the stuff out so I could see what I was doing. Like I said, it took my three hours to do, which was not easy sitting outside in the noonday sun on a concrete driveway, but in the end the rims cleaned up really nicely.
As you can see in the first picture, the rims look nearly perfect even from just a few feet away.
The third picture shows the rims a little closer, and you can se that there is still a little bit of discoloration on the rims. Where I really scraped it with the screwdriver is where it's the lighter color, but I don't think that's good for the rims so I tried not to do that much. Anyway, nearly all of the black, black brake dust is gone, which was my goal.
The second picture brings up the question--why are there two 15 gram ("5 g." on one third, "10 g." on the other two-thirds) weights glued to the inside of the rims?
Only my front left wheel had any weights (those two) on it, but I could see where something had been attached on several of the other tires. At first I thought that it was some kind of paper label, but now I believe that I was removing glue where the weights had fallen off. Were the Corona rims unbalanced, and so weights were added where needed to even them out? What's the deal?
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'89 244 GL--25/22 ipd sways, Volvo truck amber turn signal lenses
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