Review: Meguiars DUB color changing wheel cleaner

[rjs5117]

I have lurked here for about a year, and finally have the opportunity to contribute to the community with a review for a product for which I have seen none. At SEMA this year, Meguiars announced several new products in the Ultimate line, as well as a totally new line created in collaboration with DUB. It consists of a spray detailer, a spray wax, an interior detailer, a tire shine, a metal polish, and of course, a wheel cleaner. The line is pretty mid to low end, and would likely have been passed by completely by Autogeek types. However, the wheel cleaner is notable and caught my eye for a couple reasons.

One, it is a color changing wheel cleaner, in the same class as SFE, 1z Colourtec, etc. It is the first such product released by Meguiars to my knowledge. Second, is the price. The cost is around 12$ for a 22oz bottle, making it much cheaper by the oz than other similar products that are not purchased in bulk.

Autogeek does not yet carry this particular line, and it is almost impossible to find anywhere. Even the Meguiars official forums say to expect these products in stores in Q1 2014. I have been able to get my hands on a bottle and wanted to share my results with the community.

A bit about my setup: I have a 2013 Subaru BRZ with stock wheels and brakes. It is a performance oriented car, but the brakes don't produce German car brake dust. My wheels are Opti-Coated on all surfaces, and are therefore very easy to clean in general. The car was driven for about 1200 miles through rain and salt since it's last washing, about a week and a half ago.

I sprayed the cleaner onto a completely dry wheel. It goes on like SFE, bright green when sprayed and changes to red/purple as it reacts:



After agitation with Daytona brushes and Wheel Whoolies. The tires were cleaned with Meguiars APC 1:1:



In general, my wheels clean up very easily because they are Opti-Coated. Since I coated them several months ago, I have not used any de-ironizing products on them, however, they were IronX-ed when I prepared them for OptiCoat. This is what came out of the wheels:



I was running out of daylight, and by the time I washed the rest of the car and dressed the tires it was too dark to get a good picture. The cleaner left the wheels spotless and no residue was left behind.

My observations: The cleaner foams up slightly when sprayed and is a very bright green color initially. It has decent dwell time, however, it's not like the gel style wheel cleaners. Most remarkable, however, was the smell. Meguiars calls the scent "Pina Caliente". I literally laughed out loud when I read that, thinking it was a joke, and that it would smell like Pina Colada in the same way that IronX smells like cherries...However, I was very pleasantly surprised. It absolutely shares "the smell" that IronX and TriX have, there's no doubt about it, but its unbelievably well masked. It actually does have an unmistakable pina colada smell. This could mean that is has a lower concentration of the "smelly" ingredient than, say, IronX, but judging by the amount of red foam that fell out of my wheels and was left on my brushes, it might not need it.

However, this brings me to the shortfalls of my review. I have used IronX and TriX. I have never used 1z, or SFE, the most obvious comparison. Additionally, this is as dirty as my wheels will ever get. I have never and will never allow them to even approach Soccer-mom-in-BMW-X5M-that-gets-washed-once-a-decade status, so I have no idea what this cleaner is going to do against baked German brake dust. Meguiars has Youtube videos showing it being used on legitimately dirty high end wheels, however, they spray it on in a ridiculously heavy fashion to demonstrate how remarkably green it is when it hits the wheel. It's refreshing to see someone demonstrate a detailing product on a dirty car, however, using 1/3 of a bottle per wheel sort of invalidates it a little for me. Nonetheless, the videos are out there if you want to see them.

At around 55 cents/oz, its definitely one of the cheapest if not the cheapest color changing wheel cleaner out there that you can buy in smaller bottles. In comparison, the 5L of SFE purchased when not on sale puts it at around 59 cents/oz. Again, I'm unable to compare its efficacy directly to SFE, but it might be worth taking a look at for anyone who does this for a living. It's surely possible that Megs will repackage this by the gallon for the detailer line in the future similar to what they've done with Ultimate detailer and spray wax, and a few people on the Megs forums are already asking for such.

I will update if I can find someone who has legitimately nasty wheels.

[Rmd]

I just saw this today at my local detail shop, so it's out there. I didn't even realize it was a meguiars product. I'm sure AG will sell it if they want to, but with the whole dub angle, I would agree with you that its target market might be Pep Boys kind of places. (And I wasn't totally sure why it was in the detail shop other than they carry almost all of Meg's products even the consumer ones).

[cardaddy]

Glad to see you're not lurking anymore dude! Great first write up indeed. Guess we'll have to add that one to our 'need to check it out' list.

(Just have too many other color changing/iron removing products here right now that I need to use first.)

I agree, it'll be the Advance Auto Parts chain store type that it's likely marketed to. Just that Meguiar's has to get people to FIRST understand they NEED an iron dissolving product. It's like pulling teeth!

[rjs5117]

Good to know its out there. I managed to get mine by preordering it in the first website it showed up on, and they randomly sent me a bottle. The website still says 5-6 weeks until it will ship however.

I'm honestly wondering if the iron dissolving wheel cleaners haven't made it to the mainstream yet because of the smell. I know if any of my friends bought a bottle of wheel cleaner and it ended up smelling like IronX, they'd throw it away after the first wheel. I think Megs might have cracked that one here, though.

Even if it never ends up being marketed to "people like us", hopefully my review can bring attention to it and be a step towards a repackaging for the Detailer line.

Sent from my LG-VS980 using Tapatalk

[Kacz]

So I saw the thread on the Megiuars forums, but didn't see anything about where it's going to be sold.

Retailers like Walmart? Meijer? Or just AAP, Autozone, Pep Boys, etc..?

It was nice having kind of an exclusive ferrous fighting, color changing wheel cleaner not being sold at local retailers, but I guess those days might be over.

With that said; I'm still interested in buying some .

[Bill1234]

good to see this in stores from otc. It gets to be annoying ordering a small amount of iron x each time when you know clients will have iron in their rims. It would be great if there is no acid smell too.

[Route246]

I tried this today on two cars. Unbelievably effective on both cars and it changed colors just like the high-priced competitive products. Best of all it cleaned up the wheel with very light brushing. I was very impressed by this lower-tier product. It performed as well as my Sonax did in unscientific tests.

[Calendyr]

Guys, I will go ou on a limb here but I doubt any pro detailer use color changing cleaners for wheels. Yes they are very impressive to look at, and the wow factor is a big selling point for manufacturers but to be brutally honest, they can't compete with acid based wheel cleaners like Meg's wheel brightener on three important aspects:

1. They are very slow to use. You need to spray that stuff and give it several minutes to work. An acid cleaner requires seconds to do it's thing.

2. They might be pretty but they do not clean as well as acid cleaners. In the end that is the most important aspect. I have seen Wheel Brightener cut through years of brake dust accumulation with very little agitation. If the tire is maintained properly you spray it, wait 30 seconds and pressure wash off and there isn't even need to agitate. To me, that is the product you should be using. If you want to wow your customer, do a chemical decon on the paint using Iron-X. There are no viable alternative for that step so might as well do it there. And since the car takes a while to spray down, you are not really wasting time. By the time you have went around, the product has usually done most of it's work where you first sprayed, so you can pressure wash off almost immediatelly.

3, Price! 12$/22 oz. That's almost 70$ per gallon. Wheel brightener is what? 19,99$ per gallon. Add shipping say 10$ and you have 1 gallon of concentrate for 30$. I dilute it 5:1 but you can use it anywhere from 10:1 to 4:1. So let's say at max concentration 4:1, add 4 gallons of distilled water (no obligation but preferable) and you have 5 gallons of the stuff for 35$ or 7$ per gallon. At a 10th of the price and being more effective, I don't see why anyone would want to use the color changing "wow, look at that" product.