Cleaning Wheels

I think it was Tool Pants,aka, Acetone Man, that posted many moons ago about cleaning his wheels with "ACETONE". Just a couple of questions?
How safe is it?
Does it remove the "clear coat"?
Do you use it straight or mix it?
Do you spray it on and leave it set or pour it on a rag and wipe it off?
One final question? Has anyone else used this
besides the Acetone Man (???)" WIDTH=15 HEIGHT=1?

I wanted all 4 rims spotless for my new tires. I have a '97, and had 4 years of tar and other junk.

I tried every normal cleaner, but there was still stuff left. You can see it inside the rim in the pic.

Then I tried citrus, mineral spirits, lacquer thinner, tar and bug remover, and so on. Very, very slow going when you have 4 dirty rims to clean and you hate to spend time cleaning things.

Then I tried acetone as a test, as it is the stongest solvent I have a home. I though with painted rims it would dissolve the clear and color coats. Much to my suprise it did not. Instead I was able to clean all the remaining gunk in a few minutes, including the tape residue for the wheel weights.

I used it right out of the can from home depot. Soaked the rag and wiped the gunk off from the inside of the rim, and the very little gunk I had on the face side of the rim. The rims must be painted with something that is not dissolved by acetone.

Test it on the inside of your rim first to see how it works.

Jeff

I like the following;

2 parts eye of newt, 1 part acetone, 1 part bat juice

just out of curiousity.

Thanks, Tool Pants, aka. "acetone man".

Funny you should mention it -- I just removed all 4 of my wheels for cleaning last week. I only have 500 miles on my car, but the insides of the wheels weren't very clean upon delivery. I used P21-S wheel cleaner, Turtle Wax Bug and Tar Remover (spray-on type) and Simple Green. The Bug and Tar remover is KEY. It dissolved all of the cosmoline from shipping and the small tar deposits that came from who-knows-where (they were there when I got the car). Including wheel removal and re-installation, the whole thing took me 80 minutes. My wheels now look impeccable, inside and out. Good luck.