When I changed my tires from the LS2 Goodyear to Goodyear Tripletreds, I noticed when they did the tire balancing on each tire they didn’t clean off the rubber clue from the old balancing weights! Took me over an hour and a half to remove the rubber glue since there were more than one spot were it was glued for balancing each tire! Now the son of the guns did the same thing to me after I had them rotated & balanced! I did not attempt to clean them yet since it was pretty cold out when I had them Rotated & Balanced! Now it is starting to get warmer, I was going to give it another go at them again!

Any suggestions on what to use to clean off the old rubber clue? Without a doubt I will check for this next time when I get them rotated & balance and will be marching right back into the tire shop! For now I was going to clean them myself but was wondering if anybody had any good suggestion on what to use? I was thinking of using some mineral spirits to clean them!

Thanks!

In the past I have just used warm water with a dabble of car wash soap, I would let it soak, and slowly, with a razor blade, VERY GENTLY scrape the glue off.

For me, it would come off easily because I periodically clean my rims as thouroughly as possible, and put a couple coats of wax on on them, inside AND outside of the rim.

So whenever they had put new weights and removed the old ones, the new weights would kinda stick to the wax surface, and the glue would come off easier because it would be sticking to the waxy surface. The weights never fell off by themselves, so I wouldn't worry about the adhesion of the weights to the rim. Whatever the tire shops use, that stuff sticks on pretty good, and ya, it can be a pain to take off. Just like you, I like to keep my rims clean. Good luck on the removal process.

I have tried just soap and water but it didn’t help! Last time I had used Goo-Gone along with a razor, plastic and mental scraper! I had to work at it very gently with the razor and scraper the last time but it was a real pain in the butt and took forever!

I have been wanting to do this all winter but just has been too cold out and would have been useless to try to clean with anything that was water base since it would have just froze while cleaning!

I have a portable household steamer for cleaning, I might try shooting it with some steam to heat it up and maybe it might help loosen it up a little! I have used this for taking some of the heavy brake dust build-up before and help a lot with a small brush attachment! Can’t stand dirty rims / a dirty car period!

Very good idea about waxing the rims! I will have to try that before my next Rotation & Balance!

Thanks!

Yes I also clean the inside of my wheels too! I thought that I was the only lunatic out there that did that! :D I doubt waxing the inside of the wheel would help much. If the tire shop was doing their job correctly they would surely use a solvent to clean all of the dirt and contaminents off the wheel before they adhered the weights? That, and I don't think that I would want to risk the possibility of my wheel weights coming off while I was driving, especially on a long trip.