crazy brake dust problem

tracked my mustang over the weekend at summit and used race pads for the first time, while the pads were great (hawk DTC-70) i seem to have some not so great left overs of them on my very expensive Roush wheels....

its this orange crap that is hard and will not come off, i used soap/water, simple green and even a powerwasher. it doesnt come off, my wheel looks orange with this crap on it.

i take very good care of my car and wash my car every 2 days basically, clean the wheels inside and out and regularly wax them. prior to the track day they were sparkly clean, and now this crap.

what do you guys think? i can't believe this... i have never heard of this or got any type of warning from the people i bought them.

some pictures;

 

i think you hit some clay

 

I would try some clay.

 

Odds are that it's rust. :sorry: Did the wheels get wet sometime between now and the track event?

For YEARS, Hawks have been famous for this. I didn't know the DTC compounds were the same way, but it looks like they are. The dust they generate is very high in metallic content. With the older compounds (Hawk Blue 9012), a lot of the dust was actually your brake rotors - or, what used to be your brake rotors. :yikes: With the DTCs, I guess it could be anything. But it looks to me like rust, and I've seen this a lot over the years.

Get that stuff off your wheels (and off the sides of your car - some will be there too) IMMEDIATELY if rain is threatening. It'll eat right into a finish if it gets wet and stays there. One set of wheels I had on my former race car (a Honda Challenge Integra) got so ruined by running Hawk Blues that I just spray painted them flat black. And I stopped buying Hawk pads.

For removing what you already have - first things first, act quickly. My guess is that only Meg's Wheel Brightener is going to even make a dent - I'd be shocked if clay did anything at all. Hopefully, it hasn't been there long enough to do any permanent damage.

Also, don't run those pads on the street. Race pads tend to generate more dust than normal while used as street pads, because they aren't up to their intended operating temperature, and as a result, wear poorly. Driving aggressive race pads on the street will wear both your rotors and your pads very quickly.

Wish I had better news, but I've seen this a LOT of times over the years.:sorry:

 

i'm really bummed out about this

i power washed the car last night to clean off all the BS, this morning i picked up some of the Eagle 1 wheel cleaner and it made quick work of this stuff with a bit of scrubbing.... ALTHOUGH in one spot on my wheel it started to DISCOLOUR it?!?!

its hardly visible but its visible to me and im heartbroken that my new roush wheels are already beaten up

live and learn i guess, but i wish they had some kind of warning. it actually DID rain at the track so they did get rain on them.

I got one of the wheels clean for the most part but its pretty roughed up now, i polished the hell out of it to bring back some of the shine but its not looking so great



ah man FML

 

Since it rained at the track, I'm even less surprised.

BTW, if it's any consolation, stuff like wheel wax (Rejex, etc) doesn't help with this at all. I've tried it, as have many others.

Race pads - actually, race parts in general - tend to not have warnings about stuff like this. Rightly or wrongly, manufacturers often seem to assume that customers either know, or don't care about, downsides like this.

 

One other thing - there are pads out there that are a lot less bad about this problem. Carbotech pads are ceramic based, and while they do generate a LOT of dust (as any race pad will), their dust tends to be a lot less corrosive.

(No affiliation with Carbotech here - I just used to use them on my HC car)

 

i ended up using the eagle 1 wheel cleaner and a brush with a powerwasher on full blast... it actually came off after a couple hours of scrubbing, i then proceded to polish them with meguairs polish and then followed by a carnuabua wax. back to normal! for the most part atleast

 

I'm glad to read that you were able to almost completely resolve the issue.

But I'm still curious as to how this happened. It doesn't look like brake dust. It looks like calcium or rust....or maybe the stuff that forms on rotors after cleaning the wheels, specifically after using a wheel cleaner.

Did you wash the car before the track event? I've noticed that after cleaning my wheels and having that brown crap form on the rotors and then driving the vehicle and using the brakes, more often than not, the brown crap gets thrown onto the inside of the wheels. Of course, my rotors are much smaller than yours so I get a lot less brown residue on the wheels and I never use my brakes heavily so it's easy to remove after the next wash.

Can you shed some more light on the situation?

 

Lesson learned. Get beater wheels for track and track tires.

use collinite 845 maybe from now on?

 

Joe is that you?