Chemical Guys Two Face Color Changing Wheel Cleaner Changes The Game

I'm going to get this out of the way first thing—cleaning the wheels on my car is one of my least favorite things to do.

Spend enough time working in motorsports and you'll eventually find yourself cleaning a wheelset or two, or seven. The amount of brake dust and grime that gets baked onto a set of wheels during a normal IMSA stint is insane.

Welcome to tire land where cans of brake clean, plastic scrappers, piles of microfiber rags, and a seemingly endless supply of nitrogen litter the landscape.

In an attempt to ease the workload we would spray and wipe the inside of the wheels with Pam or WD40 to help keep the dust and balls of hot rubber from sticking—most teams will have some variation of this trick—but then you introduce a new problem, having to wipe all the Pam off before bringing the wheels to Michelin to remount a new set of slicks!

They won't touch a dirty rim or one with wheel weights still attached. At the shop, we would just soak the wheels in a degreaser and hit them with a hose, an easier solution, but one that often required one or two passes before the wheels were truly clean. Don't get me started on what happens if you rupture an axle boot.

All of that preamble is a long way of saying when Chemical Guys hit me up to ask if I wanted to try their Two Face Color Changing Wheel Cleaner—which promises no scrubbing, wiping, or work of any kind for that matter—I was so down for it.

Chemical Guys designed the Two Face Color Changing Wheel Cleaner for effortless brake dust removal and general wheel maintenance. According to the brand, the formula is acid-free, reducing the risk of damage to sensitive wheel finishes but still with enough heavy-duty surfactants to lift tough grime. Its party trick is the color-changing formula that shifts from a lemon-lime yellow to a deep reddish purple as the formula reacts with the surface contaminants on your wheels.

The product arrives in a familiar Chemical Guys spray bottle and is available in either 16 or 32-oz bottles. The nozzle allows for either a narrow stream or a wide spray for increased coverage. When using the spray mode, don't be alarmed if the product gets all over your calipers and rotors, especially if you have more of an open-spoke wheel design like I do.

Also, keep in mind that Chemical Guys does not recommend Two Face Color Changing Wheel Cleaner for painted wheels, so it's unclear what the effects of the product may be on painted calipers. The brand recommends testing the product in a small, inconspicuous area just to be sure.

Two Face Color Changing Wheel Cleaner works best without pre-rinsing, and Chemical Guys recommends letting it sit for roughly two minutes or so without letting it dry. I tested the product in one of the covered car wash bays at a local coin-operated spot, and even after almost 10 minutes the product wasn't dried on the surface—your mileage may vary if you're working in direct sunlight.

I sprayed my wheels as soon as I pulled into the wash bay, letting it sit while I paid and organized the other gear and products I would be using.

I was blown away by how clean the wheels came out—I've actually never seen these wheels this shiny.

For context, I purchased these wheels probably third or fourth-hand off Facebook Marketplace earlier this spring. The 5-spoke Torq Thrust style wheels originally came stock on an S197 fifth-gen Mustang GT California Special—by the time I got my hands on them they had definitely seen better days.

They were missing the original center caps and showed many surface imperfections and discolorations but thankfully no bends or cracks. They were a screaming deal, I paid something like $50 per wheel and have come to love the battle-scared look as part of the aesthetic that comes with daily driving a 20-year-old, V8, rear-wheel drive, American sedan.

In fact, the Two Face Wheel Cleaner was so thorough it started to pull up the 20 years of buildup from the inner barrel of the wheel. After I drove home I noticed some of those contaminants had streamed out from the inner barrel and made their way to the rim surface. I just hit them with some quick detailer on a rag, no fuss.

I'm not kidding, the chrome was blinding. Anecdotally—I had to adjust the settings on my camera to keep the highlights from getting blown out once all the surface imperfections were gone.

Because the Two Face Wheel Cleaner was so effective I'm planning a proper deep cleaning of the wheel barrels once I remove them in a few weeks to put my winter wheel set on. I'll spray them inside and out with Two Face, and probably use a brush for agitation before bagging them up for hibernation.

Chemical Guys has come up with a highly effective product that should be a part of everyone's car wash arsenal. Especially those of you who run European cars that make absolutely absurd amounts of brake dust—yeah, I'm looking at you, German car enthusiasts.

Same with track day goers, Two Face Color Changing Wheel Cleaner would make it relatively easy to keep your track set of wheels clean, mind you, you still might want to try the Pam or WD40 trick to keep the hot rubber particles from sticking to the insides of your wheels—but hosing them down afterward would be easy as turning on the hose.

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