Hi All,

I'm new here having just swapped my Mini Cooper S Works for something bigger and plenty of Bang for your buck ending up with a year old Octavia vRS estate, I'm really happy with the car but it must have been left standing in a yard somewhere before I spotted her on Motorpoints website and bought her. This has lead to the brakes rusting up a little and covering the inside of the alloys with a nasty brown rusty patch. Any ideas about the best way to clean this off without damaging the wheels?

And anyone got any tips on keeping the leather seats in good condition while were at it?

Thanks in advance

T-Cut & Auto Glym Leather care cream.

T-Cut & Auto Glym Leather care cream.

Cheers will give it ago

Clay should work too. While you've got them off, take the opportunity to wax / seal them to protect and help keep them clean long term.

Clay should work too. While you've got them off, take the opportunity to wax / seal them to protect and help keep them clean long term.

In addition when replacing wheels clean hubs and put some copper based grease (Not too much ) on inside of wheel where it contacts hub. Will prevent rusting and wheels getting corroded on and a b.....r to shift if you need to change a wheel.I had to get RAC out to change one of mine that had corroded on.

Sure it's rust on the alloys and not the bells of the brake discs?

If the latter some smooth silver hammerite seems to be suggested on here to cover that up.

Sure it's rust on the alloys and not the bells of the brake discs?

If the latter some smooth silver hammerite seems to be suggested on here to cover that up.

Just been and had another look it's defo on the alloys will get them off at the weekend for a good clean.

Just been and had another look it's defo on the alloys will get them off at the weekend for a good clean.

How random, has it run down onto the alloys then?

Still good luck getting it off

T-Cut & Auto Glym Leather care cream.

I'd use AG Leather Cleaner then the care cream after.

A small (8") flat file can be used to remove the corrosion on the flat face of the inside wheel mounting area. The corrosion will be in two forms :- iron oxide ( brown coloured) transferred from the hub and disc. Aluminum oxide ( white chalky colour) from the wheel alloy. The inside locating bore of the wheel can be cleaned with some "scotchbrite" but go easy with this as you don't want to take too much material off. After this wheel cleaning the surfaces just cleaned can be protected from further cxorrosion with a little copper antiseize paste. Similary the drive hub and disc face can be cleaned and protected . On no account should any paint be used as it will shrink when curing causing loss of wheel bolt tension .

At one VWdub meeting many years ago quite a few people where complaining that someone was going around loosening car wheel bolts . It was caused by excess Hermitite resin type paint shrinking under the wheel bolt chamfers. This happened to me . Could have been quite dangerous !

RE: Leather - just use baby wipes. Seriously, leather just needs to be kept 'moisturised' as it's basically the skin of a cow, and it only starts to age when it dries out/cracks etc. It's otherwise very hardy and needs no other attention.

If you must buy one though, I've tried a lot of products and the best by far was Glyptone Leather Cleaner & Conditioner (2 seperate products used one after the other).

I think the idea with the copper grease is to apply it only to the spigot not the mating face. You need the friction of the mating face to not stress the wheel bolts which should only be applying pressure to create that friction not taking any lateral stress.