I usually don’t let my car stay dirty for long periods of time. It’s like an OCD thing that I’ve developed after owning the black Civic. Swirls drive me insane, so I always made sure to wash it every 3 days at least during the summer to make sure it stayed clean.

Lately it’s been a bit different though. Since the STI is white, I see no swirls unless I’m looking for them, and for the most part, the body of the car stays clean and the wheels get owned by the brake dust. It literally takes one drive to get them primed and ready for even more brake dust. This time, the car has been dirty for at least 3 weeks. It’s rained, then it’s been sunny, then it’s rained some more and it seems like it’s an endless cycle. In between all that rain and sun, the brake dust gets caked on, my exhaust tips – thanks to a cat-less downpipe turns black and it almost looks like it’s from the ’90’s and forever stained.

I actually wasn’t going to clean it today because I’ve been lazy. That’s the main reason for not washing the car for that long. A combination of laziness and boredom. I’ve been busy with work that by the time I get home I don’t want to do anything and the boredom part comes from “finishing” it aesthetically so quickly. I’m pretty content with the way it looks and I don’t have any motivation to do anything more to the engine at this point until I’ve gotten more than 15,000km on it haha. I’ve got a few more things to get like another seat and I’m dying to get a new steering wheel and quick release combo. It’s just not on my list of priorities yet – I think it’s time I slow the car game down and move onto more important things. Seriously.

Anyways, I ended up making a visit to Canadian Tire to pick up some wheel cleaner because quite frankly, I’m tired of having to manually scrub it with the wash mitt every single time. It starts to become a pain in the ass. So I gave that a try to see how it worked…

Before shot. It doesn’t look as bad because I actually forgot to take pics before I hosed it down with water. It got quite a bit out but it’s pretty much stuck on there.

I wiped my fingers across the spoke. Boy, do I miss that nice white haha

More brake dust.

Those exhaust tips I was talking about haha. You literally can’t even see any of the blue or purple that should be there. It looks like that Noir muffler by Apex’i haha.

Picked this up to see. I think this is honestly the first wheel cleaner I’ve ever purchased. I never found the need to get any because I had always cleaned the car so often, it was never difficult to remove dirt anyway. Laziness drove me to spend $10.99 on this.

Then my laziness took a turn for the worse and I ended up spending another $8.99 on this lame ass brush. In retrospect – it was a waste of money LOL.

So I sprayed the new stuff on and waited for a few minutes… Didn’t look like it did anything to be honest.

Boom. The white TE37 I once knew when I first got them. The spray itself didn’t really remove anything because it said that I could just spray it off. I ended up just wetting the brush and scrubbing it off. It worked better than soap for sure, but I don’t know if I’d buy it again.

Inside the wheel is still dirty. Again, too lazy to get in there unless I have to…

I also polished up my exhaust tips and the bumper surrounding it because it gets stained to a nasty yellow/brown after a few days of driving from the downpipe. I thought I was going to have to re-burn it again but thankfully it stayed. I’ve missed it too LOL.

Anyways – just thought I’d do a small little update. I think the STI will stay untouched for now until I either find more inspiration to continue or get bored and have the itch again.