The Jescar ReactShine Wheel Cleaner will help you remove baked-on brake dust, road grime, dirt and more with ease! Other than your tires, your wheels are the closest part of the car to the ground. Throw in the amount of brake dust that comes off your brake pads while driving and it is no surprise with how dirty your wheels can get. With ReactShine Jescar formulated a product that not only targets dirt and grime, but also iron deposits, making an extremely versatile wheel cleaner. Simply spray the product onto a wet wheel and let the product dwell. The powerful detergents and iron reactive compounds in the formula will turn purple to indicate when it is ready for rinsing. Rinse the surface and step back to look at the clean surface! If you have any heavier soiled wheels, scrubbing with your favorite wheel brush is highly recommended for best results. Clean up your wheels today with the Jescar ReactShine Wheel Cleaner!

Like most people, at my shop we have true and tried products that we use regularly, however we’re always trying out new products to find the next best thing.  I’ve tested this Jescar ReactShine Wheel Cleaner on a few cars and unfortunately I was not happy with it at all.  I tested it on a handful of cars with varying levels of contamination.  I also tested it both by agitating and just letting sit for a while and rinsing off.  In the photos below you can see how it looks when it’s sprayed onto a fairly dirty Subaru wheel…

After spraying it very liberally all over the wheel…

I let it sit for about 4-5 minutes…

After a couple minutes you can definitely notice some dirt and iron deposits breaking down…

Then I rinsed it off thoroughly without any agitation…

Overall the wheel definitely improved and was noticeably cleaner…

So why don’t I like ReactShine?

First off, when it comes to cleaning products I want them to, well, clean.  This is why I’m not a fan of using all-in-one products.  This wheel cleaner is supposed to not only clean the usual dirt and grime, but also get rid of iron deposits.  After using it multiple ways I was simply not impressed with the cleaning ability compared to some other stuff I have tried.  Normally for dirty wheels we use a combination of Sonax Wheel Cleaner Plus, Meguiar’s All Purpose Cleaner D101 and CarPro IronX.  Comparing ReactShine to IronX or D101 would be unfair because IronX is specifically an iron deposit remover and D101 is a good cleaner.  However, the Sonax Plus is basically the same exact category as this and Sonax is much better at removing both dirt and iron deposits.  I did a review of the Sonax Wheel Cleaner Plus here if anyone wants a bit more info.  Overall the ReactShine doesn’t break down the grime as well and also doesn’t foam up and cling as well as the Sonax.

Second, it had a really bad smell… not the usual bad smell of iron removers where you know exactly what’s being sprayed :).  It was a bit worse in that it also added some odd dull smell… Kind of like if IronX had expired and was now moldy… still bad and strong iron remover smell, but also dull and “moldy”.  This is obviously very subjective, but I was not a fan at all.

Lastly, I completely hated the sprayer, so much so that I threw it out after the first 2 (of maybe 20+ wheels I cleaned with this) and put the product in a new plastic bottle with a good sprayer.  It’s extremely flimsy, rotates very easily and my fingers would hurt after a few sprays (the 2 fingers that I could barely fit on there).  On top of that the spray coming out wasn’t really wide so I had to do a good amount of spraying to cover the whole wheel.

I rarely dislike products but I simply can’t say much good about the Jescar ReactShine Wheel Cleaner.  Personally I use simple wash soap (usually Meg’s Hyper Wash) on wheels and then every few washes (depending on how much I drive the car) do a heavier cleaning with IronX and maybe add the Meg’s D101.  If however you prefer to do an all-in-one type wash every time, which is definitely not a bad idea, I think Sonax is a much better option overall.  Regardless of what you decide to use for cleaning, I highly recommend doing a quick shot of CarPro Hydro every few washes for protection!