There are lots of answers here from media blasting to muriatic acid to oven cleaner to Mother's polish....but it's been difficult to wade through and figure out what's specific to my situation so please excuse another "cleaning Fuchs" question....

This is a good example of what mine look like after a good wash.
Soap and water with a light Mother's polish on the spokes.
See the cloudy bit in the recessed part? Thats' what I want clean and i'd like it in the non-polished/matte finish. I can polish the paddles and the lip but I just can't seem to get rid of the cloudiness.

If I need to send them off and get them refinished, that's cool but I'd like to try something myself first. It's a driver so I don't need it to be perfect - just better.

Click to view attachment

If some chemical was spilled on the wheels at one time, it might have clouded up the anodizing and the only "cure" is to refinish. I would run them as-is unless you just can't live with it.

Probably dog or cat pee.

recessed areas are just anodized bare alum,,,that how they came from factory

Yup - I just can't get em clean...

Try to rub vaseline on the spokes and let sit overnight

Send them out for refinishing. Fuchsrestoration.com is a great place.

I had a set done by Al Read 10 years ago and Jeffrey had a set done my Al Read that looked great and his turnaround was fast.

I have had only delays ( slow work) from Al but the work is very good. Your are in LA so Al or Rick are the places to go.

Bob B

I'm in LA but the car is in Indiana....but that's why god invented UPS, right?

George, what would that result be? I'm cool with the spokes - it's the recessed area i'm trying to work on....

If the recessed area is what you are trying to improve, I might try to tape the high sections off nice and tight, (a good quality tape) and bead blast or soda blast; use some kind of media that will not damage the aluminum.

Generally speaking, you want to be careful with what you put on the rough-anodized sections (what's cloudy on your Fuchs), just as you do on the clear anodized sections (the spokes and lips) that look great on your wheels. I'd hate to refinish those wheels unless there was no other choice.

Vaseline may help, or it may not, but my guess is it will only seal in what you've got. My advice would be to try increasingly aggressive cleaners starting with something NOT aggressive and approved by Harvey or Al or anyone else familiar with these wheels. I have had the same problem with the "rough anodized" sections of my Fuchs, and found that once mild soap and water wouldn't do the trick, approved wheel cleaners only got me so far. Trying to remember if Harvey liked Simple Green or not, but I found that Citrus cleaner in VERY limited time bursts and rubbed only with a clean towel succeeded in bringing them back clean without causing any apparent damage. The fact it worked made me wary to the point that I did each wheel one at a time. Wasn't rocket science, but wasn't something I wanted to be distracted from either.

Felt a bit risky, and it is. But your wheels are already cloudy, so might be worth a try? Worst case, you send them off for refinishing to one of the three places people seem to like. Good luck!

supposed to remove the staining, but then again the background is rough anyway so if only to remove the stains you can try the vaseline

When I was researching how to restore my Fuchs, the Vasoline thing kept showing up with lots of people reporting good results. Someone on another forum even posted a Porsche tech pub recommending Vasoline to remove stains. My wheels have bigger problems but it seems like it would be worth a shot on yours.

Alrighty! Vaseline it is - for the first round, anyway...then I’ll step through a few different cleaners like Pete suggests and we’ll see what happens. It’ll be a bit as I’m not due back in 914-ville for a while...just gathering data.