Acetone mixed with elbow grease.
Nail polish remover...?
Maybe the crude swearing should have been directed at the mob that last did your wheel balancing.
I’d assume they‘d remove the old weights and clean up the residue before spinning up the wheel to balance them
Got some degreaser usually reserved for the bike chain, too.
I have no idea who did the wheel balancing because that was with the previous owners, the nuns down in Ballarat in VIC (OK, don't ask why the nuns are hanging out in a chilli red SV6 with dark tinted windows and drainpipe exhausts...developing bad habits [*ducks flying shoe*] ). and there is no record of who did the tyres/balancing. I have never seen such a mess of residue. Even with my old VZ, which went through 3 sets of tyres and also used self-adhesive weights had no such blight. You're right about assuming they should remove the detritis. I will certainly make sure this is the case when I get new tyres some time in the future (prob. 10k from this point).
Luckily for the wheels, I was born with the patience of a hindu cow, and have got a lot of the gunk off the wheel from a 5.30am start this am. Have used a plastic knife with a serrated edge and nail polish remover garnered from my enthusiastic neighbour's make-up kit (!) It's working, just slowly...slowly. I might start on the left side rear wheel this afternoon, even though it is somewhat out of my league to muck around with wheels, but hey, if I had not been staring at the wheels yesterday afternoon I would not expending so much yakka!!
