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need a non-gloss tire protectant

7K views 32 replies 19 participants last post by  Old_Fashioned_Cat 
#1 ·
I use Westley's Bleche White to get the grime off my Firehawk Indy 500's (white out). The stuff is great for cleaning, but it leaves the tires dull looking.

What is a safe product to restore the velvet/satin finish of a new tire?
I'm not a fan of the high gloss/wet look.

A long time ago, I used Armor All and STP, which looked about right after they soaked in and the excess removed.
Then I heard about the damaging effects of such "protectants" on rubber and vinyl, so I stopped that practice.
 
#3 ·
Bleche white is worse for that kind of thing. Most of the time when it damages the tire it is time to replace them by then. I use the armor all brand tire shine and spray it down pretty good then wipe the excess
 
#4 ·
Bleche white is worse for that kind of thing.
Well, I've thrown just about everything else at the problem over the years and found that Bleche White is the only "automotive" product that will remove the dingy film from white letters w/o laborious scrubbing/rubbing.
Some other products come close, but one feels as though he's about to rub the white off the letters due to so much scrubbing required (with various foams, pads, cloths, etc.), and they still don't get it as bright white as Bleche White does.

Most of the time when it damages the tire it is time to replace them by then.
That may be true with average miles per year usage. However, this particular car sees an average of less than 5k miles per year, so the treads last a looong time. I have my doubts about wearing tires out before improper chemical treatment has time to do damage. Speaking of which, I've yet to have tires suffer damage from Bleche White, other than taking a little of the luster off them -- if that is indicative of inherent wax or UV absorber removal, so be it, but my tires have never cracked/dry rot.
 
#6 ·
Brillo pads work pretty well on white letters, they have soap. But the Bleche White does remove grime the best.

Armor-all attracts dirt, requiring another coat sooner than it should need. Plus the shine is hideous!

The tire shine gels work pretty well, and they make some low gloss ones. The more you wipe the excess off, the less shine and chemical damage.

Al
 
#7 ·
All I use is 303 on the tires. It lasts longer and provides UV protection for rubber. I also used 303 on my RV's EPDM roof, and the EPDM (rad) hoses under the hood of my T-Bird.

Armor All is ****, I don't use it on anything.
 
#13 ·
All I use is 303 on the tires. It lasts longer and provides UV protection for rubber. I also used 303 on my RV's EPDM roof, and the EPDM (rad) hoses under the hood of my T-Bird.
Which 303 product are you using? Did some searching and there's quite a few different ones.

Joe
 
#12 · (Edited)
Torque said:
What is a safe product to restore the velvet/satin finish of a new tire?
I'm not a fan of the high gloss/wet look.
This may be what you're looking for:

PRIMA NERO TIRE DRESSSING

Prima Nero is a water-based vinyl, rubber, and plastic protectant and
dressing for both interior and exterior surfaces. The appeal of Nero is its finish: it's a concours-look with a matte silkiness on vinyl dashes and plastic trim. Nero leaves tires with a look of newness, adding almost no gloss. If you are looking for the glazed donut shine, Prima Nero is not for you. UV inhibitors help defend against sun damage. Prima Nero is detergent resistant for excellent durability

Click Here: Prima Nero Tire Dressing


In your case..You could use the Westley's Bleche White to get the grime off your White letter Tires first..

Then spray your tires down with water..Let the tires dry, and hit it with the Prima Nero Tire dressing to protect them..



Here's a couple products I have tried..

I tried almost all the foam tire protectants, and found none of them held up after it rained..

Then I started using this stuff..




When that ran out..I started using this..


It seems to hold up longer than the Armor-All did..

The Gel Applicator works great to keep over-spray or drips off of the wheels..





Rayo..
 
#18 ·

Thanks for the link.
From the pics, that finish is what I prefer. I never did care for the wet look on all blacks, but IMHO it's even worse with white letters as the high gloss black distracts/detracts from the white lettering which should be the prominent feature by contrast. Purely a matter of taste, of course, but it just doesn't look right to me.
This is also why, aside from making the tires look ill, the dullness of the black resulting from Bleche White diminishes/washes out the white letters even though they've been restored to full brightness by that very product.

Looks like Nero and 303 are my best bets so far.
I can get 303 locally at Ace Hardware for $18.97 including tax.
Nero would have to be shipped at a gouged $10.55 S&H, bringing it to $25.54 (lotta dough for a 16oz. bottle).
 
#15 · (Edited)
Ok so what's good to use on a dash to keep it from cracking (besides the windshield reflector thing I have ) I'm always willing to try new stuff not trying to argue about armor all.
Edit : so after some research I see what you are saying it has some kind of oil or.petroleum in it I didn't know that . Well now I have been wrong twice in the last 36 years . The first time ended in divorce.
 
#19 ·
The Prima Nero has almost the same product description as 303. Water based, UV protectant, low gloss, etc. I've never heard of Prima, it sounds kinda like a no-name brand to me.
 
#20 · (Edited)
Very rarely are you going to find a tire shine that doesn't produce some sort of gloss or sheen. All OTC tire sprays are pretty much in the same boat for being terrible other than Meguiar's Hot shine spray or Meguiar's Endurance spray. I've been a detailer for several years and I use it a lot on general details, however for high end vehicles I use a special pure silicone tire shine that is made by a local chemical distributor. It actually embeds itself into the rubber and cleans the tire as well as leave it looking spectacular. The trick to applying tire shine is to do just that...use an applicator instead of spraying directly onto the tire. The more excess you remove will determine the amount of gloss you have when you're done. If you're interested in some of the specialty silicone I use I would be willing to buy you some and ship it to you. It's not as expensive as you would think, but PM me if you really need some.

EDIT: I don't have much to do today so I'll probably go detail the cougar here in a half hour and post some pics when I'm done. I use a special citrus degreaser to clean the tire before I apply anything, you may want some of that as well, it's $18 for a whole gallon, moderate health hazard, and completely 100% biodegradable. Plus you dilute it 50/50 so you get 2 gallons for $18. I think if you just want a satin/matte finish just clean it with the degreaser and leave it, they will be naturally black and clean with no gloss at all.
 
#24 ·
for high end vehicles I use a special pure silicone tire shine
Some (such as 303) claim silicone is bad for tires. I'm not a chemist and I don't know how the product you're using is "special", so maybe it isn't what they're talking about:

Other Degradants
Petrochemicals and silicone oils can remove the protective waxes and increase the rate of degradation. Common automotive "protectants" and "tire dressings" are typically devoid of UV stabilizers of any type and contain petrochemicals and/or silicone oils which dissolve away the protective waxes and can actually aggress the sidewall. In the event of warranty sidewall failure, one of the first things tire manufacturers look for is evidence of the use of these types of products. When found, this is often cause for not warranting the sidewall failure.

303 For Tires
303 Aerospace Protectant contains no petrochemicals or silicone oils and does not remove the protective waxes.
At any rate, I appreciate the kind offer, but I'm going to try Black Magic Natural and see what effect I get -- unless I find out it has ingredients not suitable for tires; there's no MSDS or tech sheet on their site about this product and I haven't emailed them yet, so.. :zdunno:
 
#22 ·
Zaino Bros. for me.
 
#23 ·
cleaner wars... and more

Since I have to prep the tires for a protectant and I had some time to kill yesterday, I tested a number of different types of cleaners to see what might work well for lifting brown bloom/grime from tires.
I used standard yellow cellulose sponge to wipe/rub each product onto different parts/letters of the tire, rinsing well after application and allowed to air dry before the next product was used:

1. Caig DeoxIT Screen Cleaner -- have a huge bottle and rarely use it, so may as well experiment. As one might expect, this was least effective, though it did remove some grime from the white letters.

2. Black Magic no scrub wheel cleaner -- left over from prior use. This product smells better than some alternatives, but that's about the extent of its glory as far as tire cleaning goes. It does, however, make clearcoat wheels shine nicely... and smell good -- a boon for rim sniffers I suppose. uhm.. that didn't quite sound right. :beek:

3. Suave Naturals green apple shampoo -- because the bottle was near empty and about to be tossed, and I've noticed that when I shower after getting dirty working on the car, my fingernails are left cleaner than I get them with Gojo pumice and a nail brush! Some shampoos are really good grease cutters -- and hair is an effective, natural fingernail brush. :D
This stuff was as effective with light wiping effort as the Black Magic cleaner. The Black Magic might possibly have dissolved a little bit more grime from the black, but it was difficult to be sure. In fairness, the Black Magic I used is marketed primarily as a wheel cleaner and not a tire cleaner.

4. Dawn ultra concentrated New Zealand Springs scent dishwashing liquid -- eh.. why not? I doubt it will penetrate deeply, so any wax removal should be superficial. This had similar performance to the shampoo, but was slightly less effective on the white letters and required more rubbing to achieve similar brightness.

5. Simple Green (regular, all purpose) -- every home should have it! This cleaned the white letters with better effectiveness than the shampoo and dishwashing liquid (i.e., brighter white with less effort), and about the same on the brown grime as the Black Magic. Incidentally, this stuff is superb inkjet ink remover -- better than some I've tried that are specifically designed for the purpose!

6. Simple Green Precision Equipment -- aluminum and paint safe version which I originally bought to clean the engine/bay with (and it did a good job of it). Home Depot stocked it at one time, but when I got mine there wasn't a shelf label for it (i.e., had to ask for it) and there were only a couple stores in the Houston area that even had one bottle left. But good luck if you want to try to find it there.
It seems the manufacturer discontinued it and now markets it as "motorsports" version (the label looks extremely similar and the bottle is blue just like Precision Equipment).
This cleaned the same as regular Simple Green, with the added benefit of not being corrosive.

7. Westley's Bleche-Wite -- OLD bottle before the name change. This is now a Black Magic/Blue Coral label product, owned by ITW (Illinois Tool Works). It was the most effective, leaving the brightest white of them all and squeaky clean rubber.
However, even with double application, it did not remove all the brown grime from all areas (i.e., close inspection revealed it was still present among the small font black lettering). Yeah yeah, I know: get a wheel brush! Well, that might have helped, but the cellulose sponge should have been able to get in between those small letters, and frankly I believe it did; the product just didn't fully dissolve the grime.
Out of all the cleaners I've used, including some spray on foaming types that I no longer have, Bleche-Wite was the only one that gave a visual indication of grime/film being floated. However, when sprayed directly onto bare (and relatively clean) concrete, an identical brown tint developed in the liquid, so it obviously isn't coming only from tires, and I doubt the concrete was hosting impregnated waxes/UV absorbers that are designed to protect rubber sidewalls. :zdunno:

As alluded to, I've tried a bunch of other, application-specific cleaners in the past, but I don't recall all of the exact names of them, and it's been too long to remember enough details for side-by-side comparisons, AND I wasn't about to go purchase them again, if they're even still on the market, just to include them in this test, so they aren't listed.
Suffice it to say that a few of them were better than most of the seven listed above, but none were superior to Bleche-Wite.

So, I headed to Wally World for more Bleche-Wite. They were out of stock, so I ended up purchasing Eagle One A2Z, which the manufacturer claims is more potent than Meguiar's Hot Rims and is safe for all wheel types.
I also picked up a bottle of Black Magic Natural, which is designed to leave a matte/original finish. I wanted this for the interior anyway, so it's no loss if it doesn't produce the desired finish on tires.

I'll post the results in this thread.
 
#25 ·
results

Cleaned and treated the tires today.

The A2Z cleaner works as advertised. In fact, I'd say it's better than Bleche-Wite -- it cleans about the same, but what makes it better IMHO is that the odor doesn't bowl the user over and one can get it on the skin w/o much suffering (I didn't use gloves with the cellulose sponge and after prolonged exposure my hands weren't burning, despite the MSDS warnings).
The white letters are really bright after one application, and, like Bleche-Wite, A2Z quickly and visibly dissolved the brown grime.
A caveat with A2Z: it streaks the cap on stock wheels as it runs down out of the lug holes. I flushed plenty of water onto the lugs and there were still streaks. I feared this would be permanent damage, but it pretty much clears up on its own after thorough rinsing and allowing to air dry.

Though Black Magic Natural finish protectant is not specifically designed for tires, the label says it's safe for interior rubber.
I'm impressed with the results on tires. I hope it doesn't contain petrochemicals or silicones, as I'd like to be able to keep it on the tires and use it again -- it's also less than 5 bucks at Walmart. The product soaks in and dries quickly; even if one sprays a lot of it, there's only a moderate amount of excess to be wiped off after it runs off the tire. In fact, I suspect if I had just let it dry and not wiped away any excess, it would have looked the same. It dries to a very low sheen, somewhere between matte and satin, which is the look I was going for.
 
#26 ·
#28 ·
#30 ·
I use 2000 grit sand paper on the white letters on my wifes jeep. Makes them look brand new.
 
#32 ·
WD-40 is petroleum-based. Petrochemicals are known to be damaging to a tire's inherent, protective waxes. I use it on a lot of things, but wouldn't put it on my tires. Incidentally, it's excellent for removing cured contact cement from laminate!

I use GoJo pumice on my hands and that stuff is pretty rough. I wouldn't use it dry (or sandpaper, as per another post), especially on white letters, when there are inexpensive, non-abrasive alternatives.

Speaking of which:

Black Magic Natural finish applied on 5-28 restored the deep black of new tires and they look today just like the day it was applied.
My car sits outside 24/7 with precious little shade, for the moment, so this stuff holds up well under intense sun exposure (at least for a week :D).

I hope it doesn't use silicones or petro (need to contact the manufacturer on this), because I really like it -- it and Eagle One A2Z (the excellent cleaner I used) are cheap at Walmart, too.
 
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