Are you interested in taking proper care of your car so every time someone sees it they’ll think you drove it off the showroom floor?
Dressing your tires to have a nice black finish (instead of a dry gray color) is a great way to enhance your vehicle’s appearance!
In this blog post, I’m going to be discussing the basic foundations of tire dressing; what brand is better than the other, how to apply tire dressing, and if there are any cons to applying it on your tire..
Don’t worry, this isn’t going to be an overly complex or complicated discussion.. After all, it’s just dressing your tires 🙂
What’s The Best Tire Dressing To Use?
As much as I’d love to sit here and write that I’ve tried every tire dressing under the sun, I haven’t. I’ve probably only tried three different products.
You can buy tire dressing from your local auto parts store for $5. or you can order a different type of tire dressing for $15 online.
There’s dozens and dozens of choices to choose from, and realistically, there’s no true “best” tire dressing on the market. It will all come down to your personal preference.
Sure, some tire dressing allow you to dilute the product so you can choose to have a shiny, mildly-shiny, or super-shiny tire dressing, but that will still come down to your preference.
If I were to take a Ferrari and apply a $5 tire dressing from my local auto parts store, no one would be able to tell the difference- not even the more experienced professional detailer that have been detailing for years.
The Type Of Tire Dressing NOT To Buy
Although I’ve outlined above why there’s no such thing as a “best” tire dressing, there are some rule of thumbs to follow when it comes to not buying a certain type of tire dressing.
For the most part, all the tire dressing that you can buy at reputable online stores or at your local auto parts store will be a water-based tire dressing. These are 100% safe to use on, not just tires, but any type of rubber and dark plastic.
The type of tire dressing that you DON’T want to buy are solvent-based tire dressings. Yes, they will be very shiny on rubber, but the major downside to it is it will harden the rubber immensely.
So imagine the sidewalls of your tires. They’re suppose to be rubber, flexible, and so forth. A solvent-based tire dressing will completely harden it if you put enough for a length of time.
But like I said, most tire dressing you find at your local stores or online stores will be water-based. Always make sure you read the labeling just to confirm.
How To Apply Tire Dressing
So now that you have a tire dressing, you’ll need something to apply it to the tire with. You could use your hands to smear it around, but that wouldn’t be the best choice for obvious reasons 🙂
You can either buy a foam applicator pad or you can simply use a towel. Preferably, you’ll want to get the applicator pad or the towel in black.
The reason is because you’ll still pull of dirt and gunk from your tires (even if you’ve cleaned them), so if you have a black towel or pad, you won’t be able to see the mess. It’s more so of a preference or not since you can keep using the towel or pad regardless of how dirty it is.
Next, you can either spray the tire dressing straight onto the pad or towel, you can spray it straight onto the tire, or you can spray it on the towel or pad and the tire as well.
It really depends on the type of tire that you have and what you want your process to be like.
Then you’ll just spread it across the tire evenly until you have an even look throughout the tire. After you give it a few seconds or minutes to dry, follow the tire back up with a dry towel and wipe off any excessive residue that might have been left over.