Just wondering what the consensus is. Use tire shine on my beautiful new Vreds or not ? This spit and polish stuff is all new to me. Should I use tire shine on my semi spiffy Roadster or will I look " a little light in the slippers " if I do ?
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I use it sometimes, foam and go... You might like your new spats 
I like the way a car looks going down the fwy with the tires all clean and shiny. They are not being overlooked and, at the least, getting a cursory inspection fairly regularly....Bruce
I enjoy spiffing my replica up before I take off on a trip. I like the whole deal: prep, detailing, really clean windows, final finish, including tire shine, and standing back and looking at my work before I take off. I don't know and don't care if anyone else even notices, but I feel better when I'm driving a car that's been detailed.
If you like the process and the result, go for it. If you're doing it for someone else, it's more like work, not fun.
David, I prefer the less shinny look. Especially on Vreds (which I also have) because they have a lot of writing on them. This product has a satin finish.
https://www.amazon.com/Surf-Ci...essing/dp/B00JRPFKEA
Walmart also sell this line.
Definitely use some of the less shiny stuff. You want a deep black, but you don't want them to look like they've been clear coated. that tire foam that they often hand out in the Carlisle goody bags is decent stuff. Otherwise I get ArmorAll Tire Foam (low gloss).
I hate glossy tires. I use silk shine from chemical guys. You dilute it 50% with water in a spray bottle. It gives your tires a nice fresh new look without looking like they have been wiped down with petroleum jelly.
rayspang posted:I hate glossy tires. I use silk shine from chemical guys. You dilute it 50% with water in a spray bottle. It gives your tires a nice fresh new look without looking like they have been wiped down with petroleum jelly.
RaySpang you've been holding out on that great info.
Actually, the Chemical guys make real shiny stuff but I do prefer the more satin look as well.
rayspang posted:I hate glossy tires. I use silk shine from chemical guys. You dilute it 50% with water in a spray bottle. It gives your tires a nice fresh new look without looking like they have been wiped down with petroleum jelly.
I stay away from the sprays because it stains the driveway and gets on the aluminum wheels. How does this product effect the aluminum? My aluminum is raw not painted.
You know of course that all shine products have some sort of surfactant/wax base film that usually adsorbs to the surface of the tire / wheel. If it absorbs then your in trouble as it can then weaken the structure. Think grease and oil with rubbers.
Road grime is pretty much oil residue/asphalt oil plus dirt etc.
Not sure you can get away from it Marty. Tire grease is more like shoe polish and wheel wax is somewhat like it how do you keep that off the rim.
BTW be careful not to wax the back of your wheels the glue on weights won't adhere to them. _
Avoid dressings that contain petroleum distillants (usually glossynshinny result) as they attack rubber products. That eliminates:
1. Blue Magic Black Jack Tire Shine
2. Black Magic Tire Wet
3. Armor All Extreme Tire Shine
I thought you were going to say Vaseline
For what its worth , I go for the non shiny look... Any excess shiny solution tends to come off due to the centrifugal force of the rotating tires and can end up on the fenders and side body too...
Personally, I tend to lean towards Italian Salad Dressing.
Any brand will do, but I prefer “Newman’s Own” or “Ken’s Steakhouse Original Italian” since they are both made two towns over from me and both use extra virgin olive oil, but pretty much anything will do.
I love the Ken’s. We always have at least 3 bottles- an open one in the fridge, and 2 in the pantry.
And one in the garage for your tires, right?
Very seldom is there bottled dressing here boys. Only pure virgin olio and some good balsamic, preferably white balsamic.
As far as tire dressing I’m not as fanatical and maybe do it once a season. The pic above has nothing on the tires:-)
Years ago, (must have been around 1993) I was at a customer site just off of Wall Street with a few fellow employees from Corporate and we scooted out for lunch at a place recommended by the customer data center staff, just around the corner from "Building #7" if you remember the fall of the twin trade towers years later (tower #2 fell right on top of Building #7).
Turns out, we had lunch at "la Scala" in New York and they had the best Balsamic salad dressing I'd ever had, so I asked for the recipe. The head waiter comes to the table and walks me through how to make "la Scala" Balsamic salad dressing at home (knowing, from our accents, that we were positively from Boston) - not only how to mix it, but which specific ingredients to use and in what order, and then swore me to secrecy.
That, my friends, is customer service.
Marty Grzynkowicz posted:Very seldom is there bottled dressing here boys. Only pure virgin olio and some good balsamic, preferably white balsamic.
I (of course) know you don't buy off the rack salad dressing, Marty. The very thought of you taking nourishment from something so utterly common is incongruous and unseemly.
However, out here in the provinces, we make do with what simple fare we can find in the discount aisle at Dollar General.
Lane Anderson posted:And one in the garage for your tires, right?
I only use Ken's Italian Dressing on the silver bullet's tires when I'm getting her all gussied up for a tractor pull or the Turkey Festival parade. Most days I just run 'em nekid.
.....and of course Gordon you will only break your vow of secrecy for your brethren here on the SOC site.......
I don't know how to tell you this, Stan, but you're a stout-hearted guy so here goes:
Ken's Steak House still exists, just off of Route 9 in Framingham, Massachusetts. The Hanna family no longer owns it.
Decades ago, Ken Hanna had the hippest steak house west of Boston (the Hilltop Steak House on RT 1 north of Boston was better known, but Ken's had better steaks) and he had several salad dressings that were wonderful - his Italian was the top seller, but his Caesar dressing wasn't too shabby, either and he had this Tomato Florentine dressing that was the bomb. Regretfully, Kathy and I only ate there a few times (it was pricey for college kids) and we got engaged, instead, at Anthony's Pier 4 in Boston because it was more romantic, on the waterfront and all, but that's another story.
Vaughn Monroe (the crooner from the 30's and 40's) had another restaurant/night club ("The Meadows") next door to Ken's steak house, and the Monticello nightclub was just across Route 9 (Sinatra, Bennet, Sammy Davis Jr., Streisand and many others performed there). Remember that Ken's Steakhouse was a restaurant, NOT a nightclub, so no one performed there.
Anyway, Ken Hanna died and as has happened in many patriarchal families, the kids weren't really into running the restaurant so they sold off bits and pieces until it was gone and they were wealthy without working for it. One of those sales was the salad dressing recipes to an entrepreneur who was starting up a salad dressing business targeting local grocery stores like Stop and Shop, Krogers and Publix, among others, and he was looking for a famous brand to help kick off his fledgling business. He kept the recipe intact as much as he could while scaling it up from small lots made in the restaurant every afternoon to HUGE! lots made on a continuous formulation line in a building in an industrial park in Northborough, Massachusetts, just off of I-290. That was in the early 1980's.
Sometime in the mid 1980's, Paul Newman and his partner, A.E. Hotchner sought out a company that could take Paul's kitchen-based-salad-dressing-for-friends-at-Christmas and scale it up to large batches to sell at super markets to support his "Hole in the Wall Gang" camps for deserving kids. Paul and A.E. had both eaten at Ken's and figured whoever made that dressing might be a good choice - the rest is history and now "Newman's Own" dressing outsells "Ken's" by about 20 to 1.
I ride past the plant from time to time on my bike. It's not much to look at, but occasionally you'll see a big trailer truck with a picture of Paul on the side selling his dressings - They're all really good, but I have to avoid those with dairy in them, so most of the time I make my own at home, like Marty. I read a few years ago that the dressing maker has had to expand his operation many, many times and now has dressing formulation facilities in close to a dozen states. He seems to have been a lot shrewder than Ken Hanna's kids.......
-----Edit-----
Kathy just reminded me that they've spun off the Ken's dressings to a YUGE! building in Southborough, Mass, that used to be an AT&T warehouse and is now a formulation center for those dressings, only. A quick call to my know-it-all bike friend, Scott, confirmed that they're still cranking out Newman's Own stuff in Northborough (but does he really know that????)
Salad dressing is a lot like soup. There is a company in Warren, Rhode Island, - Blount's - that has made quite a name in the restaurant industry for making "custom" soups for restaurants east of the Mississippi (that includes Chi-town). You either send them a recipe (or a sample AND the recipe) and they'll duplicate it for you in huge volumes and supply it to you in 5 pound frozen bags of soup. They're very secretive of their customer base, but they supply maybe 75% of the name restaurants in the east with soup stock, either complete or a base stock that individual restaurants can "doctor" to their tastes.
I asked my restaurant friend, Robb, if they use Blounts in his three restaurants - They used to, but then they found that one of the bartenders had a superior knack for making soups (you can't make this stuff up) and he has been doing their soups for over ten years now and is training someone to take over when he retires later this year.
There's a whole culinary world out there that us mere mortals know nothing about....
Oh, and some vendor at Carlisle used to give out, in the registration goodie bags, "More Shine, Less Time" tire-spiffer. The stuff worked great for almost an entire season with just one application. I used my last can (it was an aerosol) a couple of years ago. I miss that stuff......Mcguires just doesn't work the same.
(At least I brought us back around to Dave's original query). Maybe you should look around at the Vendor booths at Carlisle?
Marty Grzynkowicz posted:David, I prefer the less shinny look. Especially on Vreds (which I also have) because they have a lot of writing on them. This product has a satin finish.
https://www.amazon.com/Surf-Ci...essing/dp/B00JRPFKEA
Walmart also sell this line.
I'm with Marty. Satin finish for the win. It doesn't attract more dirt while you drive.
I use "Rubber Care", and it also works on the other black rubber trim on the car. I use it on the windshield seal as well.
When used as directed Rubber Care will leave a beautiful dark black satin/matte look that is dry to the touch and will not attract dirt. This means the rubber will stay cleaner longer and be easier to keep clean.
Thanks to all who provided useful suggestions and sources for the products. Finding some of the products is tricky in Canada...discontinued, out of stock etc. so today I bit the bullet and bought a can of Black Majic Tire Foam Cleaner. This stuff is owned or produced for Permatex. It comes in four levels of shine from Classic Matte right up to Extreme Shine and I bought the first one for about $9 Canuck. No clue how long it will last.
Foam, as expected, is a clumsy way of applying any such product so I practiced on a tire recently removed from the car. I shook the can and sprayed the product onto a fingernail brush and used that to get into every part of the tire I needed with no messy overspray anywhere. Any excess got wiped off with a clean towel. Rolled the car back 1/4 turn on a wheel and finished what I missed under the fender etc. The result was good...a tad more gloss than matte I think but that will likely settle down with use.
One pain in the butt though was when I had the tires installed on the rims a month or two back, the installer left quite a bit of the slippery stuff dripping here and there on the tires ( my precious Vreds ). I mentioned that and they gave the tires a cursory wipe and said the rest will come off in the first rain. They're full of shyt about that. I spent about an hour with Dawn detergent and a nail brush getting the stuff off. PIA for sure. White or yellowish in colour and sticks like glue when dry.
One more thing knocked off the list. Next time I'll try Ryan's suggestion of Rubber Care..readily available overnight from Aircraft Spruce Canada. Thanks.
You could always order some stuff and have it shipped to the hotel when you goto Carlisle.
Dave: A few years ago at Carlisle I got some "Black Magic Tire Wet" as samples. It was a small applicator, roughly the size of your hand, with a sponge application surface on one end. Press it to the tire, give it a gentle squeeze and have at it. It provided a Semi-gloss black finish that doesn't look artificial or flashy. I bought a few of them from one of the detailing truck displays over near the grandstand on the Carlisle show field.
I could not find any with that spiffy applicator on-line, but found the stuff as a spray with separate sponge applicators bundled on Amazon:
sounds racist, should be Magic of color:}
