I wanted to put some kind of coating on my tires to keep them from turning brown and give them some UV protection, but I'm not a fan of the typical "wet look" tire shine products. It's OK for sports cars but not for big off road tires - the typical tire shine just collects dust & dirt, gets on your pants when you brush against a tire, slings all over the side of the truck when it gets wet, washes off easy, etc.
So, I wasted entirely too much time researching tire coatings and I settled on Adam's Graphene Tire Dressing. It supposedly contains "reduced graphene-oxide ceramic resins" that sounds really technical and magical. LOL, this stuff had good reviews in lots of side-by-side tests I reviewed. The main sales pitch for the tire stuff also sounds perfect: "If you’re looking for a deep black, like new tire appearance then you’ve come to the right place. Graphene Tire Dressing™ is a must-have for those that aren’t interested in a shiny, wet-looking tire and want to maintain a satin appearance for as long as possible with zero opportunities for sling."
My buddy that detailed my truck and applied the ceramic coating back in July also used the Adam's graphene ceramic coating stuff. And come to think of it, he applied a tire coating as well - maybe he used this same Adam's stuff, I'm not sure.
I also picked up Adam's Wheel & Tire Cleaner along with Adam's brushes for wheels (soft bristles) and tires (stiff bristles). The tires need to be properly cleaned before applying the tire dressing.
Yesterday I finally got around to opening the box and doing the tires. I ran my truck through the car wash a few days ago after off-roading the weekend before. I only use the touch-free car wash, never the spinning brushes that slowly grind your paint away. The wheels & tires therefore only get a quick pressure wash and spray of soap, then rinse. I've been off-roading a bunch of times in deep sand and gravel so whatever coating was applied in July was probably pretty well gone.
I cleaned each tire twice - the second time I rolled the truck back a couple feet so I could be sure to get those shoulder lugs at the bottom of the tire that you can never quite get on the first try. On the first clean the suds turned dark brown and on the second clean the suds still turned brown but only in the flat sidewall portion closer in to the wheel. My theory is that the outer shoulders have been scrubbed clean off-road and the inner flat sidewalls still had some old tire dressing and dirt on them.
I dried the tires with a leaf blower and let them sit for about a half hour. I then applied the tire dressing using a folded up soft microfiber towel (the tire dressing didn't come with a concave sponge applicator like I thought it would). I sprayed a bunch of the dressing on the towel and also shot a ring of dressing around the tire. It spread on pretty well but built-up on the ridges and had to be sponged up and moved around a bit. The dressing is medium thick like milkshake as opposed to water but certainly not thick as molasses. I did the same roll-back to get those bottom lugs and re-applied a light second coat over the whole tire.
At first I wasn't impressed because it was really shiny. This morning (about 14 hours later) it looks much better, the shine has calmed down quite a bit.
We'll see how it lasts. Unfortunately it's going to get scrubbed off whenever I go off road and we'll see how easy (and hopefully faster) it is to touch-up or re-apply. I'm also curious to see if it picks up dust and dirt off-road.
I used about a quarter to almost a third of the cleaner bottle and a quarter or a bit less of the tire dressing bottle for my 35" tires.
Another reason I bought this stuff is to do my Porsche tires which should be much easier. I'll do those this weekend.
Finally, I also bought some Chemical Guys interior cleaner based on positive feedback from someone on this forum. I haven't used that yet but probably will this afternoon. I keep getting smudges on the soft-touch surfaces on the interior where skin rubs on the interior (like the door arm rests). It's especially bad when my wife is in the passenger seat from all her lotions and makeup. And my two young boys in the back get sticky shit everywhere.
$28.30 from Amazon for the Adam's Wheel & Tire Cleaner 16-oz with 2 brushes
$26.59 from Amazon for the Adam's Graphene Tire Dressing 16-oz 2-pack
$9.68 from Amazon for the Chemical Guys 16-oz Total Interior Cleaner and Protectant
Tire before cleaning
Tire after cleaning and drying
Tire immediately after application
Tire 14 hours after application
