Car Detailing: Tire Dressing

Video Transcript

"This is Dow with the Firehouse Detail Shop, today we're talking about detailing the exterior of your car. One of my customers favorite things about their detailed car and when they leave the shop is having their tires dressed the proper way. If you do it wrong it could lead to throwing stuff up the side of the car, it makes the car dirty. So, there's some proper techniques to make sure that it's done right, it's done the way the customers like it and the car stays clean. It's a little more than just grabbing a bottle and spraying it on. Of course the application techniques important, it's also important that you use the right products. For those customers of mine who like the bright shiny tire it seems, they want a continued shine and wet look on their tire, we find that a solvent based tire dressing is the best. This is called Pacific Blue, it's got silicone in it, and it's a, uses a solvent based transfer method. Again, we don't like to just spray it right on the tire because we still, then it's going to get on the chrome, it's going to get on the body. So we use an applicator brush where I'll actually apply it on the brush and then we can put it straight on the tire from there, and that's mindful. It also prevents putting too much of the dressing on so that as the car rolls down the street it doesn't flip up and get the car dirty. For our high end details, this is probably the choice that we use in our professional detail shop. The other product that we use probably most commonly in the car wash side, and really dress up rubber and trim and other parts of molding is this water based. This product differs in the fact that it still has silicone, but it has a higher level of UV protection as well. So it protects your tires and trim from ultraviolet rays that might be damaging or might discolor the trim. On this one I'm going to go ahead and dress this up. We use a soft bristled wide brush. We just coat the brush, and we just run it around the tire, being mindful to get it inside the grooves, and go all around the tire until we have the entire wheel dressed up. You can use the rim. Now even with a controlled environment like that, there's a possibility that I'm still going to get some on the wheel. So I always have a microfiber or a towel available so I can go back up and do some final touch ups, and make sure that I get the tire looking just the way the customer wants it before they leave the shop. Taking time and effort to make the wheel and tire look good really is those finer points, why we call it a detail. We're paying close attention to details and making the wheel and tire like this really look good. It's one of those things that makes our customers happy."