I bought some of this to clean my tires as they have started to brown a little, and I thought that it would help me to again achieve the look that I got with my tire shine (Mothers FX) when my car was new (2013 Mustang). This stuff is very watery so I poured enough to wet a sponge pretty good, wiped it around the tire, but it appears like all I did was spread the brown all over the tire. The tire didn't come out black like I expected it to. Am I doing something wrong? I'm not too impressed with this stuff at the moment. Especially for how pricey it is.
Griots Rubber Prep
- Thread starter JoshLSTV
- Start date
Accumulator
Well-known member
Yikes, the way I praise this stuff I almost feel guilty when somebody here tries it and isn't happy!
IMO you oughta try a different medium. Rather than the sponge, I use something absorbent, like an old cotton towel. Yeah, it gets trashed (or at least permanently stained in a horrible way) but that's what works best for me. I've done OK with MFs, but better with cotton.
You need two things here- 1) somewhat aggressive scrubbing ability (more so than you'll get with a sponge). You can sometimes get by without this but probably not for something as nasty as tires, and 2) something that the "brown stuff"/etc. can soak into so you you get it out of/off the surface being cleaned (rather than just moving it around). IME sponges just don't soak it up well enough.
Getting a used tire genuinely "*black*" can be a challenge. Often they still don't turn out quite the way I want until I dress them. But the Rubber Prep does get them cleaner than anything else I've tried without drying them out. I recently got a Michelin tire for the Tahoe that had *terrible* issues with browning/etc., way worse than the other three on the vehicle. When I did the last big wheel/tire cleanup (coating the wheels, scrubbing the tires properly) I used Rubber Prep on it and I can no longer tell which tire it is by simply glancing at the vehicle; before it was "that ugly tire is the new one" after no time at all.
I don't use Rubber Prep for tires nearly as much as I use it on other stuff, but I do think it works better for me than it has for you.
Give the cotton a try and see if that works better. Almost forgot- sometimes a given tire will hold onto cotton lint and when that happens I do the final passes with an old MF. Yeah.."passes" plural, I do go over tires quite a few times before all the nasty stuff is off.
IMO you oughta try a different medium. Rather than the sponge, I use something absorbent, like an old cotton towel. Yeah, it gets trashed (or at least permanently stained in a horrible way) but that's what works best for me. I've done OK with MFs, but better with cotton.
You need two things here- 1) somewhat aggressive scrubbing ability (more so than you'll get with a sponge). You can sometimes get by without this but probably not for something as nasty as tires, and 2) something that the "brown stuff"/etc. can soak into so you you get it out of/off the surface being cleaned (rather than just moving it around). IME sponges just don't soak it up well enough.
Getting a used tire genuinely "*black*" can be a challenge. Often they still don't turn out quite the way I want until I dress them. But the Rubber Prep does get them cleaner than anything else I've tried without drying them out. I recently got a Michelin tire for the Tahoe that had *terrible* issues with browning/etc., way worse than the other three on the vehicle. When I did the last big wheel/tire cleanup (coating the wheels, scrubbing the tires properly) I used Rubber Prep on it and I can no longer tell which tire it is by simply glancing at the vehicle; before it was "that ugly tire is the new one" after no time at all.
I don't use Rubber Prep for tires nearly as much as I use it on other stuff, but I do think it works better for me than it has for you.
Give the cotton a try and see if that works better. Almost forgot- sometimes a given tire will hold onto cotton lint and when that happens I do the final passes with an old MF. Yeah.."passes" plural, I do go over tires quite a few times before all the nasty stuff is off.
Thanks! I used a scrub sponge like the one below so I am thinking maybe it didn't absorb the brown stuff up as well as a normal sponge, or a towel would.
I'm going to pick up some regular sponges and see if they work better, and if not I'll try the towel. The tires looked cleaner than before I used the Rubber Prep, but they were more brown. I eventually did get them to look like I wanted, but it took 3 coats of Mothers FX tire shine to do so.
Do you have any before/after pics of tires you've cleaned with Rubber Prep?
I'm going to pick up some regular sponges and see if they work better, and if not I'll try the towel. The tires looked cleaner than before I used the Rubber Prep, but they were more brown. I eventually did get them to look like I wanted, but it took 3 coats of Mothers FX tire shine to do so.
Do you have any before/after pics of tires you've cleaned with Rubber Prep?
Accumulator
Well-known member
JoshLSTV- That oughta be good for the scrubbing as long as it's not so aggressive as to mar up the rubber. A follow-up with something that'll soak up all the [stuff] oughta help, but you'll still need to do the "reapeat, inspect, repeat as needed" thing.
I've never gotten into the digital-imaging thing so I can't post pics, but that Michelin I dealt with was one nasty new tire and after Rubber Prepping it (over and over..) it looks great with just one light coat of Z16, even kept looking OK after a quickie wash despite not redoing the Z16 (which really surprised me). But I *did* go over it quite a bit with the Rubber Prep, not just ..I dunno...three or four times.
Also, let the Rubber Prep dwell for a while, just not long enough that it dries.
I've never gotten into the digital-imaging thing so I can't post pics, but that Michelin I dealt with was one nasty new tire and after Rubber Prepping it (over and over..) it looks great with just one light coat of Z16, even kept looking OK after a quickie wash despite not redoing the Z16 (which really surprised me). But I *did* go over it quite a bit with the Rubber Prep, not just ..I dunno...three or four times.
Also, let the Rubber Prep dwell for a while, just not long enough that it dries.
Accumulator
Well-known member
JoshLSTV- I can't really say, never gave it much thought. I just soak the towel with Rubber Prep and scrub away. Yeah, I do go through it pretty fast but I don't mind as I only use it *VERY* infrequently (maybe annually at most on tires, even less often on trim), only when doing a start-over-from-scratch type of job.