There’s a chance this whole post could go in the “Well, dur!” category. I might be about to post something on the level of “hey guys, did you know that engines need oil??!” But that’s okay. The stuff in question is new to me.
Do you see that tire above? The letters are really that yellow. The bottle is white. The letters are not. Something had to be done.
This happened almost all at once. I painted my tires with this Icelandic tire paint and they were quite lovely and white. The white faded to a lovely eggshell color almost right away, but I didn’t mind. It looks (looked) great with the wheels. And that was how they were for a couple months.
And then, the yellow.
All of a sudden, I opened the garage door one morning and all 4 tires were quite yellow. Ugly yellow. Horrible yellow. This never happened to me with my painted Toyos. They stayed that nice eggshell color. So… my heart sunk. Yellow. Ugh. I had visions of spending hours stripping the paint.
I tried soap and water. I tried a bug sponge. I tried Simple Green. Nothing helped. I posted about these problems in my build thread on ClubRoadster, and someone recommended Bleche Wite. I’ve seen the stuff on the shelves at the local NAPA, but never have tried it. I don’t really like tire dressing at all, so I never even considered it.
Bleche Wite totally isn’t a tire dressing. It’s a very impressive cleaning agent. The instructions have you put on gloves and eye protection and make you present a note signed by your mother promising that you won’t get any of the cleaner on your magnesium or aluminum wheels because they will disintegrate instantly. Yeah. They’re not kidding around.
And as you can see above, it really works.
You spray it on the tire and after about 5 seconds, this dark brown sludge seems to start seeping out of the rubber. It is particularly impressive to see it come out of the white letters. A quick wipe with a towel and the tire is magically black again. And the letters? Back to their lovely eggshell color.
Perfect.
No repainting for me. Nope. No sitting quietly in the corner sobbing either. Just a quick cleaning with a product designed for this very purpose. My car care shelf will never be without Bleche Wite again.
Wowza! Very happy to see that stuff worked as advertised.
You and me both! I think I let out a cheer that woke the neighborhood when I saw that yellow crap vanish.
Glad I found your blog! Just ordered a “white tire paint pen”…guess if the paint yellows, I’ll look for this!
Worth having anyway. The way it turned the tire itself back to black was impressive to say the least.
At first I thought 3hey, yellow letters could be not that bad !3.
Then I saw what king of a moisture-like yellow it was. Please stay white now, letters.
I’ve seen tires with yellow letters. Like actual yellow, not dirty yellow. It looked pretty sweet.
Alas. I did mine in white.
(Just to say, sorry for the typos, I switch between a french and an swiss keyboard all the time)