Best Tire Shine to Dial In Your Wheels

I’m going to say this right out of the gate: friends, don’t let friends have shiny tires; you want an OE, flat matte-like look on your car tires. Trust me on this one. I don’t know why, but it drives me crazy to see people with glossy tires. Don’t be that person.

It was never my objective to have a private label product in the store, but we now have three: decontamination soap, drying aid (a type of spray sealant), and the best tire shine I’ve used to date. I still don’t desire to create a full line of private label stuff; I only do it when I have to, and in this case, I wanted a tire dressing that had a uniform look to it and didn’t sling everywhere. CARPRO Perl (which we still sell in the store) is what I was using up until the release of OG Tire Dressing. Generally speaking, Perl is still a great product that can be used to restore hard exterior plastic surfaces. I just don’t plan to use it anymore on my tires because it doesn’t provide me the even look I want. 

How Did OG Tire Dressing Come About?

My friend Scott who’s been following OG for a long time and has been an active member of our Facebook group wasn’t satisfied with the lack of CARPRO Perl’s uniformity on tires. So, he reached out to some of his industry contacts, requested they whip something up for me, and sent me a sample. At first, I didn’t pay it any attention. I put it in one of my corner cupboards and completely forgot about it until one day, Bryce (our Director of Tech) pulled it out and put in on my M3 and told me that I needed to check it out. Like most products I receive, I tend to have low expectations because I’m hard to please. Well, this wasn’t the case in this instance. I applied the dressing on another tire and remembered saying, “Holy crap. This stuff is amazing.” Needless to say, I called Scott and told him I wanted this stuff and asked him what I needed to do to get it.

I honestly don’t care where the stuff is made or where it comes from; I just want it to work and work well. I didn’t concoct this in a backroom somewhere; I was fortunate to have someone just as obsessed as I am about pursuing functional excellence find it and pass that information on to me. We now have what I think is the best tire dressing on the planet. Check out the deep dive video I did back in 2020 when we released this to the world. 

What Makes a Tire Dressing Great?

You heard me mention this before and I’ll repeat it - uniformity. What makes me love this stuff is how easy it is to install and how well it goes on. By well, I mean how it lays flat on the entire tire. Many of these other branded tire shine products go on thick and uneven. How do I know? My guys here and I have tested the majority of them. Now, I won’t say some aren’t good, but ours is the best for the look and finish I want. What you won’t find in our tire dressing is harsh chemicals like:

• Petroleum 
• Silicone

Both of these are the leading cause of slinging. Ours is water-based, so we don’t have issues with slinging. If you’re diluting this (which you don’t have to do), you will experience sling because of the added water. 

I also want to mention the fantastic smell. It has a fruit-slice scent. Not that smells are important to me, but I get how it can improve the user experience. 

What’s important to know is prepping your tires for a tire shine. I’ll share my process below for preparing your tires for our tire dressing. Tire prep is critical to ensure your dressing adheres to the sidewalls properly. You don’t want to skip this part; I cannot stress this enough. 

How to Prep Your Tires for Tire Shine?

We get to the most important part of this entire article—tire prep. Most people think you just clean your wheels, wash your car and then slop some tire dressing on, and you’re done. Not quite. Remember, we’re obsessed people here, so going above and beyond average is what we do. 

So, this is how I do it whenever I get a new set of wheels and tires. If you’re doing a complete wheel and tire prep, I’d tell you to use something like a wheel detailing stand. It’ll make your life so much easier and save your back. The steps below will be if you’re just dialing in your tires while they are on your car. 

1. A good base tire cleaning. Using a wheel and tire cleaner and a tire cleaning brush is where you’d want to start if the tires are dirty. It’d be best to do this on a day when you’re detailing your car’s exterior. I’d then move to a tar and sap remover like Tarminator with a multi-purpose microfiber towel to remove any oils or leftover junk. I only really need to use this stuff when I get a new set of wheels and tires because otherwise, I’m keeping my wheels and tires clean during maintenance washes. The key thing to remember here is that the cleaner the tire surface is, the better application for your tire dressing. Be sure you’re getting in between the jam area where the wheel and tire meet—no halfway doing this step. 
2. Apply the dressing. The application of this tire dressing is super simple. First, I want to say that this isn’t a paint coating; it will not last two years. This is about looks. If you want that clean matte-finished look, you’re going to have to work for it (weekly, bi-weekly) after every car wash. I like to spray the dressing using my transparent Pressol bottle on either a detailing brush or the Curveball brush, which I’ve found to work exceptionally well, especially for big truck tires. You’ll notice that it’s pretty darn thick, and you want to apply it in quarters (if you’re using the RaceGlaze detailing brush). Otherwise, I’ve been able to apply it in one full sweep with the Curveball brush saving me some time. You don’t want to soak this stuff on the tire; you just want enough product to get even coverage.
3. Wiping it flat. After applying the product to the tire and giving it roughly 20-minutes to dry some, I’d come back around to each wheel and wipe a layer off. The objective is not to dig into the tire with your microfiber wheel and tire towel but to get the excess dressing off for that flat, matte look. Of course, if you’re someone who wants shiny tires (which I’m pleading with you not to), you could let the first application sit overnight and then come back the next day and put on another layer. 

This process is straightforward but will require effort and time. Effort and time I’m willing to give to see a product like this work at total capacity. 

Our tire dressing comes ready to use. There’s no need to dilute it. We tested it at inception, and the first thing we noticed was streaking. So, just use it right out of the bottle. 

You’ll see me coming out with most plug-and-play products. I want the purchasing process to be simple, I want the shipping process to be quick, and I want your interaction with the product to be user-friendly.

This product was designed exclusively for tires, not for trim or plastics. I’ve heard many people in our community using it for that purpose and not getting the results they wanted. Use this for your tire shine application only. I promise you it’s great.