Dressing White Walls

[OUTFXD]

Sunny weather is here at last!  I lost no time pulling off the rear fender and prepping it for paint.  In the process of pulling the fender I removed the rear wheel. Getting a good look at the wheel, I saw it had rust spots and the white wall was.... brownish and curb scarred.

 

I cleaned up both the wheel and the tire,  Painted the wheel.   once it dried I found some white shoe polish to dress the white walls.   I ended up making a mess,  The edges where not smooth and I kept getting polish on my newly painted rim.  When I was done the results where sub par. it looked BETTER... but far from great and you could see old brown marks through the polish.

 

I sat through about 2 hours of videos of guys either painting old tires or grinding the side walls on raised white letter tires (That cant be safe)

 

There has to be a better way and who better to tell me all about it than the experts here!

 

How do YOU dress your white walls?

[Plymouthy Adams]

white wall are not paint but vulcanized rubber to the tire casing in making the tire.  Many white wall can be cleaned with special cleaner for that or many just simply use a brillo pad.  Many use bleach but have been told this is not a good process for the rubber.  I personally use a product that goes by the name of B52 Brown Bomber Soap.  That stuff is good and I have seen it removed the bronze glaze from  100 year old glass when nothing else would touch it.  Other cleansers work well and you can actually use the hand cleaner with pumice.  But paint on a vulcanized whitewall....a no-go for me.  NOW if I missed something and these are faux white wall and originally painted...then forget what I said, I was never here...

Edited April 29, 2023 by Plymouthy Adams

[Veemoney]

Westleys Bleche-wite. I used this product a lot and it works well. The whitewalls on motorcycles can get stained and brown over time. Spray this on and let it set for 10 minutes then scrub it off. Stubborn stains I use it with an SOS pad and never any issues just keep whatever your scrubbing with clean or you will rub dirt back into the tire. After cleaning with this I use a tire dressing to finish it off. Back tires on a Harley see lots of oil.

 

They changed Westleys to Black magic brand and it is not as good from what I hear which don't work for crap so make sure you get Westleys if you can find it

[OUTFXD]

41 minutes ago, Plymouthy Adams said:

I missed something and these are faux white wall and originally painted...then forget what I said, I was never here...

 

Let me rephrase,  I was looking for a video on cleaning/dressing my(stock vulcanized)  whitewalls and all I could find where videos about painting whitewalls on old tires or grinding the sidewalls off.  Which is not what I was looking for.

[Sniper]

SOS pad and Westley's is what I've used since I started driving my Dad's car in HS, way back when, lol.  I washed it weekly, waxed it monthly, even under the trunk lid, hood and engine compartment.  Vacuumed it every wash too.  My way of paying my old man back for letting me borrow his car.

 

 

[desoto1939]

Do not use the Sesley White wall cleaner it has alcohol in the spray and this is not good for the rubber. I was told by Universal tire company to only use Simple Green to clean the white walls. It will not harm the rubber.

 

Rich Hartung

[Sniper]

Blech Wite does not contain alcohol.  From the SDS

 

Chemical Name	CAS No	Weight-%	Trade Secret
WATER	7732-18-5	60 - 100	*
SODIUM ALKYL BENZENE SULFONIC ACID	68081-81-2	1 - 5	*
2-BUTOXYETHANOL	111-76-2	1 - 5	*
SODIUM METASILICATE	6834-92-0	1 - 5	*

*The exact percentage (concentration) of composition has been withheld as a trade secret.

 

BUTOXYETHANOL is not an alcohol.

[Dan Hiebert]

I've used both the Westley's Bleche-Wite and Simple Green.  The Westley's product works better for me by virtue of needing less elbow grease, but I have no complaints about how well Simple Green works, I just up the concentration a tad for the WWWs.  If I use Simple Green for the tires, its usually because I ran out of Bleche-Wite and am too lazy to run into town for some more.  I kept the first set of WWWs on the ol' Dodge looking spiffy for just shy of 30 years with Bleche-Wite.  I had some scuffs on one of the tires the last few years that I could find no cleaner to overcome, pretty sure they were scored to the underlying rubber.  I wasn't too concerned with their appearance by then, so I didn't try very hard to dress the scuff marks.  Only did it once for a car show by using white shoe polish, but it didn't last much longer than the car show.

[Dodgeb4ya]

About ten years ago Westley's Bleche Wite was bought out and taken over by ITW.

Now called Westley's Bleche Wite "Black Magic" .

A changed and weakend formula from the original.

The prices of the old formula are around $70.00 up for a quart.

[desoto1939]

I just did a look up on the wesley old product before it was sold and here isa copy of their contents of the original product:

The original Wesley's did have Isopropyl Alcohol 1-5 %  The company that purchased them is called Black Majic Bleach White

 

Rich Hartung

 

 

 

Below is some info regarding 2-Butoxyethanol:

 

 

Edited April 30, 2023 by desoto1939

[Sniper]

It's not made that way anymore. So how it was made is irrelevant.

[desoto1939]

2 hours ago, Sniper said:

It's not made that way anymore. So how it was made is irrelevant.

Sniper: i posted the information just to inform the members that the older Wesley's tire dressing did contain alcohol and not to use it on your tire if you have a chnace to purchase any of the older product.  Like I stated the sales agent from Universal Tire here in Hershey told me not to use their product and they recommended Simple Green.

Not trying to get into a finger pointing contest but FYI is always important for us car guys to know.  So if this makes a car guy read the ingrediants of a tire product before buying the item that the important part of the posting to help protect the rubber components of our cars and trucks.

 

Rich Hartung

[Bryan G]

I switched to using LA's Totally Awesome, a dollar or two at your nearest dollar store. To me it works just as good as Bleche White. 

[Sam Buchanan]

26 minutes ago, Bryan G said:

I switched to using LA's Totally Awesome, a dollar or two at your nearest dollar store. To me it works just as good as Bleche White. 

Same here along with kitchen scrub pads from the same store.