Tire Shine Magic!

So recently I got tired of looking at our dirty/gray/brown tires. They really haven't been properly cleaned since our trip to Alaska. They were really bad. I tried using Dawn (you know they use it to save baby ducks so it must be good), and it helped some, but didn't really get the tires back to nice black. I had bought some Black Magic Titanium tire shine a while back, but never got around to using it. I spent the first half of the day doing the 6 exposed tires on the bus and during the process I happened to get some on the anodized aluminum trim that goes down both sides of the bus. What you may not know is that this aluminum trim gets oxidized and its a real pain to get back to looking new. One of the best was is to use oven cleaner (sodium hydroxide aka drain cleaner, aka lye), but its best if you remove the trim because it can damage the paint, then you need to buff it with polish.

Back to getting some tire shine on the trim, I wasn't sure what it would do so I grabbed a clean cloth and wiped it off. Well it also wiped off (or hid, not sure) the white oxidation. I have tried numerous times to clean the oxidation in the past, but nothing simple ever worked. Not wanting to mess up the aluminum trim I waited a couple hours to see if anything visible would show up. After 3 hours to be safe I went back out to check it out, it still looked great, and I couldn't see anything negative happening.

I thought about it for a few more minutes and then said screw it, what's the worst that could happen and continued to sponge on tire shine and wipe it off with clean rags. No scrubbing no elbow grease, wipe on...wipe off. It's been over a month now and it still looks great. It looks like I've found a pretty easy way to do a quick shine on the aluminum trim on our bus, which makes me smile, because anytime something is easier than expected is a win in my book.

Oh, and the tires came out pretty good too!