A YEAR? Come on now, be serious.
Yes a year.
The key to getting a year out of a tire coating, not a dressing is the same key to getting a great paint job and it all comes down to the prep work.
Here's how I prep my own tires for a tire coating
Once you get the tire clean to foam white (usually a few applications and rinsings), that's a sign the rubber is clean and you're good to go with applying a tire coating like either Tuf Shine or McKee's Tire Coating.
I started out using Tuf Shine because at the time it was the only tire coating on the market. Nick pioneered McKee's Tire Coating and had the chemist create the formula to create more shine and while I normally don't like a high shine tire dressing (because a dressing tends to be oily), I do like a high shine when the resulting surface is 100% dry to the touch. Dry and clean.
The other key to getting a year out of a tire coating is how you "touch" the coating.
When I use the word "touch" that of course means how you wash the tires because when you wash the tires "something" is going to "touch" the tires. Now if you wash your coated tires with a wire brush and Meguiar's Engine Degreaser then the coating probably won't last a year. Heck it won't last through a single wash.
If you wash your coated tires carefully, like you would wash your freshly polished and waxed/sealed/coated car paint, then it can last up to a year.
I've never went an entire year before "touching up" the tires to restore that deep, dark black wet look because I'm OCD about my truck's appearance in general. But after seeing the appearance of the coating after 6 months I'm fairly confident I could go a year but of course, after a yar the tire is not going to look the same as it would the day after you applied the coating.
The big picture here is tire coatings, when properly applied, like paint coatings, don't wear off like dressings or like car wax wears off paint. They endure better with proper washing.
My truck is down right now for repair. Actually, the repair is over, there was a crack in the frame and it's fixed. In order to fixe the crack I had to remove the engine. I installed the engine last week and now I've started the process of re-assembling all the parts back onto the engine and back into the engine bay, you know, water pump, starter motor, wiring, brake master cylinder, brake power booster, radiator, air conditioning, etc., etc., etc. It's more work than most people know plus I'm doing a little detailing as I go.
She should be back on the road in about 2 weeks. I could have her back on the road next weekend but Father's Day is going to get in the way.
When she's back on the road, it's EASILY been almost a year since I re-applied a coating to the tires. Before Nick left, he gave me a bottle of a new and improved McKee's Tire Coating so I'll machine scrub and then coat the tires and document the process.
Just to add.... from my experience with tire coatings - tire coatings are NOT for everyone and tire coatings are NOT for every type of tire.
Examples
Highly water and detergent resistant tire dressings
If someone has applied Meguiar's Endurance to a tire, any version of Endurance it's game over. I don't have the time or patience to try to remove 100% of Endurance or any tire dressing like Endurance so that the tire rubber sidewall is so surgically clean that a coating will make a proper bond. If someone has used Endurance or any tire dressing like Endurance, then I simply re-apply a normal tire dressing to their tires. Usually SONAX Gloss Tire Gel. Meguiar's aptly named their tire dressing when they named it
e-n-d-u-r-a-n-c-e.
Low profile tires
Another way of saying low profile tires is to say,
Hardly any tire sidewall
And it's just to much of a pain in the rear to try to clean and coat thin tire sidewalls. So any car I detail with thin tire sidewalls gets SONAX Gloss Tire Gel
I'm in a hurry
If I don't have the time to properly scrub a tire sidewall till the second or third application of the tire clean foam an artic white color of foam, then I just do a good job of cleaning the tire and apply SONAX Gloss Tire Gel then stick a fork in the tires aspect of a car detail and call it done. I also tell the owner what I used and recommend they stick with it as it's really nice tire dressing.
Hope the above all helps...
