Brown tires - can't fix

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Hawk75

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Hey all - hoping someone has a good solution for this. I put new BFG KO2s on the wrangler back in August. After a month or so I started getting the browning on the tires. Not a big deal, I've dealt with it before on new tires. I started with just dawn soap and water and a tire brush as that has normally worked. No luck, actually I think it made it worse. Ok I thought, time to go to the tire cleaners. I went through Mother's, Armor all, and Turtle wax bottles of tire cleaners with no luck. At this point the tires had been washed 5-6 times and I've used 5 bottles of cleaner with no results. I gave up and put a light coating of VRT to get them black again. Looked good, figured maybe the gases would work themselves out. Since that episode, the browning has come back about every few months as the VRT has worn off. I've reapplied the VRT a couple times, but now they are browning again.

Shouldn't the browning and gassing process be done now? What else am I supposed to use to fix this?
 
You mentioned Mothers. Did you use this specific Mothers tire cleaner?
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If your tire is STILL brown after thorough scrubbing and cleaning, then its not because its dirty. The rubber compound and conditioners in your specific tires are just formulated in such a way that they are causing a more brown-ish appearance.

Unfortunately there isn't anything you can do about it.

The best you can hope for is that if you continue with a regular maintenance of cleaning the tires with a quality tire cleaner (NOT dish soap!!!) and maybe, just maybe in time the brown color becomes less brown.
 
Hawk75 said:
Yep that's the one
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What brush are you using to scrub?

IME especially when tires are new you sometimes really have to go at them to get that initial film off them. If you have a Tuff Shine Tire Brush or similar they tend to work best at it.

Spray the tire, scrub, spray again, scrub then rinse. Or if it was me I’d go 3 rounds of spray & scrub before rinsing once and repeat at least twice. After the 3rd time of scrubbing and rinsing you should hopefully start seeing the rubber turn a deep clean black.

Sometimes you’ll literally see that brown film peeling off as you’re scrubbing it with that Mothers tire cleaner. If that somehow doesn’t work Stoners Tarminator would be my next bullet, but the Mothers should work better leaving the tires properly clean & black.
 
Tuff Shine tire cleaner got the film off my new tires and left their white walls nice and bright. Set aside plenty of time for scrubbing.
 
Eldorado2k said:
What brush are you using to scrub?

IME especially when tires are new you sometimes really have to go at them to get that initial film off them. If you have a Tuff Shine Tire Brush or similar they tend to work best at it.

Spray the tire, scrub, spray again, scrub then rinse. Or if it was me I’d go 3 rounds of spray & scrub before rinsing once and repeat at least twice. After the 3rd time of scrubbing and rinsing you should hopefully start seeing the rubber turn a deep clean black.

Sometimes you’ll literally see that brown film peeling off as you’re scrubbing it with that Mothers tire cleaner. If that somehow doesn’t work Stoners Tarminator would be my next bullet, but the Mothers should work better leaving the tires properly clean & black.
Click to expand...

Using the tuff shine tire brush. Went 1 round with the Mothers before I ran out. Switched to the Turtle Wax Hybrid solutions tire cleaner, 2 bottles and did 2 rounds on each tire. Crazy but if there was any improvement it was minimal. Had some basic TW tire cleaner in garage so tried that as well. That's when I gave up and put on the VRT. Supposed to be nice this weekend here in Iowa so maybe I'll give it a go again. frustrating
 
Bill D said:
Tuff Shine tire cleaner got the film off my new tires and left their white walls nice and bright. Set aside plenty of time for scrubbing.
Click to expand...

Thanks. Haven't seen that in the local stores, I'll look online to order.
 
Hawk75 said:
Using the tuff shine tire brush. Went 1 round with the Mothers before I ran out. Switched to the Turtle Wax Hybrid solutions tire cleaner, 2 bottles and did 2 rounds on each tire. Crazy but if there was any improvement it was minimal. Had some basic TW tire cleaner in garage so tried that as well. That's when I gave up and put on the VRT. Supposed to be nice this weekend here in Iowa so maybe I'll give it a go again. frustrating
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Get a tire brush that fits a drill. Will save you a lot of time and energy. If using Tuff Shine..scrub till the foam is white and not brown.
 
This sucks. I feel for you. You went and bought the tires you wanted and so far this has happened. Well if the so called proper cleaners can’t get results, maybe it’s time to test the hard stuff. LA’s Totally Awesome, straight undiluted.

They say Dura Shine Tire Cleaner that comes with their tire coating kit works amazing. I’ve never tried it though.
 
Awesome and Tarminator may be the two heavy hitters.
 
If you have browning appear after repeated cleanings, one after the other or having it return quickly, you are not only stripping off the dirt and grime, but also the anti-ozone and UV protectants within the rubber itself. Continue slamming the sidewall with aggressive degreasers and that has the effect of speeding up the rate of decline, and make the browning come back sooner. Some tires are more prone to this than others, and owing to the fact those tyres have a large sidewall surface, you have a larger area for these substances to rise to up to.

Naturally, you can keep hitting them with cleaners, but it's a law of diminishing returns. I would clean twice, maybe three times at the most, then dress them and call it good.
 
Like I posted previously, the issue isn't TIRE CLEANING. It isn't about using a specific tire brush or this brand or that brand tire cleaner.

It has to do with the rubber compound formulation.

I've personally experienced this years ago when we had our minivan. OEM Yoko tires. This brown appearance NEVER went away despite the tire being regularly scrubbed clean.

I just had to live with it. And sadly, so will you. :(


this is a clean tire (white foam) and just rinsed with water
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Agreed with it may just be your tire compound.

But if you wanna give one final effort nothing cleans a tire better, faster and easier than a drill brush.

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I used a different Mother's product, their Wheel and Tire Cleaner, and found it to do a really good job on knocking out the browning. Surprisingly so.

At the time I was using Maguire's Hot Shine Tire Dressing and it would brown a tire in a heartbeat. Nothing I did would remove the brown until I tried the Mothers totally by accident. First application the brown ran right off in rivers of nasty brown foam. Two application of the stuff and moving to a different dressing eliminated the problem.

EDIT: It's a pretty strong product, so just be careful with it if you use it. I'd wear gloves and not let it sit on the wheels too long.
 
Yeah, it's funny how some tire compounds are more prone to browning (I have found winter tires and the "snowflakes-on-the-mountain" all-seasons to be especially prone), and how some dressings also promote browning (especially the oil-based ones as Desertnate noted above). I think it was also mentioned that caustic cleaners also seem to pull the ozonant (which is what causes the browning) out of the rubber, creating a vicious circle.
 
I'm to the point now where I'll clean them 2 or 3 times, apply the dressing and call it a day.
 
Yeah, back when I had more energy and was washing every week, I would just wash the tire, and if it was still kinda brown looking, I would just dress it over the browning which would usually look ok until the next wash, depending on the rain. Of course winter they would get pretty brown looking. I coated the tires on one car back a few months ago, so they are holding up well this winter.
 
I've found off-road tyres just keep browning up no matter how much you clean them. I've used what is regarded as a good tyre cleaner, TWHS Hyper Foam, for a while now, and I used to go 2 or 3 times in a row and still get brown coming off them, in smaller amounts each time, but still enough that I could keep going at it. I think, as stated earlier, it could be in the compound, and that compound is related to the purpose, and size, of off-road rubber. I now only go over them once, to remove any external contamination, then dress them if I feel like it. The below pic is the inside of a Yokohama G015 off my FJ Cruiser. They've never been cleaned, and never been dressed, I had them off for a rotation, so I thought why not clean them. I didn't dress the inside, that would have been a step too silly for me, but I did do the outside, because they looked like they needed it. It's a personal thing, but I think off-road vehicles look silly with super glossy dressed tyres, I like a natural clean rubber look, which is hard to get with all the brown showing up as the tyres age.
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