As many of you know, I’ve been super happy with Tuf Shines tire dressing for many of the reasons listed here in my how to video, and here with my review of their tire dressing. Well they have been reworking the black restore product and sent me some to test out, now if you know me I take my time in testing.  I’ve been accused of taking too long but for me its about making sure my opinion is well tested.  I try my best to be creditable for the long haul and not just part of the hype.  I digress, so this newer formulation is much blacker than the first, and works equally as well.  What exactly is black restore?  Its based on the same make up as the tire dressing/coating except it has a UV stable dye mixed in that does not separate.  I’ve used it on my tires to give them a more matte finish, and it really darkens them up and if you wanted to give a sheen to them afterwards, just apply the clear tire dressing.  What I haven’t tested is multi layering of the products on each other, much like an Oreo (black restore, clear, black restore, clear), maybe that can be tested later, but at present the black restore topped with the tire dressing/coating yielded no negative effects after several months of use.  So in hypothetical theory it should be fine, but I’m of the school of thought that reality can trump theory, thus I test.

Since it worked so well for my tires I’ve been looking for other surfaces to test this combo on.  Each year I sponsor detailing sessions for a car that that is given away in a raffle for the largest multi day car show in Utah, The Cache Cruise In.  Well this years car has step-ups on the running boards, I think some of the old timers called them stomp pads.  These have a rubberized material that runs the length of the running board, and in this case wasn’t looking too shabby, but lacked the bright black look they wanted for the car.  Since the rubber was something people might, would and could step on it couldn’t be dressed with a silicone based dressing that would make it very slick and cause a fall.  The first product I thought of was Black Restore by Tuf Shine as it wouldn’t be any more slippery than the un-coated rubberized material yet it needed to be durable as it would be stepped on and they wanted it a deep rich black color.  In this review you will see photo of before, with just the black restore, and black restore coated with tire clear coat.

I’m in the process of trying to test this on cars with lots of black trim, like a Mini Cooper that needs a restoration level project.

Enjoy the photos and shoot away with questions if you have them.  More over I suggest you do some testing of your own and report back.

I just had to throw a photo of the tuf shine tire coating on the car!  That is two coats of product.  Sexy!

Here is the cleaned BUT nothing else, look of the black rubber that was going to get super black.

Applying the coating to the area, you can notice that I was a bit sloppy in the application as I got some on the metal stomp area, it removed easily with a damp cloth.  I did have to remove some that I missed after it dried, a finger nail scrape took it off the metal.  You will want to wear gloves, the kits comes with them, if not you will have black dyed fingers and nails until you scrub the bejeebbers out of them!

You can see how much darker the black rubber has become, at this point it just black restore on there……….a non sheen black look.

At this point I wanted the black to pop a bit more so I top coated the black restore with the tire clear-coating (only one application to keep from building up too much sheen)

Cheers,

Greg Nichols

Reflections Detailing of Utah