Review: Mother's Back to Black Tire Renew

[swanicyouth]

This is a review of Mother's Back to Black Tire Renew (B2BTR). To start, I'll be honest with you. I really don't care for most OTC products. To be fair, I haven't used many recently. I've used a few in the past (not Mothers per-se), and most I thought were just OK - but not too exciting. But, for some reason I decided I wanted to try this new B2B Tire Renew product.

Why?

Because, to me - cleaning tires is quite difficult. It's easy to scrub a tire with APC and say "it's clean"...But, in my experience, APC + no amount of scrubbing will get a tire to where I feel it's 100% clean. Mainly, the issue seems to me complete removal of old dressing plus whatever sludge turns my finger black when I run it across a tire that frequently receives dressing. So, when I saw a new product designed for the sole purpose of cleaning tires - I was interested.

In my opinion, this category is benchmarked by Tuff Shine Tire Cleaner (TSTC). It's the only stuff I've ever used that I feel completely removes all the old dressing from a tire. But, it's a bit costly, and I tend to use a lot of it. Plus, you have to scrub the tire with a brush and keep rinsing the brush with running water. The directions for B2BTR recommend using a towel (which has 8 sides folded) - so this seems like an easier method off the bat to me.

TSTC is $40 for 128oz. Since I dilute it 1:1 with water, that means I'm getting 256 oz of tire cleaner for my $40. That comes out to about 16¢ per oz (32¢ if used un-diluted). B2BTR is $7 for 24oz. It may come in gallons - bit I can't seem to find it if it does. The cost for the B2BTR is almost double at 29¢ an oz. This isn't a 100% fair comparison, because I'm comparing the gallon size of TSTC to the 24oz size (only available?) of B2BTR. Not to mention I dilute TSTC 1:1 and that is an off label use (RTU gallon). If you look at the regular bottle of TSTC it's $10 for 22oz. That makes it 45¢ an oz, or about 23¢ an oz diluted 1:1. So basically, if you use TSTC neat - it cost more than B2BTR (unless you buy the gallon of TSTC concentrate). However, if your diluting TSTC 1:1 - it's going to me cheaper than B2BTR.

This is one of the four tires I'm using it on:





This is the tire wet, but no cleaning has been done yet. As you can see - the tire is not dirty per-se. But, it has old dressing on it. The dressing is Prima Infinity which is a very durable polymer containing type dressing. It's also very hard to remove completely as I know from past attempts. I like to strip it 100% and re-apply fresh every few washes. As, no matter what traditional dressing you are using, dirt will stick to the side of the tire somewhat. And - I'm not going to apply fresh dressing over dirt.

I'm also going to be applying a different dressing after cleaning the tires - Poor Boy's Bold n Bright (BnB). Since BnB apparently also has a "cleaning" component to it, seeing how dirty my tire dressing applicator gets during application will give me another basis for judging how well B2BTR cleans the tires.

On with the review.... The interesting thing about this Mother's product is the directions recommend using a towel to clean and not rinsing the tire:

[IMG]http://img.tapatalk.com/d/14/07/31/panymu9e.jpg[/IMG

However, they do state not to let it dry and to wipe it off surrounding surfaces. This "no rinsing" idea makes me a bit nervous. Not so much for the tire, but for the wheel. When cleaning a tire, it's inevitable some of the tire cleaner will get on the wheel. How safe is this stuff for wheels? Is it on one extreme of the pH scale? Could it etch wheels if a spot dries that you miss? Dunno. Maybe Forrest could chime in here. So, in using this stuff - I decided I was going to rinse to make sure it was all gone. I would do this with any tire or wheel cleaner -it's not a drawback. It's just me doing things the way I feel is safest for me. I also am cleaning the wheel at the same time - so I'm rinsing it anyway.

The 24oz bottle of B2BTR comes with a 2 position sprayer for low and higher profile tires:

Low profile setting (note sprayer tip):

]

Higher profile setting ( " " ):



The sprayer tip has two positions (forward/backward) that adjust the spray pattern either narrow or wide. It also rotates (on/off)

First off, the sprayer works awesome. It dispenses the product perfectly. Even for a low profile tire, I was able to dispense the product almost 100% just to the tire - not the wheel. It looks like some thought went into this. It's an idea that actually works. This is what the product looks like on tire:



This stuff shoots out in a clingy nice foam that sticks to the tire. The sprayer has a good feel and modulates the product amount well. It clings a bit better than TSTC with a foaming sprayer. Also, it seems you use a bit less of B2BTR compared to TSTC. After you spray the tire with the cleaner, the directions say to wait 15 seconds and then wipe down the tire. I did that with an old Costco towel. Here is the towel after:



The old dressing seemed to be coming off the tire fairly easy. Because I'm picky, I decided to do 2 applications of the cleaner per tire. But, I found I could just do one application and add a little more cleaner to the towel and get the same results. The tire was coming quite clean. In fact, B2BTR seemed to be removing ALL the old dressing quite nicely just by using a towel (no scrubbing with a brush). I was liking this product.

Here is the tire after B2BTR. As you can see, the rubber is quite clean:







I decided to try the "rub your finger on the tire and see if black gunk comes of test" - otherwise known as the official "swanicyouth's is my tire clean? method" (SIMTC?M):



Rubbed pretty hard...no black gunk:



I pronounce these tires officially "clean" to my standards.

Now it was time to dress the tires with PB's BnB. As I mentioned, this stuff also states it can clean tires, so I was curious if a lot of black junk would come off on the applicator. Actually, at this point, I could tell it wouldn't. But, none the less...



That is the applicator after dressing ALL four tires. As you can see it's quite clean. This wasn't even the first time I've used this applicator. So, any trace amounts of dirt on it were likely already on it or from the tread of the tire (I tend to extend the dressing a bit onto the tread - but don't clean the tread).

Here is the wheel after dressing was applied:





So, as I was going along, I was wringing out my tire cleaning towel between tires. I was changing towel sides as well (folded in fours). So much black water was pouring out of the towel - you could really tell this cleaner was working well. On the very LAST tire, I didn't wring out the tire, but dropped the towel in my wheel cleaning bucket to get the towel as clean as possible before washing it (already done cleaning wheels).

Check out what it did to the water from ONE TIRE (water was fairly clear before):



It turned the water quite black with dirt. And, that is just from one tire that wasn't super dirty to begin with.

In closing, I'm really impressed with this Mother's product. It seems to work 95%+ as well as TSTC, and is a bit easier to use. Wiping the tire with a towel is a bit easier than scrubbing for me. The only reason I can't see for sure it work as well or better as TSTC is that I KNOW TSTC can get a tire 100% clean, if not the Tuff Shine coating will fail. I just don't have a test or enough experience yet with the Mother's product to say that yet. But for all intents and purposes - it seems just as good.

As for the price, there are variables when comparing it to TSTC. It depends how you use TSTC and what size of it you buy. I'm really hoping Mothers offers this tire cleaner in a gallon - because it would likely be the best deal out there for a really top notch tire cleaner. Even as it stands, I will continue to use this stuff just because it works so well.

Porky Pig - That's All Folks! (1938 Original In Color!) - YouTube

[EVOlved]

Awesome review!!

P.S. You have one broken IMG link in there.

[swanicyouth]

Awesome review!!

P.S. You have one broken IMG link in there.

Ouch. Missed the edit window.

Thanks!

This is the missing image:

[dpk20x]

You know I was thinking about picking up a bottle of this to use during the winter for my rinseless washes. But then I forgot all about it. Thanks for the reminder and for the excellent review. Will be adding a bottle to my next cart.

[allenk4]

Very nice review

[trekkeruss]

Thanks for the review. I'm wondering though what would have happened if you followed up the B2BTR with TSTC; if TSTC would have indeed pulled out even more.

[forrest@mothers]

On with the review.... The interesting thing about this Mother's product is the directions recommend using a towel to clean and not rinsing the tire.

However, they do state not to let it dry and to wipe it off surrounding surfaces. This "no rinsing" idea makes me a bit nervous. Not so much for the tire, but for the wheel. When cleaning a tire, it's inevitable some of the tire cleaner will get on the wheel. How safe is this stuff for wheels? Is it on one extreme of the pH scale? Could it etch wheels if a spot dries that you miss? Dunno. Maybe Forrest could chime in here. So, in using this stuff - I decided I was going to rinse to make sure it was all gone. I would do this with any tire or wheel cleaner -it's not a drawback. It's just me doing things the way I feel is safest for me.

It's a waterless tire cleaner - using water will only dilute it and decrease its performance.

The product will not damage a wheel. That said, you don't want to let it (or any cleaner) dry on the wheel or tire.

Spray it on, let dwell the appropriate amount of time and wipe off.

[dad07]

Great review Steve! for folks doing waterless or rinseless washes this is a great product.

I have had the results as you with using this product and I really like it! altho when doing a more traditional wash (2 bucket) I reach for another great Mothers product their Foaming tire and wheel cleaner..........LOVE this stuff.

[FrankS]

Excellent review! The tire came out looking very nice with the BnB dressing.

[cleanmycorolla]

Nice review. Makes me want to try it now.