These here are all water-based tire shines and while they come in different colors and thicknesses, you can tell they’re water-based by their milky color and texture. These clear tire shines are solvent-based.
Water vs. Shine: What Makes Tires Glossy?
Over the years, there have been many debates over which type of tire shine is better, water-based or solvent-based. I’ll get into comparing these in another video. In this one, I’m focusing just on water-based tire shines and showing you exactly what they are and even how they’re made!
From the name, you can guess that water is the major component of water-based tire shines! But, what does water have to do with making your tires shine? As you see here, water doesn’t stay on the tire, doesn’t produce a shine, and after several minutes in the sun, the water completely evaporates.
The Role of Silicone in Water-Based Tire Shine
Water by itself does not make a good tire shine; instead, there’s something mixed in that produces the shine. In most water-based tire shines, the special ingredient is silicone! Of course, it could be some other chemical or a blend of them whether it be acrylic, ceramic, graphene or whatever the next craze is.
By the way, I’m not talking about silicone sealants you find in Home Depot. This stuff in tubes is great for bonding glass but is formulated to dry into rubber. The silicone in tire shine is chemically different and is manufactured in the form of a safe, stable, non-reactive oil.
Silicone Oil: Properties and Challenges
This is pure silicone oil. It’s crystal clear, colorless, and does a great job of sticking to surfaces making them slick and shiny. It also has strong natural abilities to repel water. While silicone oil has excellent properties to shine and protect your tires, the thickness of the oil makes it difficult to apply. You only want to apply a thin layer; too much of this stuff will attract dirt, streak, and sling all over your car!
Diluting Silicone: Water-Based vs. Solvent-Based Tire Shine
To solve the thickness problem, tire shines are formulated specifically to dilute the oil so it spreads easily, quickly and evenly on the tire in a nice, thin coat. Water-based tire shine dilutes the oil with water, which is the more eco-friendly choice while solvent-based tire shine dilutes using a chemical solvent, often petroleum distillates or something similar to mineral spirits or paint thinner.
Making Water-Based Tire Shine: The Emulsion Process
The art of making water-based tire shine can be pretty complicated and often requires specialized equipment. It starts off by first producing an emulsion of silicone oil and water.
This is silicone oil from earlier and I’m going to add water to this. No matter how fast I spin this thing, when I stop, the oil will float to the top and clump back together. Oil and water do not mix, no surprise here.
Surfactants: Keeping Oil and Water Together
The magic happens when I add a surfactant to this mixture. I’m not going to get into the chemistry of how this works, but if I add just a little dish soap to this and mix, the oil and water will temporarily stay together! Again, this is called an emulsion and it’s a pretty common process used in cosmetics, foods, construction, etcetera.
What’s happening is the propeller is breaking the oil into small droplets and the dish soap is surrounding the droplets and keeping them from clumping back together. In an emulsion, the oil doesn’t dissolve into the water. Instead, oil droplets are suspended and just floating around.
Limitations of DIY Emulsions
Unfortunately, my emulsion will only last a couple minutes since I’m not using the right surfactant nor using the right equipment. Nonetheless, this is how you make water-based tire shine! Commercial products have a lot more ingredients to stabilize and improve performance, however, my version still works!
Testing My Homemade Water-Based Tire Shine
Before I let you go, let’s spray some of this on a tire! As it sits now, this mixture is approximately a 50/50 mixture of oil and water. This is similar to the consistency of tire shine gel. To turn this into a true water-based tire shine, I’m going to water it down some more.
Notice how even though all my ingredients were clear, the tire shine is milky white? This is caused by all the oil droplets scattering light in different directions. This is the easiest way to tell if a tire shine is water-based or solvent-based.
Application and Results
Let’s give it a good shake and add 3 sprays onto the applicator pad. The dish soap makes this stuff smell pretty good. I’m just going to work this into the tire as with any other commercial product.
Let’s add 3 more sprays. The tire is looking pretty good considering my product was made in a garage! What do you guys think? Leave a comment!
Final Thoughts on Water-Based Tire Shine
It’s been about 30 minutes and the water has evaporated leaving a thin layer of silicone oil on the tire with a tad bit of dish soap. I’m pretty impressed. The coat is consistent, wet-looking, and even dry to touch.
While the tire looks great, let me show you what my tire shine looks like now. It has for the most part separated. The white layer on top will eventually turn gooey. Even though you won’t be seeing my tire shine on shelves any time soon, I hope you now have a good idea of what water-based tire shine is.
