Help with painting raised white lettering on tires

[InTheZone]

6 weeks ago, I spent five (5) hours carefully painting the raised lettering on four (4) truck tires with bright white acrylic paint...hey, acrylic won't come off your hands right? So it will surely stick to rubber, right? Well, it is already chipping off in pieces....???? What in the hell do I need to be using exactly??? Any thoughts would be appreciated...thx!!!

before you apply any paint you need to remove as much of the oils and dirt from the tire as possible. Buy yourself a tire brush with those plastic bristles and some wheel/tire cleaner.
-Wash the tire with dawn or dish soap (do not wash your car with dish soap), then rinse completely
-apply wheel cleaner to the tire and scrub with the brush until it forms suds, scrub the whole tire even if the suds turn brown
-rinse the tire off completely along with the brush, reapply tire cleaner
-repeat scrubbing and rinsing until the wheel cleaner and brush no longer turn brown/gray

do not apply car wash soap or any other kind of soap at any point after this initial step, you want the paint to bond as much as possible.

I don't know of any tire paint to recommend, but you definitely need to remove all contaminants regardless of whatever product you end up using.

This this forum, the main site sells a lot of detailing products. You can search in the upper right corner and if you click home it takes you to the store.
https://www.autogeekonline.net/forum/?s=a9f59bf02fe6fedb29e33c7b09daead4

 

[Runwildboys]

before you apply any paint you need to remove as much of the oils and dirt from the tire as possible. Buy yourself a tire brush with those plastic bristles and some wheel/tire cleaner.
-Wash the tire with dawn or dish soap (do not wash your car with dish soap), then rinse completely
-apply wheel cleaner to the tire and scrub with the brush until it forms suds, scrub the whole tire even if the suds turn brown
-rinse the tire off completely along with the brush, reapply tire cleaner
-repeat scrubbing and rinsing until the wheel cleaner and brush no longer turn brown/gray

do not apply car wash soap or any other kind of soap at any point after this initial step, you want the paint to bond as much as possible.

I don't know of any tire paint to recommend, but you definitely need to remove all contaminants regardless of whatever product you end up using.

This this forum, the main site sells a lot of detailing products. You can search in the upper right corner and if you click home it takes you to the store.
https://www.autogeekonline.net/forum/?s=a9f59bf02fe6fedb29e33c7b09daead4

............sigh............

Never mind, I'll just buy new tires.

 

[InTheZone]

............sigh............

Never mind, I'll just buy new tires.

Cleaning supplies and time needed to clean will be around $25 for 20-40 minutes of work + whatever time it takes to dry and paint. And if a quality flexible paint is used it'll last, but will definitely require touching up (I'd imagine it'll last through a few washes before it starts to fade or discolor)

This all sounds like something for a show car rather than a daily driver. If it's for the weekends you can expect touchups as frequently as monthly, but there's tire dressings out there that dry to the touch and last months, don't see why there wouldn't be something similar with colors.

But yes tires with the color already injected into the rubber compound would be the more permanent solution.

 

[InTheZone]

Found this link for different types of paints, not sure of his prep but the results will be the same, cleaner tire will result in longer times between touchups

 

[Runwildboys]

Cleaning supplies and time needed to clean will be around $25 for 20-40 minutes of work + whatever time it takes to dry and paint. And if a quality flexible paint is used it'll last, but will definitely require touching up (I'd imagine it'll last through a few washes before it starts to fade or discolor)

This all sounds like something for a show car rather than a daily driver. If it's for the weekends you can expect touchups as frequently as monthly, but there's tire dressings out there that dry to the touch and last months, don't see why there wouldn't be something similar with colors.

But yes tires with the color already injected into the rubber compound would be the more permanent solution.

I was just joking. I'm not the one who asked about it. lol

 

[InTheZone]

I was just joking. I'm not the one who asked about it. lol

thought you might've been interested in this like the OP