The wonders of shoe polish!

earthvspace4XTuUWcX

Posted this build in the Your Bikes section a few months ago. Was happy with it apart from the side walls of the Vittoria tubs. They were a much paler yellow colour than I was expecting. (even more so than they appear in the photos). Was thinking of trying some tyre paint from Halfords to make them all black, but then had a brain wave and opended up an old tin of Kiwi ´Burgundy Bordeaux´ shoe polish.
Hey presto!
From this:


to this:


Result!

rower63

Work firewall prevents me from seeing the images, but seriously, shoe polish on bike tyres? :shock: :shock: It'll do wonders for your grip and your braking. As long as you never ride it, you should be fine.

andrewjoseph

shoe polish contains petrol chemicals i think. won't the the rubber any good either.

MountainMonster

Oh the things people do in the search for aesthetics.

imposter2.0

Great - they now look like Conti GPs from the 1990s. Strange thing to do...

rolf_f

Well that beggars belief!

TheHound

So you had some nice classy gumwall tyres... And made them look crap and dirty?

Each to their own I suppose.

dodgy

First picture looks best, sorry. Did you also use shoe polish on your saddle? Please tell me you used shoe polish on your saddle.

Wunnunda

Something tells me the OP wasn't expecting this kind of response...

robbo2011

Well in my opinion, the darker tyres are far less offensive to look at than those horrible tan wall things. I would have just bought some new black tyres though...

Philly8mt

Sorry .... Much prefer option one

term1te

I quite like the look of the darker sidewalls on that bike, but they looked fine in the original too. I've just bought some Vittoria tubs for a retro wheel build (Ambrosio Nemesis on Campagnolo Croce d'aune hubs) because they have tan sidewalls.

I'm not convinced of the wisdom of waxing your tyres though, skis yes, tyres, not sure.

I have however successfully used shoe polish to fix an annoying squeak that was coming from my Sidi shoes. Some polish applied under the strap with the ratchet worked a treat.

navrig2

Shoe polish on rubber........ not a great idea. Did you avoid the rims?

First photo looks much better. I can barely see the sidewalls on the second.

N0bodyOfTheGoat

Black Hammerite would have been better.

team47b

I think tan walls look wrong with black rims because visually you see a black tyre, a tan wall, a chrome braking surface and a black rim - too many bands of colour.

A black tyre would look best as you would get a black/silver/ black combination.

Needs more chrome