I've seen several people make mention of the elusive "clay bar"...can anyone explain exactly what it is, what it does, where to get one or two, and if there are drawbacks to using one? Basically looking for "Clay Bars for Dummies" summary...

Thanks....

 

Clay bars have been used by professonial detailers for awhile now but have been a growing favorite by a lot of consumers. Clay removes dirt such as rail dust, brake dust, and other such dirt embedded into the paint's surface. You can find clay bars in a package by Mothers or clay magic at your local autozone or strauss. Some drawbacks from using clay bars is that it is very sticky and when not used properly may leave a residue that a pain in the a$$ to remove. you can do a search on autopia.org and they'll have tons of threds on using clay.

 

I never had residue problems when I used mothers clay bar. the key is to always have it wet with the quick detailer spray

 

agreed... a slippery surface is key for the clay bar

 

I didn't say mothers caused residue and I did say that it would cause residue if not used properly, ie. not using enough lube.

 

a) Don't work outside of a 2'x2' area for claying. You don't want to fatigue yourself while claying.

b) As guapsnaman said, put down a moderate amount of lubricant. Some bars will actually disintegrate if too much lube is used. A trick I have used is to clay the car while it's still wet after the final rinse. This is a huge time saver.

 

Once again, another situation in life where not using enough lube can be a pain in the ***

 

When I did mine i did it right after i washed the car so it was still wet but I also used the quick detailer. Im real glad i tried clay, it wasnt a hard job at all and it made the paint soooooo smooth!!!



-Steve

 

So on the final rinse when washing with Dawn. Just leave the car wet and spray clay lube on the surface then rub the clay across the surface then dry???

 

Nope. Just start claying after the final rinse. The last time I clayed the '02, I just went at it after the rinse without using the QD or clay lube. Got the same smooth results and saved a lot of time.

 

So you didn't dry your car at all before clay-barring?

 

Nope. Still worked nicely.

 

noo....the water adds to the lubrication process....after the car is clayed, u rinse the car down and then dry it...THEN apply your waxes...

 

Thanks guys.

 

Actually, NT, this is what I did:

After the final rinse, I clayed with the Clay Magic bar a section at a time. Since there was no residue, a second rinse was not necessary.
After the clay, I dried it with a MF.

After that process, I followed up with S100.

 

On the back of the packaging of the Mothers clay kit it says not to use water

I did manage to get some of that residue and yes, I was being cheap on the detailing spray and didn't apply enough.. Not enough lube may also leave many swirl marks.

 

will the clay bar remove hard water spots from being transferd back to the states from hawaii

 

Not alone. You will need to follow it up with a polish such as Klasse AIO.

 

http://www.autopia.org/forums/showth...threadid=14212

 

What do you mean when washing with Dawn ?? Are we talking about dish soap?

 

What he means is that Dawn, yes the dish washing soap, is a good wax stripper. So when you wash your car with Dawn, the old wax will be stripped and now you can clay bar your car and apply some new wax.

 

interesting , I didnt know that. My friend uses Dawn regularyly to just wash his car . Ill be sure to let him know why his car looks like crap.

 

yea its normally best to clay after the easier dirt has been removed, perfect opportunity to attack the harder ones after a good wash

 

How does this sound:

Start with dirty car with old wax, etc:

1.) wash car with water and dawn
2.) quickly dry car (does anyone use "The Absorber" to dry??)
3.) Clay bar the car
4.) re-wash with regular car soap
5.) dry again
6.) apply polish, apply wax, apply 2nd or more coats of wax

does this sound like a good plan?

 

IMHO, the second wash is not necessary after claying unless you have a lot of clay residue (that can be removed by spraying the lube over the residue and wiping with a soft towel or MF). Otherwise, you have a pretty good plan. What are the products you are going to use for this process?

 

products i have right now:

1.) dawn
2.) absorber
3.) clay magic clay bar with detail spray
4.) not too sure what kind I have...just something from KMart (i think turtlewax)
5.) absorber again
6.) polish: Klasse AIO
wax: four star platinum (www.4starplatinum.com is the website i guess)

the reason I wash a second time is because the detail spray and clay leave a nasty residue on the paint after it dries...I didnt want to have any other greasy substance on there before the wax. maybe its not necessary then?

also...i remember reading somewhere about "glaze." What exactly does "glaze" do and how would one fit it into the above "plan" for detailing?

 

sorry for the double post, but I just remembered my other question:

Lets say you wash the entire car, polish and apply one coat of wax, and then it becomes night and you're tired as hell after all that work. You want to apply more coats of wax to build them up, but you dont have the energy to do it right there and then. How best can one go about adding more coats after a few days? I would think that after a few days, there woudl definately be some dirt on the surface that could harm the paint if you just started to wax it without washing it. However, if you washed it without soap, you probably wont get that dirt off, and if you DID use soap, that would destroy whatever work you had done originally (polish and wax would be broken up and you would be back where you started). How do others on here wait a few days and then add another few coats of wax?

 

Wash it with one of those "Car Wash" things, since they won't remove the wax that you have. If you want to start from scratch then use Dawn.

 

Okay, your plan sounds fine as-is for the most part.

1) You should be buffing off the detailing spray (that's what that "lube" is) when you're done claying a small area. I imagine the instructions should say this anyway. Detailing spray won't interfere with polishing (what Prinz said).

2) Since you're using Klasse, using a glaze does NOT fit into the plan anywhere. That step is only compatible with carnauba-like waxing routines.

3) Washing with properly mixed (or slightly weaker) car wash shampoo will not be harmful to your work, which leads me to...

4) .....what product are you exactly using after Klasse AIO? If you're using the Platinum Ultimate Paint Protection then you should NOT apply more than one coat in one day anyway (probably true for any wax really). It's not going to hurt anything, but with synthetic waxes like Platinum you should wait at least a day between coats to let it "cure".

By the way, if you are using UPP and also are going to use the Platinum Pre-cleaner, it's redundant with AIO. Skip one of them if this is the case.

By the way 2 I hope your paint isn't too bad swirl/scratch/oxidation wise, because AIO/plat. are too gentle to really fix much...

 

Thanks for the clarifications. I guess whatever I have right now should be fine for the car. Yes, all I have is Klasse AIO and Ultimate paint protection. I guess I will chop-out the extra step, and go straight from dawn to clay bar stuff, and then straight to the AIO. That should save a lot of time!

My friend and I plan to get together to "assemly line" two of our cars...hopefully we can finish two vehicles in one day faster than one person doing one vehicle.

Anyhow, I must also thank you for the advice of doing one coat per day of wax...I didnt know that you had to wait at least a day between coats. This should really save some time and save the arm muscles.

Finally, my car is black and the swirl marks arent too bad. You say that AIO/UPP are quite "delicate." Can you recommend a pair (polish/wax) that are much more rugged? Are you saying that this combo will not last as long, and also, by "delicate," do you mean that this combo is the least abrasive? (or are you saying BOTH?) I would prefer to use the least abrasive polish/wax.

 

I never said "delicate" I said "gentle", and by that I mean that AIO won't be able to take out a lot of swirls because it's not very abrasive as a prep product. UPP is the protection product and is non-abrasive AFAIK.

People are always scared about using abrasives (one of the selling points of Zaino I might add), but you can't really have your cake and eat it too. To get rid of swirls you have to polish them out with an appropriate strength abrasive. You could try covering them up, but this usually only helps the finest and lightest of them, and is temporary.

I don't know how durable UPP is, but it should give you a couple months at least as a guess.

 

well stillen_i30 forgot to mention that we do have 3M swirl mark remover... would this be okay to use?
plus: should we use an orbital polisher (not buffer) everything (if we can get our hands on one)?

 

We? I guess you're working on this together then...

3M SMR is a good, if somewhat milder prep stage to do before AIO/UPP. If you have it I would definitely use it, but you have to really work the product in to get results from it. By hand SMR is very gentle so if you have anything worse than "mild" swirls don't expect too much.

If you have access to an orbital, I would at least attempt to use it even if it's not a Porter Cable... what make/model is it? Also, I'm just curious - what do you think the difference between a "polisher" and a "buffer" is?