Detailing Clay - My new best Friend!

[LC250Trials]

I managed to pick up fine tar spatter on the bottom half of my paintwork, what a nightmare!
Not wanting to use strong soap or automotive shampoo to remove this, it seemed to just not come off.

Enter into my life Detailing clay! This is synthetic polymer clay used by professional detailers, pricey at £14 a puck but so worth it.

After a good and thorough wash, I pulled up my rolling chair, filled a spray bottle with auto shampoo and water and started. It is a careful process, but the clay will pick up any roughness and pull it into the clay, not scratching or marking your paint.

I am adding a couple of pictures of the clay after the exercise as well as the end result with added ceramic coating.

A great outcome.

 

[ultane]

Do you throw the clay away and start fresh when it looks like that?

 

[LC250Trials]

Do you throw the clay away and start fresh when it looks like that?

@ultane, I was not planning to, but I suspect it comes down to how much crud you manage to lift when using. This is all tar specs with thankfully no grit. I may just see if I give it a good working through if I can get one more use out of it. Expensive exercise otherwise...

 

[uraniumrich]

I managed to pick up fine tar spatter on the bottom half of my paintwork, what a nightmare!
Not wanting to use strong soap or automotive shampoo to remove this, it seemed to just not come off.

Enter into my life Detailing clay! This is synthetic polymer clay used by professional detailers, pricey at £14 a puck but so worth it.

After a good and thorough wash, I pulled up my rolling chair, filled a spray bottle with auto shampoo and water and started. It is a careful process, but the clay will pick up any roughness and pull it into the clay, not scratching or marking your paint.

I am adding a couple of pictures of the clay after the exercise as well as the end result with added ceramic coating.

A great outcome.
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Anytime you clay your car, you will introduce scratches. That's why any good detailer will follow up a clay bar with a paint correction. Your best (and safest way) to remove tar from paint is to use a dedicated tar remover like Tar-X. If you ever drop a clay bar on the ground, it should be replaced and not reused.

 

[amiyank]

Anyone know what the next step up is? The clay bar is not taking he roughness from my 2025 paint job. Admittedly it sat in the dealer lot for some time and most likely other lots on the way to me. Anyway I "clayed" it, and I still have those rough spots, that are on top of the paint, but did not succumb to the "Mothers" clay bar.

Is it the correction fluid mentioned above? I have some and that did a very nice job on some oxidized paint I had. I do have the blackest of black LC, that may make a difference.

 

[uraniumrich]

Anyone know what the next step up is? The clay bar is not taking he roughness from my 2025 paint job. Admittedly it sat in the dealer lot for some time and most likely other lots on the way to me. Anyway I "clayed" it, and I still have those rough spots, that are on top of the paint, but did not succumb to the "Mothers" clay bar.

Is it the correction fluid mentioned above? I have some and that did a very nice job on some oxidized paint I had. I do have the blackest of black LC, that may make a difference.

A lot depends on what is causing the rough spots. Is it some kind of contamination (think tree sap, for example) that is on the paint? If so, using something like Tar-X should remove it. If the roughness is due to oxidation in the paint, then the safest (and best) approach is to do a full paint correction using the appropriate tools. If you aren't equipped to do a paint correction yourself, then find a good detailer who will do it for you. You should expect to pay $1000+ for a proper paint correction on a vehicle the size of an LC. The swirls you see in black paint are due to micro-scratches in the clear coat. When you use a clay bar on paint, you introduce those scratches and the only way to remove them is to use a polisher and the right combination of pads and compounds. The goal should not be to get the clear coat to perfect, rather to get it to about 90% so that you remove the minimum amount of clear coat necessary to improve the overall appearance of the paint.

The pic below shows the polisher I used to correct the paint on my LC when it arrived. If you have any thougth to DIY, then keep in mind that the equipment/pads/compounds/towels are a pretty steep investment.