Afraid to marr paint!

Mulletman44

Mulletman44

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I ordered some fine clay bars and clay bar lube and planned on claying and before I used hydro2 which I am switching to from wax, so I wanted to get all the wax off and get it clean before sealing. But I am afraid to clay bar now because all of the stuff I've seen about marring I know you generally polish after but I don't have a polisher so I won't be doing that. There's also a fair amount of overspray on a panel of my truck. What should I do go ahead and clay bar or just skip it?
 
Clay it as long as you didn't get an aggressive clay bar you should be fine. Don't need hardly any pressure. Just smooth passes. It should feel like it is grabbing and then get smooth.
 
You should be fine. No worries....just remember lots of lube!!
 
I got the fine clay bar from carpro and their clay lube! Thanks guys I'll give it a go!
 
Do a couple test spots with the clay. Fine clay may not be enough for overspray, but it's also unlikely to cause marring. If you do end up marring the paint, you could hand polish that test section out.

For an occasional user, a harbor freight DA polisher is very reasonably priced. You could get set up with a polisher, lake country polishing pads (white) and meguiars m205 for around $100.
 
IME if there is a lot of contamination - you will get the most marring. But, "claying" is a learned skill. First time I did it - I cause some marring. Now I can clay my black BMW without any marring.

I'd skip clay and get a towel or a block.
 
There are likely a lot of contaminates it's kept outside, regularly washed but it hasn't been clayed in over a year.. What is the towel and blocks your talking about? I've heard about the nano mitts
 
It is highly likely that you will leave marring in the paint from the claybar process. I mean, think about what clay is... it's essentially a micro-fine abrasive suspended in a malleable polymer "clay" block. Its purpose is to "shear" contaminates off the paint. Even if you use an excessive amount of lubricant you will probably see a few spots where the surface will be marred up.

Why don't you want to polish? It seems like you want to, and perhaps enjoy, taking care of your vehicle. Part of the proper "restore/protect/maintain" process of detailing is going to be periodically polishing the surface (even if it is just by hand).
 
I do enjoy cleaning my trucking I have done it by hand and its sucked and I haven't had much results from it and I've yet to buy a machine so until then I was just going to hold off on it.
 
Nicholas@Autowerx said:
It is highly likely that you will leave marring in the paint from the claybar process. I mean, think about what clay is... it's essentially a micro-fine abrasive suspended in a malleable polymer "clay" block. Its purpose is to "shear" contaminates off the paint. Even if you use an excessive amount of lubricant you will probably see a few spots where the surface will be marred up.

Why don't you want to polish? It seems like you want to, and perhaps enjoy, taking care of your vehicle. Part of the proper "restore/protect/maintain" process of detailing is going to be periodically polishing the surface (even if it is just by hand).
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Typically even "severe" markings from claying a car are pretty minor and with the variety of excellent polishes available today, even hand-polishing will easily remove these marks. Polishing IS worth the extra effort.
 
Use lots of lube and you wont have any issue with marring because the bar isn't insanely aggressive. If you're trying to strip off old wax so you can put something else on then use some dish soap to clean the car carefully. Note: Never do this unless you're trying to strip off an old wax otherwise you run the risk of damaging your car. Clays purpose is not to get rid of wax but rather all the other contaminants that embed themselves in the paint.
 
Mulletman44 said:
What polish would you recommend for the circumstances?
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You'll get a lot of different responses on this, but any polish is gonna suck to use without a machine. I'd recommend using Meguiar's Ultimate Polish bc no matter your experience level you can't really screw that up.
 
I believe that is the polish I have. I washed and then clayed a test spot where there was a lot of over spray it got all the overspray off and left it very smooth but did marr the paint quite a bit.. Maybe because of all the over spray I don't know but something has got onto my paint leaving it VERY rough.. Just recently so too so I guess I will be saving up for a DA probably the GG6, and then I will clay the whole truck.
 
And I also tried the polish there and it didn't help much at all but I may be doing something wrong.
 
Mulletman44 said:
I believe that is the polish I have. I washed and then clayed a test spot where there was a lot of over spray it got all the overspray off and left it very smooth but did marr the paint quite a bit.. Maybe because of all the over spray I don't know but something has got onto my paint leaving it VERY rough.. Just recently so too so I guess I will be saving up for a DA probably the GG6, and then I will clay the whole truck.
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Good first machine, if I had to do it over again, that's where I would start too!

Mulletman44 said:
And I also tried the polish there and it didn't help much at all but I may be doing something wrong.
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You're probably not doing anything wrong, it could just be that you need a machine to correct the paint. Some paints are like that.
 
Mulletman44 said:
I believe that is the polish I have. I washed and then clayed a test spot where there was a lot of over spray it got all the overspray off and left it very smooth but did marr the paint quite a bit.. Maybe because of all the over spray I don't know but something has got onto my paint leaving it VERY rough.. Just recently so too so I guess I will be saving up for a DA probably the GG6, and then I will clay the whole truck.
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How much lube were you using because you shouldn't have horrible marring.
 
Mulletman44 said:
And I also tried the polish there and it didn't help much at all but I may be doing something wrong.
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When applying polish by hand it can have no effect because its done by hand. Think about it, your hand, no matter how strong you are, can't move as fast as a machine. There are certain abrasives in polish and it takes the right amount of pressure, temperature, and speed to break them down so that they can give you the look you want to achieve. If they don't break down before the polish dries up you will just be left with a barely better looking car and a pain in the a$$ job of removing it from the car.
 
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