you guys do it your way. ill do it mine. it works excellently for me and if it doesnt for you then congrats.

back in forth or in circles doesnt honestly matter because when i buff I use the rubbing compound which has a different effect than the clay bar and quik detailer. so ill keep doing it my way. just helpin the guy out who asked for it

 

most clay bar kits will come with quick detailer in them. especially if you buy them at autozone or somewhere. but yeah, just read the directions and you should be fine. its basically just wash car, spray with lube and rub clay bar over surface and dry. you will need to knead the clay every couple of panels to get a clean side. and then top with a wax after you are done.

 

I clay bared the crap out of my car and didn't see much difference. Just my experience.

 

Why the hostility? I was just giving MY OPINION on minimizing the swirls that can be produced when claying the car after the wash.


I understand that you rub out any swirls after claying the car but save yourself some time and use a back and forth motion just in case you drag a particle across the paint and lightly scratch the paint. Might save a little time in the end and line scratches IMO are easier to get out than swirls and compounding a car all the time will reduce the amt of clear over time and risk burning thru the paint. Your way is fine and it was just a suggestion to the OP that asked the question

 

Many times you wont see the difference but use the back of your hand and feel the paint and if it is not super slick go over the area until it is with the quik detailer and the clay....... again JMO

 

Always claybar in straight lines, never circles. clay in the shade, and wipe off any lubricant before it dries. Use a fine POLISH/machine polish, NOT A RUBBING COMPOUND, to remove any light swirls or scratches. If scratches persist, go to a more aggressive polish, (again NOT A RUBBING COMPOUND!) then finish with your original fine polish before waxing/sealing.

Learn how to wash/dry your car to prevent scratches in the future.(these 2 things cause 90% of scratching/swirling on your car)....you are your paint jobs worst enemy!

.....see the Sticky on how to
wash
dry
clay-bar
polish
wax/seal your paint.

^^^^^^detailing should be done in THAT order.

 

thanks musicheadt

 

Wash your car first using the two bucket wash system when finished then dry.

Take your clean hand and rub across your paints surface to see if you feel any bumbs sticking above the surface, if so you have what is called above surface bonded contaminants and then you need to clay.

I use the meguiars system which comes with a quik detail,2) clay bars,a micro-fiber towel and a sample of their cleaner/wax.

Take out a piece of clay and kneed it into like a little mini pancake, mist some quik detailer onto the clay bar and the area your working on (no bigger then an 18X18"section )and then rub back n forth or circles really doesn't matter because it's not going to scratch the paint.

Rub surface until it becomes smooth as glass and move on to a new area do a small section and then rub the residue off with a clean micro-fiber towel. Then when finished with that section move on and/or check the clay and see what was sanded off or pulled into it's self from your paint's surface, if dirty then just fold into it self and kneed to exspose a fresh side and use over again, should be able to do an average car about 3 times or until you can no longer exspose a clean side, and always pick out the larger particles that's stick in the clay.

When you start to use clay put your finger tips slightly over the edge of your clay bar so your wont be applying more pressure in the center of your clay bar and rubbing holes in or having to rekneed more often. when you put your finger tips over the edge of your clay what your doing is forcing yourself to put even pressure over the face of your fingers and claying longer and less kneeding.

You will no doubt use up about the whole bottle of quik detail provided in the meguiars kit or any other for that matter to clay your car one time the right way, the quik detail is lubricant for the clay and an important step so don't try to conserve because then you will streak clay on your surface and then introduce more labor into your work to try and remove the streaks. You can stop by at most dollar general or dollar stores and pick up some quik detail pretty cheap as well as the wal-marts.

One last thing, don't throw away your old clay or if you drop it, instead label it for glass or chrome.(you can clay any smooth flat surface, like glass and even your chrome rims. I do the same thing but will label the containers or jars so as to not use the old clay on paint. I like to use the old used up meguiars blue mild cay for chrome and the old used up aggressive clay for glass and windshields. And that goes for the meguiars fine smooth surface clays as well.

Hope I've help shed some light to this important step on the claying process, after all the most important step for creating gloss, deepth and bringing out the richness of color is to spend a lot of your time during the paint cleaning, and claying is very important in this process before a cleaner or cleaner/polish, because a compound is way to aggressive for a finish that don't need it, and after all if a light cleaner polish doesn't bring the finish back you can always go up in the aggressivness but if you start with something way to aggressive and remove to much clearcoat or paint then you just took away your paints uv protection and in short while a repaint will be in order.

So always do a test spot( a 16"X16" area and use a piece of blue painters tape to help show the before and after difference,lay down a piece of blue painters tape and then lay down a micro-fiber towel down on half of the tape so you can use another piece of tape to help hold the micro-fiber towel down on the first piece of tape so as not to sling any product over on the other side,so when your done just remove the micro-fiber towel and tape slowly and then look at the difference of your produces being used to see if that's the right combonation of products) on the products you will be using to see if you can make that little 16"X16" area look good then you know that you can and will make the whole car look good!

Hope I've help on a few different things.

LATER

 

Awesome post man thanks a bunch.
that is just the kind of detail I was looking for.