Why should I use a clay bar treatment for my car?
A clay bar is a synthetic plastic putty used to remove various forms of debris. Using a clay bar treatment for your car is an important follow-up after you finish washing and drying it. Oftentimes, there are many foreign contaminants that remain on the surface of your car even after washing and drying, due to them being deeply embedded in the car body or from accumulating over an extensive period of time. These foreign materials like fine dirt, bug splat, industrial fallout, road tar, among other harmful substances are bad for your car body since they’re corrosive and if left untreated can leave spots on the car body that are susceptible to rusting. In addition, it’ll cause any wax coats that could be applied to your car to wear out faster and not shine as well as they could. Lastly, if you were to polish your car body without removing any of the rough contaminants that are already on it, then you may leave irreversible scratches on the car body. With a clay bar treatment we can safely remove these substances without harming your car since clay bars are non-abrasive and won’t scratch your car body.
Not all clay bars work the same. Depending on how often you clay your car and your car body’s condition, we’ll select a clay bar customized for your car’s needs. If your car has low levels of contamination since it's fairly new, then we’ll use a light-duty clay bar. If your car has more resilient levels of contamination from your daily commutes, then we’ll use a medium-duty clay bar. Finally, if your car has never been through a clay bar treatment before then that means there’s a large amount of contamination that’s been built up over time and we’ll need to use a heavy-duty clay bar.
So now that you know why you need to use a clay bar treatment for your car, let’s break down how we do a clay bar treatment.
First we break up the clay bar into three or four smaller pieces. For each piece, we apply a small amount of clay bar lubricant. This makes it easier for the clay bar to glide over the surface of your car body without pushing the foreign contaminants deeper into it. It’s worth noting that the lubricant that we use is designed to work in conjunction with the clay bar and gives the clay bar a more seamless flow regardless of the car body’s surface. Then we rub the clay over a section of the surface of the car body in a back-and-forth motion, keeping track of how dirty the clay bar gets.
This is because clay bars collect contaminants rather easily and we don’t want to keep scrubbing the same section with a dirty clay bar since we’d be rubbing dirt back into the car body. Once we finish up a particular section with our clay bar, we wipe it down using a microfiber towel. At this point, your car’s exterior should be as smooth as butter and any rough spots that are leftover will be clayed over again to ensure a flawless finish.