Sonus Gray vs Green Clay

[crew219]

Not sure why my original post was moved to the autopia carcare forum, since it is a discussion of the two products.

Anyways here is a repost of the other thread.

I've been using Sonus green clay for quite awhile and love it, except that it tends to break down and isn't very aggressive. I opted to try the gray clay since autopia ran out of the green clay, and wholly regret it.

The vehicle is an 06 Audi A3, brilliant red, and meticulously cared for. Very little marring, swirling & etc present.

Reading about the marring issues with the gray clay, I took precaution and gently warmed it up in a warm water bath and kneaded it carefully. I used sonus glyde lubricant and went over the paint with very little pressure.

Same panel, same conditions before claying. Surface was washed twice with Eagle One car wash and Sonus Gloss shampoo. Here are the results

Sonus Green:


Sonus Gray:


Needless to say, I will be using the sonus green clay for the rest of the detail and returning the gray clay.

Dave

[toyotaguy]

dont know if you can return the gray as its used, and it has its purpose in the detailing world AND its clearly stated as a medium duty grade clay....you just bought the wrong thing IMO

I use and love the gray for those cars I do (typically white ones) that have A LOT of oxidation, fallout, etc where other clays will take 3 hours to remove it all. It does scuff like crazy, but when you are going to do a 2-3 step polish job, its not a problem as the scuffing usually comes out with a single pass of a light polish...

i have too many bars of the gray, otherwise I would buy it off you

[BMW335i]

Ouch..Yeah, Sonus Grey is widely known to cause marring. You didn't need that clay, IMO.

[crew219]

Any recommendations for a slightly more aggressive clay than the sonus green but doesn't cause marring? I'm thinking I might try clay-magic blue again. Used to use it with fairly good results.

Fortunately with IP + PO106FF I was able to remove all the marring caused by the sonus gray, but it added about 2 hours to my detail.



Dave

[Accumulator]

crew219- Glad you got the marring out, maybe you can look at it as having been motivation (however unappreciated ) to improve the finish.

If the ClayMagic worked for you I'd just go back to that for those "medium strength" clayings. I use the discontinued SmartWax/KEL clay and if I didn't have that I'd probably go with the ClayMagic or *maybe* go back to the Griot's/Mother's (which I ended up disliking after having tried the earlier/milder versions of the Sonus gray).

Umpteenth repeat: I wish David would have them go back to the milder formulation of the Sonus gray, but then I'm not running the world...

But now that you have things all nicely detailed, I bet you can get by with the Sonus Green. I haven't used/needed anything stronger on most of my vehicles for years and the only times I *did* need something stronger I could've just used a solvent/paint cleaner if I'd been willing to redo my LSP.

[AMDin93103]

I appreciate the mild aggressiveness of the Sonus grey. Mind you, I do use this in professional applications but very rarely do I clay and not polish thereafter. The time it takes for anything to adhere that steadily to the paintwork will usually produce minor defects that need addressing anyways.

I find the marring left by the grey to be a better alternative than either not removing all the contamination or spending twice as long with a less harsh product. Rust Blooms (for example) are impenetrable by only the Grey Sonus or a similarly aggressive clay. In my experience these scuffs can be removed easily with an extremely gentle polish; Final Polish II and a green pad around 1200 or Intensive Polish with a green pad on 5.

As Accumulator stated, maintain it by occasionally spotting with the Sonus Green. In your case, I would keep the Grey around to prep for the once or twice per year all out polish. There are a lot of "tools" out there and if something isn't good for a certain task, it will typically excel at another.