Look what happened to my "praised" clay magic bar!

Well this weekend, I detailed a good friend of mine's 2000 VW jetta. I used clay and megs GC(1 oz) and water(16.9 oz) as a lube. The lube worked better than QD imo but about at the last panel i noticed the clay began to feel grainy. I tried to press the clay together to make the clay reform but it didn't work. My hand then started turning blue from the clay residue. After a few more passes the clay was sticking to the panel even with lube! This clay has been used before one time about a few weeks ago. The clay bar has been in my hands for about a month. The clay was fine the first time i used it, but i used EO QD as a lube. I don't know if the thing that ruined the clay was the soap lube or not. Many on this board use a mix like that as a lube. I am clueless. Here is a pic of the garbage clay magic...

[Guess My Name]

Hmmmmmmm...maybe a reaction to the GC soap?

I use Z wash with CM and have had no problems like you show in the pic.....I have seen that from the Mothers clay except yellow of course.

I think it has too much water in it and well it needs to dry out a bit????

[2wheelsx2]

Hmmm...I have a new block of Clay Magic I have not tried yet. But I have been using car soap (Mother's) as a lube for my Mother's clay bar for quite a while and never had this problem.

Did you throw that bar away? I am wondering if it will get back to normal after it dries out for a bit. I don't know what the composition of detailing clay is, but being a geologist, I know that with clay in soil, if it's overworked and saturated, sometimes the cohesion breaks down, but will reform normally after the moisture evaporates. Might be worth a try.

[ALAN81]

IT LOOKS LIKE MY WIFE'S COOKING!

oh yea, its in the garbage. I got pissed at it. Come to think of it it was pretty soaked in water....

[Jngrbrdman]

People have had that problem with Pinnacle Poly Clay too. The problem has always seemed to include that they used too much lube. I think you just saturated it. If you wring it out and let it sit somewhere to dry then you might get some more use out of it.

[TortoiseAWD]

I had a bar of Z-clay do something similar once; I decided it was because I was folding too much water into the clay (using Z7/water as lube) when folding/kneading to expose a new surface. The next time I clayed, I did pretty much everything the same except I made sure to dab the clay on a clean MF to soak up extra water before I folded it. No problems with the clay falling apart that time or since.

I've since switched to CM clay, and use the same technique of drying before folding, and so far (knock wood), no problems.

Tort

[4DSC]

Originally posted by ALAN81
IT LOOKS LIKE MY WIFE'S COOKING!

LOL It looks like a kid who's smushed up his blue cotton candy!

[porterdog]

I use that same exact combination with a wash-like soap/water mix and haven't had any such problems. It does look nasty! Mebbe too much soap?

R

[tomciob]

i had the same experience with meguars clay (yes the smeary one), when i ran out of their QD. it was not water in it, the clay did not return to any better shape. , so i only use meg qd now.

[Michael H]

Gold Class caused this, had similar problem when I used it. Change to another wash (for lubrication) like Zaino or Zymol which do not cause this.

[JustinTRW]

Wow, that never happened to me!

I've used QD and GC shampoo from my wash bucket (it was very dilluted though, less than .25 - .5 oz. per gallon) as a lubricant with no problems. I think in your case it was the GC shampoo. It seems to have killed it.