How often should you clay?

[BMW645]

Hello, I use Collinite wax on my car. It's been over a month, and the car still beads really good. Now, I've noticed that there's some bumps in the surface that a clay bar would scoop up.



So my question is, how long do I wait before I clay my car? It seems kind of a waste to undo all the wax work just to get out a few invisible debri. Yet, I want to add another layer of wax on my car, and I wonder if it would be a waste to add another layer, when I got invisible debri on my car!



Collinite is still doing a fine job. How often should you clay your car?



any advice would be great. thanks.

 

[Accumulator]

I spot-clay with every wash. If you clay "properly" (i.e., *gently*) you won't remove much, if any of your LSP. I had 476S on my wife's Audi last winter, and numerous clayings didn't compromise it one bit. As long as you think of it as "claying the contamination off the LSP" as opposed to "claying the LSP off the paint" you should be fine. In fact, I just clayed the bugs/etc. off the same car after her latest roadtrip to/from TN. The claying didn't do a thing to the #16 I have on there now.



The *BEST* clay for this sort of work is the new green Sonus stuff. It's exactly the right product, made just for this. It won't remove Collinite unless you do something *very* unusual. It barely removed Meg's #5 glaze when I experimented with it.



Besides the spotclaying at every wash, I always do a full claying before refreshing my LSP. Again, I'm very gentle about it and it doesn't remove the existing LSP.