which one 1st: claying or cleaner?

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97 bonneville/98 Z71
Which one do you do first: clay or use a cleaner of somekind to get rid of scratches? If you clay first, do you wash the vehicle afterwards or do you just go on to the next step?
 
Clay first, then use the cleaner. Claying sometimes causes minor scratches, more noticable on dark colours.



After claying I rinse the car with water, dry and apply the cleaner. It still have smudges from the clay but the cleaner removes those with no problems.
 
When you're working on an heavily oxidized car, you better us a paint cleaner first, or you'll need some clay bars cause they'll get too dirty too soon.



After cleaning and claying, you can better evaluate the surface and decide what to do next, SMR or polish or whatever.
 
If the paint is heavily oxidised, a paint cleaner is a waste of effort, you need to use a cutting compound instead. After the compound you can then clay. But the paint has to be in very poor shape for this to occur.
 
A strong chemical paint cleaner such as Poorboys Pro Polish will remove the loose oxidation well enough that permits you to evaluate the following step.
 
Yes, but if you use the cleaner first, won't it take the top off any any embedded contaminants and then the clay won't be able to pull them out?
 
butchdave said:
Yes, but if you use the cleaner first, won't it take the top off any any embedded contaminants and then the clay won't be able to pull them out?
Click to expand...



Yeah. You don't want to "smooth" the contaminants over for exactly that reason. So doing any compounding/cleaning before using the clay can cause trouble. You don't want to do it unless you HAVE to.



UNLESS you're dealing with severe oxidation on single stage paint, CLAY FIRST. I do plenty of work on ss paint, and I still hardly EVER use a paint cleaner/compound first. It's really only necessary when you're dealing with dry, chalky, "dead" paint. The kind that's :sosad when it's b/c. I've NEVER done a b/c car where I needed to clean/compound before claying, and I've done some really neglected ones.



But I do go through a lot of clay sometimes.



Luke667- If you mean the consumer stuff in the burgundy bottle, it's fair, not great. If you mean the old #6, it's better. Mother's makes a good cleaner wax if you want to try one.
 
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