What is clay bar treatment?

To put it simply, using detailing clay is a way to remove embedded contaminants from your cars paint. This is essential before carrying out any polishing work to ensure you are working on a perfectly clean surface and not dragging contaminants around your paint. Failure to do this could result in more damage being caused to the paint, as well as reducing the lifespan of polishing pads significantly.

Detailing clay ready to be used

How often should I use a clay bar?

This treatment should be carried out sparingly, this is because this treatment will leave some marring due to mechanical abrasion, therefore this should only really be carried out as the final stage of decontamination before polishing, as this will allow you to easily remove any marring caused by the clay.

What other methods can I use to decontaminate my paint?

There are several other chemical based methods of decontaminating your paint. These are using tar and glue remover, as well as fallout remover.

These methods can be used at any time as they require no abrasion, however it is unlikely you will achieve full decontamination.

Summary

To summarise, using a clay bar is a very effective way to decontaminate your paint as it will allow you to remove tar, glue, tree sap as well as fallout from brake dust.

However this method should only be used on a car which is about to be polished and this method should never be used on a ceramic coated car, as this will ruin the finish of the car and could leave you needing to redo the coating.