Decent clay bars and polish?

[Beddo88]

Hi all,

As my car is taking part in the Retro run in a couple of weeks time, it would be nice to get her cleaned up and polished before the event. Hopefully keep her paintwork in better knick too.

Does anyone have any recommended clay bars (i think that's the best thing for cleaning up the paintwork of crap right?) and then a form of polish to apply afterwards?

I have a machine polisher somewhere in the house, so would that be good to apply it with?

OR if anyone has a better suggestion for brightening up the paintwork i'd be much obliged if you could share!

Regards, Dan

[lewp91]

detailing world forum has loads of reviews and products so its worth having a look online, i too will be looking ro buy new cleaning stuff.

ive settled with a autoglym full kit and still looking for what clay items to use,
make sure you buy lube though! makes a huge difference :)

also with the Machine polisher youll want a degradable abrasive
basicly it gets finer the more you use it which lowers how course the abrasive is giving a final better finish,
my mate did some on my white scala, it came right up!
but i would suggest reading up on it heavily first, you dont want to burn white paint!
also youll want to clay a car of its imprities in the paint before machine polishing :)
btw find out what rpm your polisher is it can make a huge difference in finish depending on how fast your polisher is to what abrasive you have.

Lew

[Beddo88]

Brilliant, some good advice there.

I've just picked up a mequiars (sp?) smooth car kit or something. Comes with some detailing spray, 2 clay bars and a microfibre cloth. Suprisingly halfrauds could actually compete with online prices!! Anyway, i'm gunna give her a good going over with that today/tommorrow, and maybe do some polishing at the weekend if I can dig out the polisher.

That wbsite was very useful btw, cheers!! I'll post up some before/after pics if i remember!

[daffy.dub]

I bought Bilt-Hamber Auto-Clay Soft for about £10 from Practical Classics magazine, pics off all the cr@p and leaves a lovely smooth surface. You use water to lubricate a small area first. Then I apply Harly Wax pure Brazilian Carnauba, which a mate of mine use to import, but I'm sure there's other people who make this wax. It comes in a tin like furniture polish, gives a great shine. that was about £15. All labour intensive, I havn't got the bottle to try a hand held machine, i've been told you can take the paint off on the corners of the bodywork - and there are a lot of corners on a Rocco.

[Risocco]

Depends what machine you are going to use, rotory takes a bit of practice to get used to as you will burn through paint if you're not careful, however DA polishers are very user friendly and can give fantastic results due to their simplicity. So much so that even I am pretty decent with them

daffy.dub - what polish did you use dude?

[daffy.dub]

I'll have to look at the tin tonight for the exact stuff, will let you know.

[daffy.dub]

Hi Risocco, this is a pic of the wax I use, it's great because it doesn't leave that horrible powder everywhere, just a great shine!

wax.jpg