I've just washed my shabby car as usual but beforehand I used a product called Safecut on it. (This is like a weaker version of t-cut).

Anyway, after using lots of this and loads of elbow grease and ruining loads of cloths (they're all blue now) I ended up with a flawless 'flat' finish. It even had a wet look to it.

Isnt this the same 'final result' I would get if I had used a clay bar?
I really cant see how it could be any smoother. After a coat of cheap GT wax its like a teflon finish.

 

It may be as smooth as if you had used a clay bar but it now has less paint on the car than it did before.

Clays do not remove paint, just crud

 

So clay is soft enough to not even touch the paint?

Might have to get some now the surface is good. There were lots of odd water run marks in it before, from the mirrors/handles/seals etc..

 

t cut take a layer paint off every time u use it

 

As others have said t cut is just that, it is a fine compound that "cuts" away the top layer of paint to remove swirls etc. Clay will just remove these without the need for excessive polishing after.

well that is the way i understand it.

 

As touched on already, they're not really comparable products as they're not in the same sector and are for different jobs. A clay bar only 'skims' off the above surface contaminants like tree sap, tar, overspray, industrial fallout, etc. basically anything that's settled and bonded to the top of the paint layer.

Using an abrasive 'polish' to remove these will have varying degrees of success, and some may well remove these contaminants from the surface, but in doing so brings up 2 problems; Firstly, as said, it's also going to be removing a degree of the paint in the process, and it's always best to preserve the thickness of your paint whenever you can for obvious reasons. The second problem is that as those hard bits of crap that were stuck to the surface get picked up on the cloth you're polishing with, they will inevitably start to scratch and swirl the surface. A clay bar, because it's only used with light pressure and with plenty of liquid lubricant, won't allow these hard specs of stuff to mark the paint.

This is why claying is always done before any polishing stage, and especially if it's going to be machine polishing. Can you imagine the machine's pad picking up rock hard specs of old tree sap and then once they're lodged in the surface of the pad proceeding to spin them around the paintwork!!!

 

Cheers for the info.
I know about the abrasive properties of t-cut etc.. (I recently used toothpaste to remove a scratch from sister in laws pug )

I did have to keep changing cloths too. There was that much crud it would form into sticky globs, like rubbing old sellotape gunk off something.

Clay sounds like a good investment but I had worried about the whole 'pick up' problem, asuming objects would stick to (or in) a clay bar easier than a cloth. I might just get one of those megs clay kits with the spray.

 

the finish of your paintwork after claying makes it ridiculously smooth, t cut doesnt do that for sure lol

 

 

A more detailed guide to detailing clay and what it does and doesn't do can be found here...

http://www.polishedbliss.co.uk/acata...des_clean.html