Hi Booth, Would you not recommend Claying in General then? A lot of people say that you should Clay a brand new car before applying polish to it to remove all the deposits from it?
Will be interesting to hear your view?
Hi SCOTTE, I was only saying in this instance that better for Raffe to try removing the Cuprinol by other means first which may well negate claying in his case.
I would recommend claying a new car, but only if you are definitely going to polish (preferably with DA) it afterwards. Reason being that claying, being an abrasive action, can often leave marring (even with good technique) and polishing (light finishing polish) will easily get rid of clay marring. Claying without polishing will leave the paintwork in an unrefined condition.
But if you are not intending to polish it, I personally would not clay it. In either case it is best to carry out an initial decontamination of the car first with iron/fallout remover and then a glue/tar remover. These stages are low risk decontamination stages which tend to be spray on/rinse off processs, so require minimal touching of paintwork and therefore less risk of swirls or marking the paintwork. On a new car there's a good chance that the majority of embedded contaminants will be removed by iron and tar remover. After doing this I would suggest the plastic sandwich bag test - pop hand into bag and run flat palm over panels. Any roughness indicates that there are still embedded contaminants present and if so, this is when claying would be the next step. But as said highly recommend following with a polish.
When I first got my R I did the iron and tar stages, and there was no need to clay as the paintwork was glassy smooth afterwards. Polishing was not necessary at this stage, because it wasn't clayed and as it wasn't dealer prepped, the paintwork was in great condition. I'll be doing a full detail, incl de-iron, de-tar, claying and DA polishing, protection this autumn, ready for the winter months.
