Clay Bar Before and After: What Your Car CAN Look Like 😲

The weather is perfect outside, and you want your car to look its very best. You’ve got your car shampoo and are ready to give your ride that well-deserved bath. But what if we told you that your car isn’t really that clean at all, even after you just spent hours washing it?

The truth is, just using car shampoo to wash your car isn’t the most effective way to get your automobile clean. In fact, some washes for vehicles do more harm than good when it comes to cleaning your car. But even worse, all those dried-up bugs and other insects simply won’t come off with just regular car shampoo.

You know what we’re talking about if you’ve ever taken a long road trip, or at least driven on the highway. All those nasty bug guts caked onto the front of your car are one of the most challenging things to remove from it later on. Forget driving through a car wash—that won’t make much difference when it comes to this kind of stuff.

If you want your ride to be completely clean before adding any shine to it, you need to consider using a clay lubricant. Maybe you’ve never heard of this before, but we're positive that once you try it, you’re never going to clean your car again with just a regular car shampoo.  

So, without further ado, let’s clay bar your car!

Why Do You Need To Clay Your Car In Order To Achieve An Epic Before And After Result?

The main reason most people choose to use clay to clean their ride is that it’s the most effective way to remove all the contaminants from your vehicle. Clay can remove even the ones you don’t see, including mineral deposits like iron, brake dust, and overspray.

Often times, bird droppings can sit on your car’s clear coat, which is the only thing protecting your vehicle’s paint. Those hard-to-remove chemical etchings from bug-splattered guts, road tar, tree sap, and annoying bird poop leave marks and remnants that prevent your car from looking its best even after being thoroughly ‘cleaned’.

We’ve all been there—you’ve spent countless hours cleaning your car, only to see those leftover circles or spots that just won’t come off. It’s frustrating and can make you want to pull your hair out—well, if you have any hair. We’re not judging, and some dudes totally rock the bald look.

Clay works in conjunction with chemical products to lift all those marks and leave your car truly spotless. If you think you want to test out a clay product, we highly recommend trying the Clay Decon Kit from Torque Detail. It’s one of the best products on the market and makes your ride look as clean as the day you bought it.

Alternatively, you can purchase our FULL Decon Kit, which also includes a microfiber towel wash mitt and our tough-as-nails Decon Soap.

In short, in order to get the best end result and truly give your car that gorgeous new car finish, a proper decontamination is a must. It’s truly the best clay bar kit, especially for a beginner.

While claying a car takes extra time, it’s certainly worth doing before you apply a car wax or ceramic coating on your vehicle.

Recommended: How to Clay Bar a Car - The Ultimate Guide

The Secrets Of A Professional Paint Decontamination

Any professional car detailer knows that proper decontamination is the most important factor when detailing any vehicle. This is why using clay is so important—it’s the process that manually removes all the contaminants from the surface of your ride’s paint, windows, and even your wheels.

If all these contaminants aren’t properly removed, they’re likely to cause you more headaches and wasted money than you can imagine. You’ll experience issues with the wax, ceramic coating, or sealant when trying to apply it after washing your car.

An improperly prepared car surface can cause all other products to not bond correctly, giving you mediocre results or a total disaster, aka an epic fail. If you want a smooth finish on your ride’s paint, using clay is the key. There simply isn’t another product as effective as clay when it comes to removing the toughest marks.

Here’s a little test you can try: get a plastic bag and put it over your hand. Now slowly and gently rub your hand (with the bag on) over your car’s paint. All that texture you’re feeling is bonded contaminants that have no intention of coming off with any car shampoo.

The objective when using clay is to remove all the embedded debris and dirt from your vehicle’s paint. The right clay product will do this by trapping the contaminants and then strategically pulling them from your paint.

Here are the two biggest mistakes people often make when using clay products on their car:

Mistake #1 – Clay Bar Lubrication Is Key

Many people detailing their cars at home forget about a clay bar lubricant. When using clay, you’ll want it to glide over the surface of your car. This is how it will be the most effective, and this is also why we don’t recommend using clay bars right away. If there’s not enough lubrication, you could be causing surface scratches to your car’s paint.

Mistake #2 – Reusing Clay Bars

People often reuse a dirty clay bar without even realizing the damage they’re doing to their car’s exterior. Once that clay bar has picked up any dirt or debris, it’s contaminated, so using it again is a big no-no. Instead, try using a spray with a reusable clay pad like Torque Detail’s Clay Decon Kit.

Clay Bar Before And After: The Showcase

We want to give you an inside view of what using clay can do for your car. Check out these videos below to see some of the success stories and the authentic results these folks experienced from claying heavily on contaminated paint.

Be sure to watch each video to see some drastic results from using clay products and what a huge difference they make.

Before And After Clay Bar And Wax - Joseph Treu’s 1985 Saab 900

The paint on the Saab in the video was highly contaminated, and it looks like only a new paint job will get this car looking good. On closer inspection, you’ll see where he reveals the very tired surface that requires a lot of work to get the car looking great again.

However, claying heavily on the contaminated paint left everybody shocked! You won’t believe what claying did for this Saab—fantastic results from both a distance and up close.

Check out the video now to see the end result. You won’t believe your eyes when you see what claying and then waxing did to this Saab! As expected, the clay bar did its job. It’s not a polishing tool, but it still helps to brighten the paintwork and restore the shine immensely.

First Ever Clay Bar - James Llewis’ 2003 Honda Civic TypeR

This video showcases the effectiveness of using a detailing clay product. Just look at how much dirt it’s pulling off the surface of this 2003 Honda Civic! You can literally hear the sound of the clay picking up the contaminations from the surface of this car.

We’re betting that James Lewis is wishing he didn’t wait three years before trying out his clay bar! It’s the first time he ever used it on this car and it worked perfectly—so simple yet so effective.

Milan Mastracci Detailing The Grossest Infiniti Ever

This car was absolutely caked with contaminants! If you look at the clay bar after it was used for rubbing just a tiny section of the hood, you’ll see just how gross and dirty it got.

Depending on the clay’s roughness, you’ll see how it actually installs some scratches. This of course depends on the product used. However, those will come out after polishing the car, and it will then look like a million bucks!

Why Our Clay Bar Kit Is A Must-Have To Turn Your ‘Before’ Into A Gorgeous ‘After’

You’ve seen all the incredible results in these videos and can only imagine what all the possibilities are when you choose to use a clay product designed to give you optimal results.

But how do you choose which clay product to use? Simple—you’ll want one that’s super easy to use and effective the very first time. Don’t spend cash on a clay bar that should only be used one time and then thrown away. And definitely don’t use a dirty clay bar on your ride!  

Our Clay Bar Kit comes with everything you need to get the job done. The clay lube will bring out all the contaminants and ensure that the clay pad itself doesn’t scratch your car’s surface. Even better, the clay pad is reusable up to 100 times! The easy-to-follow instructions will have your car spick and span in record time.

Summary

Don’t waste your time and money on car shampoos when trying to get all the debris off your paint’s surface. That bird poo or tree sap isn’t going to budge without using a proper clay product.

Regardless of whether your vehicle is just a few years old or an incredible prize-worthy antique, using the Clay Bar Kit will take your car’s paint from looking lackluster to turning everybody’s eyes when you drive by. If you want people admiring your ride, you need to start using the best products on the planet!    

When you consider how long we spend in our vehicles, you deserve to drive a car that looks amazing all the time, not just when it drives off the dealership lot. There’s nothing better than getting behind the wheel of a car every single day that has been completely cleaned from all contaminants, and more importantly, shines brighter than the sun! I hope you end up with a nicely clayed vehicle!