- What's up guys.
Welcome back to
the Newbie Series of Detailing Flowchart.
In the last episode,
Henry and I washed this Nissan Frontier.
We showed you how to do the 2 bucket method
and why it's important to avoid
scratches and swirls at all costs.
Today, we're going to get rid of those scratches and swirls.
So the first thing you do in any situation
like this is inspect your paint.
- By starting out by inspecting you're paint,
you're going to start noticing
exactly what you're working with.
There's some vehicles out there
that are much newer, it's brand new,
straight off the lot.
You might think, "My vehicle is brand new.
It doesn't need no type of polish."
So we always recommend getting the
ultra bright light and just inspect the paint.
By hovering the ultra bright light over your paint,
it's going to reveal all the scratches and swirls
and imperfection that your paint might have.
- Before we even get into
polishing out scratch and the swirls,
there's one other important step
which is claying the vehicle.
Now, what is claying exactly?
It's pretty much what it sounds
when you take a piece of clay
and actually stick it on your paint
and it will pull off any contaminants
that are embedded within the paint itself.
We do offer many different Clay Bars.
These are literally just bars of clay
in different densities and strengths,
I guess, you would say.
So this is our OG Clay Bar, which is our original.
And you can see it's just a very--
- Sticky substance. - Sticky substance.
And this will
pull out any contaminants on your paint.
Now, fortunately for us,
this is a super light amount of grime.
There's really,
if you were to rub your fingers on it,
you don't, you don't really hear that
sandy kind of sound.
So there's not too much contaminants.
So today, we're actually going to be using
our synthetic Clay Block.
We have synthetic clay on one side
and a sponge on the other.
And the nice thing about this
is it's super easy to use.
You can reuse it over and over,
whereas a Clay Bar, you can not.
If you were to drop a Clay Bar on the ground,
it will pick up all the contaminants inside the clay.
And you have to throw it out.
You can't ever use that again.
Whereas this, if you happen to drop this
or it gets super contaminated with stuff off of your ride
you simply spray it
and wipe it down with a microfiber towel
and you can use it again.
- So how do you inspect your paints?
So you know exactly what type of Clay Bar you need
or Clay Block.
It's very easy to just test out your paint.
Just simply walk over to your paint,
make sure the surface is clean.
You grab your hand and just glide across.
If you hear any contamination, I'll be quiet.
If you hear any contamination that sounds
raspy or sandy how he said,
that means you have high amounts of contamination.
If you have something that feels like smooth as glass,
fortunately, you don't have to have no contamination
that's when you can stick with our lightest Clay Bar
which is going to be popped up right here.
So we do offer four different types of Clay Bars.
The black one that is the most heavy,
the gray one which is medium,
the OG which is light to medium
and our blue one, which is our light.
If you have a newer car
and does not sound something like this.
Just use the light duty Clay Bar.
I'll be using the OG Clay Bar
while Jason will be using the Clay Block.
- In order for us
to not install any more scratches and swirls
or mar the paint with the Clay Block.
What we use is something called Clay Luber.
And this is similar to our wash video,
like the foam on the car,
when you're washing your paint,
this is going to create a bunch of lubrication
to help you slide the Clay Block
or the Clay Bar on your paint
and not install any scratches and swirls.
So how this is going to work
is you basically spray the Clay Luber
on your Clay Bar or your block
and also on your vehicle.
And you basically start rubbing back and forth
until it becomes smooth.
- [Henry] If you do come across the area
which is not highly lubricated
just simply grab your bottle.
We recommend being very, very generous with your Clay Luber
because the more lubrication you have,
the less chances of you have a mar on your paint,
scratching it or even causing damage to your paint.
Because imagine if you grab
a sticky substance like this,
you just glide across the surface of your vehicle.
There's not going to be any type of lubrication sitting on
So the more lubrication you have, the better it is to you.
We do not recommend diluting Clay Luber
Clay Luber comes ready to use.
So simply use it straight out the bottle spray,
glide, and you're good to go.
- A lot of people will ask,
"Well, why can't I just use water as a lubricant?
That's wet, right?"
- Yeah. And the answer is water actually has
a lot of different types of minerals in it.
It has calcium,
it has different types of minerals in it,
which is going to make the water heavy.
Over time, once you start using it,
it's going to deteriorate Clay Bar
because all the calcium
is going to eat up your Clay Bar or Clay Block.
And it's not going to last as much.
And then, since water is heavy
and it might have contaminants in it,
it's going to scratch your paint.
So we want to recommend preventing all that
by using the proper steps.
Use Clay Luber, your Clay Block, Clay Bar.
Like this, you'll achieve a perfect clay decontamination
and like this, your pain stays pristine
and shiny at all time.
- Now there is one thing I do want to address
is that we get comments a lot.
We've expressed in our videos
that even your brand new car off the lot,
you should Clay Bar before you do anything.
And we've gotten feedback on that
where people think we're crazy for that.
But think about this,
you're not the first person that drove that car.
How many times is that car been test driven on the lot?
How much has it been sitting outside
with all kinds of industrial fallout
or contamination?
That new car might even be worse
than one that's been sitting in your garage.
So it might not make sense,
or it might not seem like common sense
to have to Clay Bar a brand new car.
But honestly,
there's probably some contaminants on there
that you don't even think about.
- We only recommend
cutting off a portion out of your clay.
So cut off a little, like 1/4,
then you'll turn it into a little ball,
and then you'll squeeze it down into a little patty,
like this.
You have a perfect coverage.
How I like to spread it out is three finger width
and then I go to clay.
And then once it gets super contaminated,
we recommend refolding it.
And then you redo the same step
around the entire vehicle.
How do you know when to toss it up.
When your whole entire clay is filthy, dirty,
just toss it out and get a new piece.
And that's when you get to use it.
If not,
you store it back into your little plastic,
put it away in a safe box,
and reuse it next time whenever you're decontaminating.
All right.
So now we just finished
Clay Barring the whole entire surface of the vehicle.
The vehicle is now smooth as glass.
Now it's time to move on to the polishing step.
So we do offer different types of polishers
from the most beginner, which is a TORQ X,
all the way to the most detailed professional,
which is a TORQ 15DA, or even a TORQ 22D.
That does not mean
every single polish is for beginners or professionals,
they all work for both.
So Jason, on his hand, he has a TORQ 10FX.
The TORQ 10FX, how I like to say,
it's like the big brother
that looks after all the polishers.
The reason why, it has a eight millimeter throw,
but the cool thing about it is
it also goes up to a 6 inch backing plate
a 5 inch and even a 3 inch backing plate.
Like this,
you get to cover all around the whole entire vehicle.
Whether you have a small intricate areas
or big flat areas.
The TORQ 10FX is going to cover you.
If you're working on a surface that is very flat,
it does not have that many curves
like this Nissan Frontier.
This is why I went with the TORQ22D.
The TORQ 22D is an amazing machine.
It has a 21 millimeter throw,
but the odds about this is
if I do come into intricate areas,
unfortunately, I cannot change out my backing plate.
It has to stay at a 6 inch backing plate.
That's when Jason would come back and look after me.
So that's why I liked saying that the TORQ 10FX
is a big brother for the rest of machines,
because you just swap out the backing plates.
The TORQ 10FX also has a 700-watt motor
compared to something like this.
This has a 900-watt motor.
So it is going to be cutting a lot faster,
but the TORQ 10FX, the slower you work,
the better results you'll get.
So keep that in mind.
- That's exactly right, Henry.
So I like this one personally,
because it's it's very versatile.
And for beginner like me,
it's not too big, it's not too small.
It's like just right in the middle.
And it can get done
a lot of different polishing applications.
Now, if you find yourself working on
huge vehicles all the time,
like big trucks like this,
the 22D is going to save you so much time and effort
because you have that big 21 millimeter throw
versus this'll take me a little bit longer to get it done,
but it still gets it done.
They all get the job done.
Now on top of that,
we have our...
- Foam pad.
- Polishing pads.
So this is our quantum orange Hex Logic Pad.
As you'll see from this chart,
the color of the pad dictates
how heavy the cut is as well.
Some of these pads cut
and some of them are very soft.
They don't cut at all.
We'll use those in our later videos
to apply glazes, sealants and waxes.
- Before you guys start commenting down below
asking why does Jason's pad have a hole in the middle
and Henry doesn't,
the reason is
it's because that is the quantum pad.
If you guys see the edges,
the edges are flared.
It looks like a little fanned out.
The hole in the middle
is going to help you disperse the heat
across the whole entire pad.
So you won't have a high heat in just one area.
Compared to this pad,
this pad does not have a hole in the middle.
It's still going to disperse the heat
across the whole surface,
but just be sort of constantly moving the pad
around the whole entire vehicle.
So today, we're going to be using
the Orange Media Duty Cutting Pad
to remove any scratches and swirls
that the paint might have,
because this paint does have pretty deep scratches
and we need a product that's going to help us
remove them safely and easily in a timely matter.
So today we're going to be using what product, Jason?
- We'll be using C4, Clearcut Correction Compound.
This is an amazing compound
that removes deeper defects and scratches and swirls.
And it's great for beginners
because you just need this one product to get started.
And then after this,
we go to our second step--
- Which is going to be refining the paint with P4 Polish.
P4 Polish is going to refine any micro scratches
and swirls that C4 might have left behind
because keep in mind,
a compound is going to have a much deeper cut
and then you need to refine
and bring back the lustrous shine
with something like P4 Precision Polish.
P4 Precision Polish can also be used
with a white pad or even a green pad.
Just to we bring back the lustrous shine.
P4 Polish is going to be a great one step as well.
You could also use that a one step
just in case you have light scratch and swirls
and you just want something that
gets you in and gets you out.
P4 Polish.
But in this occasion,
this paint is severely neglected.
So this is why we need to pair the C4 and P4 together
to get an amazing shine and reflection.
- Exactly.
And just like sandpaper,
if you were to use that on
something to sand it down,
you use the heavy grit
to basically get deeper into it.
But then you want to refine that with a lighter polish
so it gets nice and smooth.
So that's the same principle here,
where we're cutting those deep scratches out with C4
and then refining it with P4.
So what you're going to do
is you're going to shake up your product
so that it's nice and mixed together.
And we're going to put 5 pea size drops
onto our pad here.
We recommend a 2x2 area to get started
and then work in each of those areas.
Now, one other thing you want to do before you get started
is spray your pad with Polishing Pad Conditioner.
This will help keep your pad moist
and reduce friction while you're polishing.
Basically blotch out the product on your paint.
And you'll also want to take the cord
and put this over your shoulder.
So you don't scratch the vehicle.
Turn your polisher on the lowest speed setting
to spread the product out
or along your or 2x2 area.
And then, jack that baby up to speed setting 6
and get to work.
Now, when you're polishing
something that I probably would assume you'd want to do is,
stay on one section for a long time.
But I think that's actually a bad idea,
right, Henry?
- That's actually very bad.
Once it's on speed setting 6,
you're going to work side to side
and then once you're done with the area,
you go up and down,
and then side to side to work it in until it's clear.
But how much pounds of pressure
do you actually put down?
It's only 5 pounds of pressure.
You do not want to be
on top of your machine
going like so,
you just want very little bit of pressure on it
and let the machine do its job.
So if you are using a dual action
and you start seeing your backing plate just get stuck,
that just means you're using too much pressure.
The rotor machine
is a completely different ball game.
Whenever you are using a rotor machine,
you still blotch it out, you smear it,
but you do turn on the machine away from the paint,
not on the paint.
DA machines can be turned on
while the machine is sitting on the paint,
whereas rotaries has to be turned on away from the paint.
So once you work get side to side
and then up and down, side to side,
and you see your product starting to clear translucent,
wipe it off using a premium microfiber towel,
inspect the cut.
If you like it, continue.
If not, you could drop to something
much more heavier like our V Line.
Once it is time to move on to the next step,
what I like to do is I like to blend on my work.
Like this, you don't have a high spot.
So, even though you're working on 2x2 area,
you're still going to
want to encounter a little bit from your previous pass,
just hover over it, polish it out.
Like this, you get a perfect finish
around the whole entire vehicle.
- Exactly.
You don't want to be stuck with
polish lines across there
where maybe you hit one section
and missed the little stripe.
Yeah. Unless you're into tiger stripes,
maybe you are.
But yeah,
definitely go over your previous line
and that'll blend it in nicely overall
and it'll be beautiful.
As you can see here,
Henry is using the White Polishing Pad with our P4.
The White Polishing Pad has a very light cut to it,
so it's just a tiny bit of refinement with the pad,
as well as with P4 itself.
All right, guys,
and it's that easy to clay and polish your ride.
I mean, we got rid of those scratches on that panel,
super easily.
Two step process,
and it they came out beautiful.
Like the difference,
the before and after is kind of amazing.
Those scratches-- - And you guys can see it too.
- Yeah.
It's like, you wouldn't even notice
the scratches were ever there.
So we're going to
and do the rest of the vehicle. And then move on
to the next step in the detailing process,
which is going to be
protecting all of our hard work that we just did.
'Cause we don't want to do this all over again.
It was a lot.
It looks beautiful,
we want to keep it beautiful.
Join us for our next video,
where we show you all the different ways
that you can protect your ride.
- Don't forget to like, subscribe, comment down below.
Let us know what other feature you want to see.
And we'll see you guys next time.
Right here at the Chemical Guys Detail Garage.
- That's right. - You clean up.
Woo!