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Re: Clay bar can only be used twice?
I have used a clay bar once and then had to toss it; I've also used a clay bar 4 times before it got so nasty that I had to toss it.
The very first time I clayed a car (2002 Saturn SC2), I had to toss the bar after the first use. The car was 4 months old and had been parked, day in & day out, under the flight path of John Wayne International in Orange County. It's amazing how a silver car can turn a hazy bronzish type of color in a few weeks due to jet fuel fallout on the car's paint! I wish I had pictures of the clay bar to show on here, but it looked like a rust color when I was done, and it took several passes over each panel of the car to get all the contaminants off.
I've also used a clay bar only once on a truck; my dad's F150 got pretty nasty one day, and so we cleaned it off and stripped it down with the clay bar. It came off brownish black. But, the current clay bar I've got, I've used it 3 times and it's still very clean. I've not found a lot of contaminants on my cars lately, but that's because they've been either covered or garaged.
I think, ultimately, how many times you can use a clay bar depends on 1) how much your car is exposed to contaminants that can bond to the paint (i.e. do you work/live under the flight path to an airport, do you have trees that drop a lot of sap, are you near a house that's being repainted/re-stuccoed, etc), 2) how large your car is (are you doing a sub-compact like a Geo Metro, or are you doing a full sized SUV like a Suburban or Expedition?), and 3) how often your car is clayed (if you only clay your car once a year, you're probably going to have a lot more contaminants on the car than if you clayed it once a month).
I have used a clay bar once and then had to toss it; I've also used a clay bar 4 times before it got so nasty that I had to toss it.
The very first time I clayed a car (2002 Saturn SC2), I had to toss the bar after the first use. The car was 4 months old and had been parked, day in & day out, under the flight path of John Wayne International in Orange County. It's amazing how a silver car can turn a hazy bronzish type of color in a few weeks due to jet fuel fallout on the car's paint! I wish I had pictures of the clay bar to show on here, but it looked like a rust color when I was done, and it took several passes over each panel of the car to get all the contaminants off.
I've also used a clay bar only once on a truck; my dad's F150 got pretty nasty one day, and so we cleaned it off and stripped it down with the clay bar. It came off brownish black. But, the current clay bar I've got, I've used it 3 times and it's still very clean. I've not found a lot of contaminants on my cars lately, but that's because they've been either covered or garaged.
I think, ultimately, how many times you can use a clay bar depends on 1) how much your car is exposed to contaminants that can bond to the paint (i.e. do you work/live under the flight path to an airport, do you have trees that drop a lot of sap, are you near a house that's being repainted/re-stuccoed, etc), 2) how large your car is (are you doing a sub-compact like a Geo Metro, or are you doing a full sized SUV like a Suburban or Expedition?), and 3) how often your car is clayed (if you only clay your car once a year, you're probably going to have a lot more contaminants on the car than if you clayed it once a month).
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