My cousin talked me into helping him start on zainoing his WRX before I started working on mine this summer. Today I clayed the whole car with Mothers claybar, using the mothers showtime instant detailer for lubricant (comes with the kit). After that I buffed it with Meguires scratch remover, washed it with dish soap and did a couple coats of z2,zxf/z6. Turned out pretty good for a start. I'll take some pics once he gets some more coats on it. Anyway, I want to work on mine tomorrow but we ended up using most of the showtime detailer on his car, might be enough left to do half my car. So, what can I use to lubricate while I'm claying instead? Should I just buy another bottle of the showtime stuff? I was thinking I could probably use a solution of dish soap and water since I will be stripping the wax off anyway and will need to wash the car with dish soap but I wasn't too sure so I thought I'd ask. Any suggestions? Thanks.

Colin

 

If you have Zaino Car Wash Z-7 you can use one capful of car wash to 16 ozs. of water in a spray bottle.

 

Haven't tried Zaino car wash yet. I have heard good things about it so I will most likely be ordering that this month since I'm running low on z2, zfx, z5 and z6. What else could I use?

 

Soapy water will destroy the mothers claybar. I ran out of the showtime spray in the middle of working on my car once and thought a car wash/water mix would be ok. After 20 minutes or so the claybar had deterioted to nothing.

 

Thanks for the info, I'll just grab another bottle of the showtime **** then.

 

take some pics of your car before/after, I want to see how well this Zaino stuff works, everybody takes pictures after, and I cannot tell the difference.

 

The difference isn't necessarily in the pictures, but rather in the protection that's on the car. It's pretty difficult anyway to capture the shine/depth/clarity of almost any product through just pictures. You could make TurtleWax look as good as Zaino, Pinnacle, or any other product with a picture, but the difference is the protection that's on the car, the slickness, the fact that nothing seems to bond to the Zaino like bugs, dirt, etc... Meguair's Gold Class and Zaino both shine well (but not necessarily the same shine) but whereas one can barely last a month and the other can last well over 6 is the difference. And this can't be captured in any picture. Of all the Zaino pix I've taken of any car I've done with Zaino, only one or maybe 2 I felt were actually representative of how Zaino looks when you're standing next to the car. It looks better than most pictures can capture.


Anyhow, to answer the original question, yeah, you can use dish soap or another car wash soap. I completely soak my Zaino bars in soap and water when claying and they've never even tried to come apart. Mother's or Meguiar's may be a different story, but I also soaked Clay Magic with good results. I prefer using soap and water actually to a QD spray, so I need a bar that won't fall apart. You could try a soap and if it seems like it's messing up your clay, go back to the QD.

 

I've had the same problem with Mothers (then again I do use a lot of lube). Doesn't seem to like water/soap as well as the qd.

If you pat the clay dry on a clean towel b4 kneading it helps a lot.

 

already ordered some Z2,Z6,Z7 and ZFX... hopefully I'll get my car back this weekend, by the way... after a fresh paint job (done this week) and a 3 hours drive... should I use the clay bar, or do not apply Zaino at all??? thank you.

 

I just got a mothers clay bar and it worked great, it is so much better than the Maguires, The Maguires fell apart and stuck to my car too easy, mothers clay bar did make any new swirl marks like the Maguires did either. (I'm sure my clay baring skills have improved also.)

 

Yeah the Mother's is certainly better than Meguiar's. In fact, I can't think of any clay that sucks more than Meguiar's. They really should change clay suppliers as they make the process so much harder and messier than it really is. As you've seen, using a good or great quality clay will yield much better results and make it a breeze as well. Now, if you want to take your claying skills to the top, try the Zaino Z18 next go around. It's by far my favorite clay just because it makes the process so damned easy and provides exceptional results. Of course Clay Magic makes a fine clay too, but it's Clay Magic that's trying to keep everyone from developing better clays!

Happy Claying!

Mike

 

Holy crap! It does? Wow. I usually use a bucket of mixed Zaino car soap to lube and clay as I wash. Hell, I usually toss the claybar INTO the bucket while I sponge or rinse. And 99.999999% of the times I knead the Zaino claybar it's soaking wet. It's never fallen apart. I used the same ones for a year and a half (finally got new ones and realized they're supposed to be YELLOW!!!).

So, um, guess I'll stick with these then