What's in the Box.
16oz, TW Liquid Clay Bar
16oz, TW Clay lubricant.
100g, Clay bar (light blue color)
This kit is the preparation phase of the Turtle Wax Ice system. It replaces the TW Liquid Clay Bar which used to be sold as a standalone product. The ICE liquid polish lacks any cleaning ability, and so the Liquid clay bar provided a combination of pre-wax cleaning, together with the light polishing action of a cleaner wax.
From my personal experience, the LCB is excellent at removing accumulated schmutz from the paint surface. It the gap between a bug and tar remover and a real clay bar. It will remove stuck on dirt, road grime, and minor swirling/scratches. It's not going to remove the very fine dirt that can only be removed with a real clay bar.
To use the kit, you start by rinsing the car to remove any surface dust. The LCB comes as a three layer liquid, which you shake up to mix the components including the "clay" layer at the bottom of a bottle. The milky liquid is very thin, so be careful you don't spill it everywhere. The whole ICE line is very liquid, which is a bit disconcerting if you are used to thick, creamy, or pastey auto products.
The LCB likes to mix with some of the water on the car surface, and to be honest I think the product needs some water to work its best.
The LCB will quickly strip off any old wax on the cars surface, but it needs a little bit of scrubbing action to get rid of stuck on dirt. You can easily tell if you missed a spot by rinsing the car, and looking for any places where the water still beads. The area's you've cleaned with the LCB will sheet water.
While cleaning the car, the idea came to me to try it on the headlight lenses, since I had been thinking of getting some PlastX to defog them. The LCB seemed to defog the lenses somewhat.
Overall, the car's surface is much cleaner after using the liquid clay bar, although you can still feel some contaminents which would need a real clay bar to be removed.
The polishing action of the LCB leaves the car surface quite shiny, and you'd almost think it had been waxed, except that the finish has a bit of "grip" to it consistent with a lack of any lubricating effect from a LSP. I did notice that some of the finer scratches on the paint seem to have been polished away.
The next step, after rinsing the car to remove any traces of clay dust from the LCB, is to use the real clay bar that comes with the kit.
The clay bar lubricant, is very thin liquid with texture very similar to distilled water. It's certainly not the same as the Ice spray detailer. This was very interesting, as the Meguiars clay kit comes uses an actual bottle of Meguiar's spray Detailer to lubricate the clay bar.
You can actually hear and feel the clay bar picking up dirt off of the paint surface. As a quick test, using the clay bar on a part of the car not cleaned with the LCB resulted in much faster fouling of the clay bar. Like molding clay you can roll the clay into a "string" shape to clean small areas of the finish, or else mold it into a puck shape and glide it across the surface.
The whole process took about 1.5 hours for cleaning a compact car, but it probably depends on your technique and how fast you work. If pressed for time, you could probably wax the car after just using the liquid clay bar, as the surface is probably 70% of the way to ultimate cleanliness.
Overall, I'm pleased with this TW Ice clay kit, as it costs about as much as other clay kits, yet provides you with more cleaning and polishing power to prepare your car's surface for taking wax. I would guess that this is especially important for the ICE car polishes as they are pure polishes without any polishing fillers.
16oz, TW Liquid Clay Bar
16oz, TW Clay lubricant.
100g, Clay bar (light blue color)
This kit is the preparation phase of the Turtle Wax Ice system. It replaces the TW Liquid Clay Bar which used to be sold as a standalone product. The ICE liquid polish lacks any cleaning ability, and so the Liquid clay bar provided a combination of pre-wax cleaning, together with the light polishing action of a cleaner wax.
From my personal experience, the LCB is excellent at removing accumulated schmutz from the paint surface. It the gap between a bug and tar remover and a real clay bar. It will remove stuck on dirt, road grime, and minor swirling/scratches. It's not going to remove the very fine dirt that can only be removed with a real clay bar.
To use the kit, you start by rinsing the car to remove any surface dust. The LCB comes as a three layer liquid, which you shake up to mix the components including the "clay" layer at the bottom of a bottle. The milky liquid is very thin, so be careful you don't spill it everywhere. The whole ICE line is very liquid, which is a bit disconcerting if you are used to thick, creamy, or pastey auto products.
The LCB likes to mix with some of the water on the car surface, and to be honest I think the product needs some water to work its best.
The LCB will quickly strip off any old wax on the cars surface, but it needs a little bit of scrubbing action to get rid of stuck on dirt. You can easily tell if you missed a spot by rinsing the car, and looking for any places where the water still beads. The area's you've cleaned with the LCB will sheet water.
While cleaning the car, the idea came to me to try it on the headlight lenses, since I had been thinking of getting some PlastX to defog them. The LCB seemed to defog the lenses somewhat.
Overall, the car's surface is much cleaner after using the liquid clay bar, although you can still feel some contaminents which would need a real clay bar to be removed.
The polishing action of the LCB leaves the car surface quite shiny, and you'd almost think it had been waxed, except that the finish has a bit of "grip" to it consistent with a lack of any lubricating effect from a LSP. I did notice that some of the finer scratches on the paint seem to have been polished away.
The next step, after rinsing the car to remove any traces of clay dust from the LCB, is to use the real clay bar that comes with the kit.
The clay bar lubricant, is very thin liquid with texture very similar to distilled water. It's certainly not the same as the Ice spray detailer. This was very interesting, as the Meguiars clay kit comes uses an actual bottle of Meguiar's spray Detailer to lubricate the clay bar.
You can actually hear and feel the clay bar picking up dirt off of the paint surface. As a quick test, using the clay bar on a part of the car not cleaned with the LCB resulted in much faster fouling of the clay bar. Like molding clay you can roll the clay into a "string" shape to clean small areas of the finish, or else mold it into a puck shape and glide it across the surface.
The whole process took about 1.5 hours for cleaning a compact car, but it probably depends on your technique and how fast you work. If pressed for time, you could probably wax the car after just using the liquid clay bar, as the surface is probably 70% of the way to ultimate cleanliness.
Overall, I'm pleased with this TW Ice clay kit, as it costs about as much as other clay kits, yet provides you with more cleaning and polishing power to prepare your car's surface for taking wax. I would guess that this is especially important for the ICE car polishes as they are pure polishes without any polishing fillers.
) I get vapor from a cooling tower leaving my car w/ bonded contaminants. I'll reply to this thread when I finally get around to using the LCB.