I claybarred my truck for the 2nd time since taking delivery of it last night. Normally, I'm sure this isn't needed so often, but my truck sits under a tree in our driveway, and was covered in tree sap.
The first time I claybarred it, I bought the Mother's claybar, which was a yellow color, and worked like magic on everything that was on the paint. This time, I bought a Meguiar's claybar kit, with the white claybars, and it sucked. Actually, to say that it sucked is an understatement. The only way I got it to remove ANYTHING, including tree sap stains, was to use the Mother's Quick Detailer mist with it. Even then, I was 4 hours into it for the hood and roof.
I'm sure this is as subjective as anything else, but I'll never use any Meguiar's products again once I use up the stuff I have now. In fact, if I happen to knock some of them off the shelf and they spill out for some reason, I won't replace them. Mother's stuff has worked so much better for me on this truck.
I tried, just for comparison's sake, the Meguiar's claybar on my wife's truck, too. I had previously used the Mother's claybar on it, and was very impressed. This time with the Meguiar's, it was as useful on her truck as it was on mine.
If anyone lives in the area and wants to give me $20 for all the Mother's stuff I have, come on by, it's yours.

 

Are you saying you tried to clay it with just the clay bar on a dry surface, and it didn't work until you used the Quick Detailer? Or was it wet with just water (or some other liquid), and didn't work until you specifically added Meg's Quick Detailer?

 

No, I know better than that.
I used the Meguiar's claybar and Meguiar's Quick Detailer mist it came with. It was horrible. Removing all the surface shouldn't have been that hard. I changed to the Mother's Quick Detailer mist with the Meguiar's claybar, and it was better, but still a royal pain in the azz. If I hadn't been so mad, I would have just ran over to O'Reilly's and bought another Mother's claybar.

 

I just used the Meguires clay bar and it did a great job.......

 

I've used Meg's bar for 9 years now. No complaints here.

 

there is little to no difference between those two clay bars .. my guess is the contaminents were worse this time, or the protection on the truck was not as good ..

 

Chances are it's the same clay, just a different color, there are just a couple/few manufacturers out there. Different brands add their color and put in their box. Honestly I haven't found much difference in the different brands of clay kits that I've used.

And even if Megs clay was crap, you're going to avoid anything Megs just because they had 1 bad product? If we all avoided brands that had even 1 bad product, there wouldn't be anything to use!

 

I used to detail cars...when I needed a clay bar to do my own Jeep a few years ago, I bought the Meguiars...It worked very well. Probably the same as the "professional" stuff I had been using back when it was my job.

I think we used to use something like Windex back then, but I used the spray that came with it and it worked well. I recently bought a new bark and spray kit about 3 months ago to do my girlfriend's care, and it worked well also.

 

For some strange reason I don't like the feel of using the clay bar with quick detailer. It feels like I'm potentially doing less harm to the paint using Gold Class soap with the clay bar (maybe that's because I'm using warm soapy water making the clay warmer and softer), and it seems to clean a little better as well. Although I admit, the soap seems to break down the clay after a one use - forget about reusing it. It's also much faster to wash and clay in the same step, heh. I normally will wash a panel, rinse, re-lather the panel with fresh soap and clay and rinse - wash & clay step DONE all at once. Paint comes out so butter smooth it almost doesn't feel real, lol. Wax goes on and off, again, butter smooth.