Do I need wheel clay?

[shoeless89]

Hey guys, I'm about to place an order in a few min before I go to work. I'm going to Opti-Coat my summer wheels this winter and I'm going to clay them as part of the decontamination process. Griot's has wheel clay and I'm trying to decide if I really need it. I have Meguiar's Smooth Surface clay and Pinnacle Poly Clay. What do you guys think?

[embolism]

after my paint clay becomes too contaminated for paint, it becomes wheel clay so no, you don't need wheel clay or glass clay...

then again, I just run stockies. If there is something in there that can scratch the paint, it can also scratch your wheels so you still have to be careful...

[shoeless89]

Bump

[Rei86]

Why can't you use just normal clay?

Never understood the whole concept of buying glass, paint and wheel clay. Its just the same clay you use for your damn paint.

After I'm done claying my cars paint/glass, I kneed it/clean it and use it for the wheel.

[shoeless89]

Thats kind of what I guessed but with Pinnacle being a fairly mild clay and Meguiar's being in the mid-range I'm not sure they will be able to pull everything off the wheels as well as a more aggressive clay would (which I'm sure wheel clay is pretty agressive). I just want to make sure the surface is a clean as possible before I apply Opti-coat. Wheels see much more grim, iron, tar, ect. then the rest of the car.

Looks like I'll just try to go with regular clay and IronX. That should work I hope. Thanks for the input guys!

[Rei86]

Being the forum and reading stuff for sometime now.

If the Wheel is painted and has clear coat on it, its actually harder than your paint so an aggressive clay is probably safe.

But this comes down to you can get a gray (no abrasiveish clay) to the more aggressive one for the paint...

Don't know need to focus a bit but I'm listening to a podcast and my mind is wondering a bit. But I've used my Z8 clay to clean my wheel and it works. Hell before that I used the yellow clay from Mothers with no issue.

[Kristopher1129]

I don't see there being much sense in buying clay specific to wheels. Regular clay will do just fine. I just buy clay in bulk on ebay.

It's just generic clay...but does just fine. I probably pay about $8 per clay bar. At that price...you can buy one for your wheels, and one for your paint for less than one bar at most places.