Paint Transfer Removal Car Kit
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That streak of someone else's bumper on your door is usually not damage to your paint. It is their paint, sitting on top of yours, and it comes off with clay and a chemical decon rather than with a body shop estimate. Paint transfer removal on a car is a twenty minute job for most parking lot scuffs. This kit is the clay pad that shears the transfer off, the iron remover for the fallout specks around it, and a detailer to see what is actually left underneath. The rest of the range is on the bundle guides hub.
Read the mark before you touch it
Look at it in daylight from a low angle. A raised colored smear that sits proud of the surface is transfer. A white or gray line you can feel as a groove is a scratch through your clear coat, and clay will not help. Most bumper strikes leave both, with the transfer sitting over a much smaller scratch than the mark suggests. Take the transfer off first, then judge the scratch on its merits, because ninety percent of what you can see usually leaves with the clay.
Three items, two of them chemical
The 3D Detailing Clay Pad does the mechanical work. It covers far more area than a traditional bar, and 3D rates it for up to 50 vehicles before it needs replacing, which is different economics from a clay bar that is finished the moment it hits the driveway. 3D designed it for use with a machine polisher, which is what makes it quicker than claying a panel by hand, run at low speed with light pressure. One warning worth repeating: it needs lubricant. A gallon of clay lube sits in the add ons, and running the pad dry will put marring into your paint faster than the transfer ever did.
3D GLW Iron Remover is the pint for the specks. A parking lot strike usually comes with a halo of industrial fallout and overspray around it that clay alone does not shift. 3D describes it as a high performance, acid free iron remover that breaks down and loosens brake dust, traffic pollution and road film, and says it cleans painted, chrome, polished and coated aluminum wheels without damaging the surface. Spray, wait for it to turn color, rinse.
P&S Pit Stop is the last pint and it is there to stop you overworking the panel. P&S describes it as an easy to use detail spray that removes dirt, fingerprints, dust and smudges. Wipe the area down, stand back, and decide honestly whether anything is left. Plenty of people polish a panel that was already finished because they never cleaned it well enough to look properly.
The polish we left out
There is no compound and no polisher in the kit, which is deliberate. Reaching for abrasives before the transfer is off means cutting clear coat to remove something that would have wiped away. If a scratch is genuinely left after clay and decon, a correction creme is listed as an add on and can be worked by hand over a small area.
No touch up paint either. A pen belongs to a chip through to primer rather than to a scuff, and matching one at home rarely looks better than the mark did. The full aisle is on the Wash Bay. Clay formats and decon sprays are worth comparing on Explore first.
The sequence
Wash the panel first. Nobody skips this and gets away with it, because clay pushes whatever is on the surface into the surface. Then iron remover across the strike area, left to dwell until it colors, and rinsed off. Wash again. Now lube the panel heavily and work the clay pad in straight overlapping lines with almost no pressure, checking the pad every few passes and folding to a clean face.
Wipe down with the detailer and look again in low light. Most of the time you are done here. Run the back of a fingernail over the mark once more before you reach for anything abrasive, because a line that has stopped catching is a line that has gone.
What it replaces
A body shop looking at a scuffed door will quote to sand, fill and repaint the panel, because that is the job they sell. The clay pad in this kit covers a lot of cars and will still be usable the next time someone parks badly. The iron remover doubles as the wheel decon step you were going to need anyway, and the detailer goes in the trunk.
Questions we get
Will clay scratch my paint?
Not if it is lubricated and the panel is clean. Dragging clay over grit is what marks paint, which is why the wash and decon come first and why the lube is not optional.
Do I need the iron remover for a simple scuff?
Not for the scuff itself. You need it for the fallout speckling around the strike that you will notice as soon as the transfer is gone and the panel is clean.
What if the mark is still there after all three steps?
Then it was a scratch, not transfer. Try the correction creme by hand on a small section, and if the mark catches a fingernail, it is deep enough to be worth a professional opinion.
How it ships
Pal Automotive items are sold and shipped by Pal Automotive through Shopify Collective and arrive separately. A clay pad and two pints is a small box out of New Jersey, and it usually beats the weekend you were planning to use it. If you add the clay lube gallon, the order gets heavier and slower, so order the lube with the kit rather than after it, when you are already stood on the driveway with a dry pad.
Related guides
The wider decontamination range is filed under the paint decon cluster:
