Ive clayed before and know a fairly decent amount of doing it. I got my 03 Z from some college. He took good care of it except for the outside he probably just ran it through car washes. The hood feels disguting its like nails on chalkboard. I tried claying it and wow it makes the whole bottom of the clay orange brown its DISGUSTING. Well i clayed 1/3 of the hood and its still not as smooth. I looked closely and the stupid dots wont go away i would sit there for 2 hrs just trying to do a 3rd of the hood. Anyone have suggestions?

 

It sounds like something has pitted the paint. Clay takes stuff from the surface but once something pits the paint the clay can't always extract it. You're probably going to need to polish the paint with a mild abrasive to take off the upper layer of clearcoat.

Get some 3M Swirl Mark Remover to start with and test it by hand on a small problem area. If it does remove the spots, you need to do the whole car or affected areas. Better have a Porter-Cable ROB machine handy!

 

check out topoftheline.com for the right products... and yea a quality buffer/polisher will be key. Use the correct pads, and compound and you should take care of it no problem.

I'd probably use some sort of wash to get all of the old wax and products off the exterior, then use a mild leveler on a fine cut pad, then clay, polish, wax, wax

 

What brand/grade of clay were you using on the hood?

After subsequent passes of the clay, does it still come up with contaminates?

If you're going to be polishing via machine afterwards, you may want to try a clay that's a grade up from what I presume is a fine-grade of clay. However, with higher grades (aggressiveness) of clay, there WILL be inevitable marring caused by the clay itself; I will not recommend you claying with a high grade unless you'll be polishing.

At a low-cost solution, do you have any bug and tar remover around? Perhaps you may want to saturate a test spot, cover with towel, set for 5 mins, rinse, and see if that improves anything.

It's really hard to suggest a solution w/o seeing the condition personally!

Best of luck!