no way without polish.

have some patience, and try to stick to hand polishing as it is sitting on an edge and machine polishing may burn off your clearcoat and god forbid paint.
done that mistake on my sister's new car however seeing as i did more good correcting the damage on that area resulted of a fender bender at the parking lot scraping a pillar, all is good.

Does it get caught by finger nail? If no, those wax with lots of fillers might be able to cover it up (but its not permanent and temporary only).

No right or wrong, depends on your preference, requirements.

Grit guards are meant to ward off dirt recirculating in your cloth.
So if you prefer to have less dirt getting back on your car potentially scratching it, use lo.

On other hand, if not bothered, can just clay/polish every few months, don't use grit guards also won't die. (Majority of outside car wash also never use)

Personally I use, but I wash once every few weeks/months, 1 year less than 5-6 wash or so.
Dirt does get accumulated and the wash mitt/sponge will get very dirty

I mean if can you feel the scratch with finger nail? If you slide your fingernail across and it gets caught in it... then its likely too deep.

Leather care product doesn't work that way. It only clean, condition and protect from UV, make it last longer before it totally crack. It will still get dirty eventually. By the way, I'm using meguiar one, you check the video in the forum if you want. plenty brand out there, choose the one suitable for you.

Oh yeah, my coach also used meguiar one, none a single line of crack so far after 6 years of usage, being everyday usage and blast by air conditioning.

No, I'm using the balm below
https://www.meguiarsdirect.com/meguiars-ult...r-balm-5oz.html
The differences between the ultimate leather detailer and balm is the detailer type is more on cleaning, whereas the balm type is more on protection. I'm referring to the formulation even though both packaging stated the same thing which is clean, condition and protect.

As far as I know, meguiar leather care product is suitable for all colour as long as it is leather.
My 6 years coach protected by meguiar ultimate leather balm
[attachmentid=10929790]

Let me make the poison deeper. I still on my first balm, as meguiar always said, a little goes a long way

OK couldn't resist myself since my son gave 2 cars a good wash yesterday upon returning from my evening run.

Applied remaining SnS and Cerakote Graphene on diff cars yesterday night after Olympic opening. My personal review on both products...

Cerakote Graphene+Ceramic Spray Coating (CG)
Very easy to apply, streak free 👏 and easy to buff off 👍 unlike SnS although SnS is still much better than Osren Luminous by far
At 225pm today, the smoothness level is very close to SnS
CG has a smell which I don't like it compared to fruity SnS which smells great
Gloss on par for both although the cars are different in colours
CG price is still on par if calculated based on cost per oz against TW Graphene Flex Wax (I'm a cheapskate but willing to try out the cheapest graphene 😂)
Watermark unknown yet
Beading or sheeting not tested... 😂😂😂
Reliability unknown until Xmas... 😂😂😂

Note: Both cars were coated with cheap $50 DPro Ceramic Glass coating before CNY and the coat is still doing great

If detect early, and attended early it is fairly to remove. But if it has been baked under the sun for several days/weeks then going to be tougher.

I hope u didnt buy those fake 3M clay bars..

These spray paint usually don't stick well on clear coat compared to primer coat... basically react fast should can save it fast. Worse come to worse, need to polish/compound.

If its those cheap 3M clay bars, most likely its fake. Anyways u already clay it, it will induce some scratches no matter what..
If the scratch is obvious, there are scratch removers like meg n turtlewax that would do the job too..

Marring from clay bar can easily remove by polish, no problem la. Clay bar will induce marring anyways.

i bought the cheap 3m clay bar at shopee (less than rm10) for my old kelisa, so far the clay bar did it job very well, in terms of removing bugs, tar, bird poop, etc... because i can feel & differentiate the smoothness of the paint surface before & after
but how do we differentiate the fake & good one?
even the one from PG is almost rm50

Same here I bought the 3M clay but not sure fake or not, but it's feels weird, hard to tear and feels really rough. It's my first time using clay so I got no idea how those expensive ones like.

I used alot of soap for lubrication while claying too, but still it still leave scratches after done I think it's either not enough lubrication, i applied too much pressure or there are too many contamination on the clay. So yeah after clay, just polish to regain the shine.