Spank

Yeah, I have no illusions of permanent clearcoat damage I won't be able to get out. Yup. I'm using both the Swirl Killer and the MINI. I did wax it by hand and it gave it a nice glossy shine, but obviously that isn't going to coat the paint and its imperfections evenly and that might be part of where I'm going wrong in trying to smooth it all out.

Oh, you can definitely see it beyond five feet. With the sun hitting it right, you can see it from well over 30 feet away. What about going the opposite direction? Can a couple coats of wax or another topical product gently buffed onto the paint help fill in some of those areas? It obviously wouldn't be permanent, but would that help diminish the light showing it off?

Thank you, mc2hill. Yeah, I'm being careful not to go too crazy, but I do want to shave off just a tad extra in the more troublesome areas. Overall, I haven't hit it too hard with the Compound as is; I managed to eliminate a lot of the big scratches and imperfections with just a single pass, some with just a simple polish. I'm not too worried that I've removed any significant portion of clearcoat, but there are a few areas I want to go into a little deeper. I don't know what happened to the paint job beforehand, but it looks like a mechanic or service tech leaned against once of the fenders and scratched the holy hell out of it on one side and somebody drove along some bushes or something on the other. I managed to get virtually all of that damaged cleared away, but then there are these various little scratches and specks scattered across the upper portion of the body like it went through a sandstorm. I'll give the microfiber pad a try, hit the areas with a pass or two, and if that does the trick, great. If not, then it's as good as it'll get.

I've got an '18 Challenger I bought used last year and the previous owner did an absolutely abysmal job maintaining the paint. I don't think the dealership he traded it off to did it any favors, either. I've managed to get a lot of the damage out with Compound and blue pads, but I'm still noticing a lot of tiny flaws virtually everywhere that are more visible in certain light angles. You can really see the surface damage at sunset when you're getting that massive blast of light from the front or rear of the car as opposed to up top. Short of having to wet sand anything, is there an Adams product or method that can cut just a little deeper than the blue pads to try and eliminate these flaws? Some are scratches, others looks like tiny particles (like the clearcoat was shot with a light blast of sand). Again, I've managed to correct a good portion of this, but I'm still not quite getting it all. I don't expect to get this thing absolutely flawless, but there's gotta be something I can do to take the progress I've made a little further. I'll try attaching photos when the weather is better, but it's one of those situations where the conditions have to be just right to notice it (and, of course, I notice it more than others). Thank you!