Originally Posted by Dave9
Originally Posted by atikovi
Sanded with the 500 and 800 discs followed by 1000 and 3000 foam pads. Looks hazy but that gives the clearcoat a better bite. Usually you would use polishing compound next as a final step but that would make it too smooth for the clearcoat to adhere well.
This is just Wrong Information.
They are supposed to be polished as clear as possible and a clear coat, while a bad idea to begin with, is only supposed to preserve that highest level of polish you can achieve.
There is no problem getting a proper clear coat to adhere, rather it just doesn't block all UV so you end up back to where you started eventually.
Clear coat is a bad idea because it's not a permanent solution. Yes it will make it take longer till you need to re-do them, but then you have to strip the clear coat off which takes many more minutes of "precious" time than just a touch-up polish occasionally.
If you don't clear coat then you can just polish them briefly every time you wash the vehicle, or every third time or whatever (depends on amount of UV exposure, where it's parked, etc, yearly can work fine if it's not parked outdoors).
Once you get them to a very high state of polish, you don't even need plastic polish to keep them that way, can use plain old toothpaste, but of course you are convinced in weird ways that this is some great ordeal that involves removing them instead of the 2 minutes it takes everyone else, so do it any way that works for you!
Says right on the instructions, Each box contains two Clear Coat Wipes and one 3Mâ„¢ Trizactâ„¢ 3000-grit abrasive disc. Use this disc by hand, with water to lightly clean the lens surface. Wipe on the coating immediately after. The disc will create very tiny, light scratches in the lens which the coating fills in to increase adhesion and lengthen its effectiveness. But if you prefer homebrew Jethro solutions like toothpaste over the chemical engineers at at multi-billion dollar company, knock yourself out.