I bought this car with only 18.5k miles (not bad for 10 years old!) sight unseen from Hawaii. While I did have the car inspected remotely, the paint was in worse shape than I realized so I had to do some correction work. It's not nearly as fun as wrenching or driving, but I enjoyed learning a new skill all the same.
1) I prepped with a proper wash using a foam cannon followed by the two bucket method. 2) Next I clay barred the hood and fenders. 3) Then I used a DA polisher from Harbor Freight Tools and Meguiar’s Ultimate Compound. This is about as heavy as you can without needing two stages of compound (coarse and fine). 4) Last, I used a color touch up kit to fill a few stone chips. I had to do about 4 layers using a toothpick to barely transfer any paint to build up to the full paint thickness. Next up, paint protection film (PPF), a wax job, and track time!
The previous owner of this car did not know how to wash a car based on the swirl marks. I taped the hood down the center so I could gauge results.
Not perfect, but watch the light reflection as I pass from before to after in this video. Huge improvement!
Filling in license plates holes (grrr!) in the bumper using JB Plasti-weld. I bought some bumper plugs (who knew they operate out of Charlotte, where I live?), but later decided this was a more stealth fix.
I'll sand these down later.