Frist Attempt at Polishing

[Sam1990]

I've tried talking to a few friends about polishing my Honda Prelude but nobody seems to know the difference between polishing and waxing a car these days.

I'm tempted to spend the weekend seeing if I can improve the shine of my lude and get a few of those car park dings out (weather providing!), I've got myself some clay and wax then was tempted to try polishing the car but have been having doubts in the back of my mind that it would do more harm than good to the paintwork. As I've never tried it before I wouldn't want to strip too much paint down, looking to polish by hand to start with and possibly move onto machine some time down the line. I've heard the paintwork on Hondas is pretty soft therefore prone to damage from polishing, is this true?

Does anyone have any product advice, techniques or any other guidance before I go ahead?

I've got the Nordic Mist Metallic (Silver to you and I) paint code as far as I know, any particular polishes suited to that colour?

Any info appreciated.

[Defcon5]

You wont do any damage using hand polishes, unless the paint is flaking or something.

Get some Autoglym Super resin polish, and get cracking!

[halo34]

As above you wont do much damage by hand unless using a stupidly abrasive polish - which would never breakdown unless applied by machine anyway.

If you want to improve the cars looks here is how I started out before moving onto a DA and machine polish - results were very good.

First give the car a good wash in a strong mix of car wash
Then clay
You then have two options - one is to use a proper sealant and paint cleaner such as Jeff Workstatt or Do Do Juice Lime
Other is to use SRP
Then seal this in by using a good wax such as dodo juice to give the car the final touch

The clay removes all the bits stuck on the paint - second stage will give the paint a really good cleanse and stop the swirls from being so obvious. The final coat of wax then seals that all in but more importantly you have a nice base on which to put the wax.

I did this 4 or 5 times before moving onto machine polishing, which I still find frustrating but can get a car 90% corrected now.

I would honestly stay away from correction and focus on masking using SRP or similar initially until you get a feel for what finish you can achieve by hand (you will be surprised at how well the above works).