Removing oxidation...

[Danglybanger]

Anything actually do it fairly well?

The hood/deck of my car are a bit hazy, I went over the hood with meguire's cleaning wax and then scratch x (scratch x first really didn't do anything, but applying it after the cleaning wax gave a fairly significant improvement...)

The finish no longer feels like chalk and is a bit shinier (it reflects SOME light now but...)

well, there must be something better Short of a new paint job (it'll be in the next ten years, and almost certainly be yellow/orange/lime green) but for now I'm not too concerned with looks beyond polishing so...

What product should I purchase to do this?

[sblake01]

I use the Meguiars cleaner wax and Meguiars Color X. I use a small Ryobi orbital applicator to apply them, however. The more you go over it, the better it gets.

[Carl Beck]

Might not be a matter of the polishing/waxing products you are using - so much as it is the paint itself.

The answer really depends on what paint your talking about - it's age and condition etc. If it's the original factory enamel, on a metallic color - your clear coat could be going bad. Enamel drys with a skin coat of solids on the top layer - once you've polished your way through that - the paint will not hold a shine for more than a couple weeks. So you don't want to use anything that is too harsh, or that would remove too much of that skin coat.

Lacquers will usually polish up and hold a shine, right down to the primer under them.. that is not the case with the older enamels.

FWIW,

Carl B.

[Danglybanger]

I'm afraid of buffing through the 15 year old maaco paint, which does have to go at some point, but must stick around a bit and look at least decent for now... Not sure what sort of paint this is, but there appears not to be a clearcoat... or else it'd probably look a lot worse by now.