I polish three or four times a season (the car does not come out in Minnesota winters). I polish this often not because my cars see harsh use but because I'm still pursuing swirl-free paint. I use Adam's Polishes exclusively. I usually use his Swirl and Haze Remover with the orange pad and the PC set on 6. When I take the car out into the sunlight, it looks perfect. When I pull it into the garage, wait for the Sun to go down, and look at it under a bare light bulb, I still see lots of microscratches. I tried Meguiar's ScratchX and didn't see any improvement. I also tried Adam's new Fine Machine Polish with the same results.

I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong. Is my technique bad? Am I using the wrong products? Do I need to try different pads? Or, is this normal? Do all of those "wet-shine" cars look like mine under a bare bulb? Mike's post above implies that, despite all of my hours of buffing, I've "barely touched the paint." Clearly, what I'm doing now isn't giving me the results I want. Unfortunately, winter is fast approaching here in Minnesota so I won't be able to try again until spring. I plan on using this winter to assemble a variety of different products and hopefully get better results next year.