can you polish a windshield? Options

[Olympic 914]

My windshield has some wear from the wipers. but no cracks

Can this be polished? or is there some coating that would be ruined (more) by trying.

When I did the car I left the windshield in, and really have no reason to change it out now. But I would like to eliminate some of the fine scratches from years of wear.

[Olympic 914]

Decided to work on this yesterday,
Promised report.

Here’s what’s in the Eastwood package



First I laid some plastic drop cloths over the car to protect from compound getting everywhere



You can see the wiper marks here reflected in the light.



I only used two teaspoons of compound mixed with a sprits of water to mix it up (they recommend a toothpaste like thickness, mine was thinner)

Started out with their pad mounted in a cordless drill, they recommend a speed of 600-1500 rpm max
Well my dual range drill goes 0-450 or 0-1800. So I put it on the lower range to start.



Very hard keeping the 3” pad they supplied flat on the surface, It would start to oscillate violently at 450 and you had to stop and start again. In the top range anywhere near the 1500 it was slinging compound all over everything, So I stayed with the lower range.

When the instructions say “Labor intensive” They are not kidding.

I worked the windshield for 3 hours doing ¼ at a time, spritzing with water to keep the surface wet (but not running) wiping off every 15-20 min to check progress.

And change batteries, (Had two on charge all the time)

After around 3 hours I stopped for lunch and thought about this for a while.

Then I decided to get out my Porter Cable Orbital buffer and try that out.



I had originally not used it because the min speed was 2400 OPM and I thought it would be too fast.

Found that a Meguires 6” cutting pad seemed to be similar to the 3” wool or felt pad supplied by Eastwood.



So I hooked up the 6” pad and started again.

MUCH much easier to control, and I could do ½ the windshield at a time. The larger pad didn’t want to lift an edge like the smaller pad, Kept it moving to avoid heating up one spot.



So I worked this for about another 3 ½ hours and I am quite happy with the results.
If I get the light Just right I can still see where the wiper marks were, BUT they are almost invisible.



A drive at night with lights coming towards me will be the real test.
Hoping for the best.

I only used two teaspoons of compound mixed with water out of the ½ lb supplied in the kit.
You could do this many times with this much compound.

With this compound you don't have to worry about cutting too much, It takes a long time so it must be pretty fine.

I struggled with the 3" pad on a drill, Maybe on orbital buffer it would have been OK but the 6" pad was much easier to control

Hope this helps someone who wants to tackle this project.