The windshield on my car is very pitted. I had heard somewhere that glass can be polished. Has anyone tried that? what about plastic? the lights on my daily driver is also pretty well marked up.

Yes they can be made to look much better---do not expect to get "new" look results, but the results are non-theless nery good.

In the military we use lexan polish, it is non-descript but the essnetially same stuff can be purchased at most auto parts stores.

It is a paste to liquid that is the equivelant to 5000 grit.

They do make ones for glass and plastic seperatly--but my recommendation is to use only the plastic polish on both surfaces.

The trick is just like wet sanding the primer before first coat of paint--i.e.: you must keep the surface wetted at all times. Do NOT allow the compund to "dry rub"!!

Another thing is NOT to use a circular motion--this puts a very fine "globe" look into the glass- and under certain light conditions will produce a " halo" effect.

Use a long sweeping side to side motion with only the natural weight of your hand--DO NOT PRESS!!!

It WILL take some time, you will go thru a 12 pack of brew easily before it could be to your satisfaction-Good luck!!!

For plastic I've had great success using the same thing I buff clear coat with - my Makita buffer and wool pad + 3M Perfect-it III compound. I painted an Explorer a few weeks ago and the plastic headlights were all dull and yellow. A quick going over with the buffer made them look new again and took out almost all of the yellowing. A wool bonnet on a drill with some polishing compound should work fine too. For glass, Eastwood company sells a glass polishing kit. I've never used it, and don't expect anything to take out deep pits or chips but only light scratches.
Glass Polishing Kit

You can't really polish anything but the lightest imperfections out of glass, even under the best of circumstances. Back in my autoglass days, we had a glass polisher that was very powerful and went some crazy-high RPM like 50,000, and even with that, our rule of thumb was that if you can feel it easily with your fingernail, you will almost certainly not be able to remove it. If you take the obscene amount time required to do so, you will have removed enough glass to cause a significant distortion, and it will be garbage anyway.

If your windshield has pits, it simply can't be fixed by having it polished. Sorry dude.

I've seen some impressive work at the SEMA with these guys but they are much more expensive than Eastwood's DIY kit. They sell a system for people to start a glass repair business. Check these guys: glasweld
Felix

" This difference enables you to remove scratches up to .004” deep (deep enough to catch your fingernail) without leaving any distortion!"

This "glasweld" sound interesting. Looks like it "removes" a scratch without removing the glass around it by filling it with a polymer. There have been many attempts at this idea over the years (Novous was one of the first I recall) with marginal results. Maybe these guys have it right. The systems were very expensive back then.

I see our old "if you can feel it with your fingernail" test looks to still be the industry standard almost 20 years later.

I've heard that toothpaste works well on plastic lenses.