I have some pretty jacked up looking paint on the roof of my 2000 Honda Civic, and decided I would try to hand polish it a little. So I got out a very soft white hex logic pad, and some extra fine polish ( real polish ), cleaned a small area on the roof and went at it. It's very hot were I live, so I tried to make sure to polish for just a few seconds and then wipe off any excess polish. I was also using a bit of Optimum No Rinse to moisten everything up.
Well when I wiped away the excess polish I was shocked to see a light dull whiteness seemingly covering my dark navy blue roof. So I went later in the day and got a Nanoskin pad to try and take it off, without much success as can be seen below. I also used the pad to scrub down that whole same side of the roof ( which I had not polished ).
Here's what it looks like now:
You can see on the right side that the street lamp is reflecting on the roof where I used the nanoskin pad, yet the spot where I polished has a distint whitish appearance. You can see in this pick of the left side what it looked like before and how the lamp doesn't reflect almost at all:
Anyways, am I up a creek, or do I have some hope that this is just dried polish that I can somehow remove?
EDIT
Just to make it more clear, I'm talking about actual abrasive polish, not wax.
This is the product I was using, IMPA Phase 1 Rubbing Cream.