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I hope I posted this in the right forums, anyways, I smoked the tail lights on my coupe, and I put one coat of clearcoat, once I was done my lights looked pretty dull, no shine to them whatsoever. I was wondering what I should do to make them look glossy, a friend told me to use sandpaper to polish them up, and then re gloss them with clearcoat, but this time put more coats instead of just 1. If so what % sandpaper should I use? And how many coats of clearcoat would you recommend? I want them to look like some Mercedez' I see around a lot, though I think they're using sheets of tint paper. Your help would be appreciated, thanks!

 
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For mine I used a nice Polycarbonate safe spray tint(Tamiya brand PC Smoke coloured) I did a few coats of that and then an acrylic(I know that mixing them isn't a smart idea) Clear Coat. It took around 10 light coats of the clear coat to make any difference. I've never been able to get it to look at glossy as it was before but it looks pretty good.

As for sanding... Prolly 1000+ grit sand paper. Something to rough up the surface.

 
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I see, do you have any pics of how your lights turned out? I would like to see the result of your method

 
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I am at work right now and don't have any available. I can take some either tonight or tomorrow though. The only pics I have on hand are on my myspace in one of the blog entries. But that was before the clear coat. The best way to describe it is it looks like a deeeeeeeep cherry red. In bright enough sunlight it doesn't look as dark but at night it's very dark.

What's nice is the spray is very translucent so you can still see through it.

 
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If you want gloss to stand out from clearcoat, you need to wetsand with a very find grit, like 1000+, then move on to a rubbing compound. I know 3M has one, available at most bodyshop supply stores.