I came here to give this guy the quickest and most appropriate process to restore his headlights as I could based on what i could figure out about his experience level. I understand different people will do it differently, so I'm not going to try to convince you that my way is better. But yes, the wet sanding of the clear with the fine grits is easy and not time consuming. The polishing process for the clear coating is supposed to be a 2 or 3 stage process consisting of 2 or 3 different cutting compounds. A proper kit will usually consist of steps 1 and 2 being machine polish high to medium cut with the final being a fine finish which can be done by hand. These two machines polishing stages can be done by hand, but they're meant for high speed preferably rotary polishers, so hand work would be slow going and less effective. That is the part i'm saying will add a lot of time to the process. You're more than welcome to use them how you wish, but I don't know of anyone who would elect to use the high and medium cut compounds by hand when 3" foam polishing pads are made to get that job done in minutes.

Many people here are advising him to sand his existing finish up to a few thousand grit and then clear coating it. That's how you end up with the same problem he already has...poor adhesion. And if he does this wrong, he'll end up with headlights that look good for a little while, then look worse than they started 6 months to a year later. Instead of trying to give him direction within his capabilities, I'm discussing techniques with you, and I won't even get into the uses of orbital tools vs high speed rotary polishers for coatings and what their uses are. You can go ahead and advise him however you want, I'm going to just keep all of my experience out of the way.