Repairing a bad touch-up job

I have several paint nicks in my pearl black 90 300E, some of which were repaired by the previous owner. Unfortunately, what he did to them almost looks worse. One spot has about a 1/8" chip blobbed over with touch up paint. Then it's covered with about a dime-sized area of transparent clear coat, which is, of course, slightly higher than the paint surface. It looks ok when you look straight at it, but the nicer I shine my car the more noticeable the "high spot" becomes. Is there any way to level it out somehow without damaging the surrounding area? Or redo it completely?

There are some methods but they are somewhat high risk. As in, one slip, and you can damage the rest of the finish. Have you tried machine buffing it with #9 or 3M light cut? You could take some 2000 grit sandpaper, attach it to a wooden block the size of a billiards cue, and wet sand it. Of course, if you sand too far off the "blob" you will mar the surrounding area. The wet sand will take down the high spot but you must be VERY careful not to touch the surrounding area. Once you have the blob down closer to surface area I would revert back to the light cut or swirl remover. Then polish, wax, etc.

If the paint on your (hood?) is original I would not have it repainted, I would try the sanding method first. IF the paint isn't original then I might just consider a repaint. Think of it this way, if you sand and do it just right you are good again. If you sand and screw up, you still have to repaint. Don't sweat a little bit of sand marks but you can take the factory paint off just as easy as the ugly stuff. I would try and avoid buffing the crap out of the entire area with something very harsh, you will likely make things look worse as the problem is confined to a small location.
If all of this sounds a bit too much of a PITA then you could just learn to live with it. Superglue should suffice to attach the 2000 grit to the billiards cue. (1"x1"x1" cube) I'm sorry to hear about your situation. If there is anything else we can do don't hesitate to ask.

Lee