My first boss told me to never trust a paint meter on a quarter panel

Back in the early 2000s, I was a new guy at a shop in Tacoma. My boss, a man named Carl who'd been doing this since the 70s, saw me checking a used car we were about to buy. I was using a new paint meter on the quarter panel and it read clean. He just shook his head and said, 'Kid, they always fill that spot with mud. You gotta check the door jamb and the roof edge.' Sure enough, I pulled the interior panel and found a fist-sized glob of filler behind the wheel well. He was right. It was a lesson in knowing which spots on a car are easy to hide damage. That old-school knowledge saved me from a bad buy more than once. Do you guys have any other 'tells' for hidden damage that you always check first?

3 comments

3 Comments

uma_taylor471mo ago

Oh, that's such a good point about texture and overspray. I've seen guys miss a full respray because they only checked the panel readings. That roof edge trick is a keeper, it's amazing how often people botch that transition.

the_elizabeth1mo ago

Ha, yeah that roof edge is where dreams go to die. I once spent a whole day wet sanding a car because I thought I was being clever checking panel gaps... then walked out to the sun and saw the roof looked like a zebra. We all learn the hard way I guess.

lopez.quinn1mo ago

Actually, a good paint meter reading on a quarter can be a real sign of trouble (it means they might have stripped it to bare metal for a full re-spray). The real trick is checking for texture or overspray on the adjacent roof or door, which is way harder to hide perfectly. That mismatch is the real tell.