The Reverse Test Spot

[Mike Phillips]

One time I had a chance to work on a very cool 1954 Corvette for Corvette Mike. I had never met Mike before and he hired me based upon a recommendation by Mike Kennedy from Meguiar's.

I showed up for the job with my Brinkman Swirl Finder Light to inspect the finish myself but to also show Mike the true condition of the paint before I started working on it. I found out that Mike would be out of the office till that evening.

While I knew that he knew the finish was a wreck otherwise why would he hire me to work on the car, I also knew that it's easy to forget how horrible a finish started out after it's been restored. Because this was the first time I worked for this gentleman I wanted to make a great first impression and since I couldn't do a normal Test Spot on the hood or deck lid to show him the before and after results BEFORE buffing out the car, I decided to tape off a section on the hood and then buff out the entire car except this one spot.

Then when he arrived I would show him the true before condition of the paint with the Brinkman Swirl Finder Light and after showing him I could then quickly restore that one section to match the rest of the car.

I called this The Reverse Test Spot but never found time to post the write-up for this project. Since I still have all the pictures I'll post the write-up on here in the near future because there's some very interesting procedures I did to this particular car that I think others might enjoy seeing.

Until then, here's what the Reverse Test Spot looks like; instead of taping off a small section to work on while leaving all the surrounding paint undisturbed, you tape off and cover a small section and then disturb all the surrounding paint.

(The word disturb in this case means to correct and polish the paint to a high gloss )


The Reverse Test Spot




Here's what the paint looked like before when highlighted with the Brinkman Swirl Finder Light






After shots...










Think outside the spot...

[AdvanceDetail]

Re: The Reverse Test Spot

i did the same thing... polished the whole car and left the 1/2 of the hood un touched..

[Mike Phillips]

Re: The Reverse Test Spot

i did the same thing... polished the whole car and left the 1/2 of the hood un touched..

And then showed the customer the before and after differences?

And then fixed the other half of the hood?

[john m.]

Re: The Reverse Test Spot

Awesome, Mike!!! This is such a good idea! I never would have thought of something like that! Thanks for the tip

[Mike Phillips]

Re: The Reverse Test Spot

Awesome, Mike!!! This is such a good idea! I never would have thought of something like that! Thanks for the tip

It's just too easy for owners to forget how bad the finish was to start with, so taping this section off before working on the car preserved the ugly as I like to say.

For years when teaching the Saturday classes here at Meguiar's before doing the hands-on demonstrations I would have the owner of demo car back the car out into the sun outside of the garage and then ask all the students to carefully inspect the condition of the paint with the sun shining down exposing the swirls.

I would say,

"Look at the finish and lock how it looks into your memory because when we're done it's not going to look the same and you need to remember how it looked before we start"


Kind of like this,



After