Rather than a mass of orange rust, I was treated to lots of little holes that needed to be dealt with individually. The first was the "jacking point", which someone had tried to use as such:
so out came the angle grinder:
and in went the repair patches, expertly crafted this time since I'd had the practice on the other side:
there was also the depressing sight of the brake hose mounting tab, which had started rotting away around the mount. This is where the inner wing skin meets the chassis rail, so it had to be cut out in two parts:
and two small panels let in with an overlap. They'll be spot-welded together in due course (well, plug welded) when the bracket is clean and ready to go back on.
But the worst part was the leading edge of the wing, where it joins the tray that sits under the windscreen washer fluid tank. The tank had obviously leaked many times in the past, and the fluid pooled in the tray, rotting it out from the inside. It's barely noticeable from the engine bay and invisible with the wheel arch liners in place, but once the plastic liners are removed, the extent of the rot becomes apparent:
and once the metal was cut away, you could see that the tray itself was suffering around the lip:
Now, I could do this the proper way and cut out all of the spot-welds and let in a new tray for the princely sum of 20 quid, but a) I didn't want to wait b) it's really fiddly cutting out all of those welds and c) I'm a pikey. So I cut out the rotten bits and made up some more repair patches:
Add into that a small repair to the side of the chassis rail, and it was time to re-skin the bottom of the wheel arch with fresh steel. That should keep the orange devils at bay for a little while longer:
) it will have to wait until respray time when I get the rear valance attended to as well.
Keep up the good work!
