An Audi, and a Vauxhall

I thought all HB/HC wheel wells looked like that one you removed!

I decided to swap places with the Audi and the hatch this weekend. I haven't touched the Audi since the hatch arrived, despite intending to switch between both cars, so by moving that out of the way and admitting it wasn't getting any work, I could also put a load of stuff inside it and free up a bit of space in the shed. Once I did that (which took longer than I hoped as the Audi has very heavy steering due to it usually being power-assisted, and the hatch has a broken steering coupling) I could have a look at the nearside in more detail.

One of the issues is this lovely section where the inner wing joins the side panel:



Three or four poorly-shaped patches applied over rusty steel, which has all been left in place. And a bonnet hinge repair panel with a big overlap so that stuff can be going on behind it. Other than that it's pretty similar to the offside, except that it's had a sill fitted. But there's a lot of filler over it, so it's really got to come off so I can see why, and how/whether they've fixed the inner sill. Not a horror story, though.

Here's a section where the replacement/cover sill joins the rear quarter panel, with another scabby bit of steel welded quite a way behind the two panels and filled over with almost 15mm thickness of filler.



And towards the back end of the sill, for some reason it's had a big section cut out and loosely patched, with a load more filler over it. I wonder what's behind that.

It strikes me that maybe they put the outer sill on, but hadn't noticed a problem with the backing sill. The backing sill feels OK, but the sill has to come off anyway so I'll know more at that point. Doing the bit where the inner wing joins the side panel first.

If it wasnt for that stupid hinge reinforcement plate the wings wouldnt rot out half as bad, the back of the wing and chassis leg look good though!

Seems that the other issue is the car is painted with the bonnet hinges on, so between the hinge and the inner wing is only primer. While I'm stripping the section of the used inner wing there's a bit of rust behind the hinges that needs to be dealt with, and there's no white paint there.

Looks good, nice job

I think the biggest trouble with these repair panels is that they're designed to fit over / inside / around the rusty bit, so they don't have quite the same curves as the original panel. But you're quite right, they're designed to do a quick MOT job and nothing more. If they were easier to find, I'd just stick a new inner wing on it, but they're not.

Joining piece between the inner wing and bulkhead is on now. I haven't done much on it over the last few days as I've been helping a mate clear the jungle at the top end of his yard in return for some rusty racking that was in a shed there. So now I have another project - trying to clean up some old racking so I can put stuff on it and hopefully tidy things up a bit.

You are going to struggle to get that from the rear of the panel - You may well be better to lightly weld tack a few pulling pins / nails to the face of the damage in the deepest section then ideally drawing it out on a slide hammer principle - you need to take care that you don't over pull it and end up with convex panel damage rather than concave - I'd give it a go before you cut the arch off otherwise you will find the panel difficult to pull against has it will have lost its retained tension that it has whilst fixed on all sides