Out with the old...

Well that seems to be a decision made then!

Whilst staring at the problem and drinking tea, some sort of necessary sequence for the repair work needed at the back of the car began to form. It was fairly clear that the first step would be to remove the entire boot floor and rear valence in one piece. The plan being that this would allow the floor to be replaced which in turn would provide locating points for the inner wing repairs and to replace the rear light panel.

Having tidied up the edges with the flap disc it was pretty obvious that the metal along the back edge of the axle tunnel and wheel arches was very thin and there were a few holes and general frilliness. This necessitated cutting out more metal (and finding some rust in one of the seams) and welding in patches to replace that which had dissolved.

The results are stronger but the thin metal kept blowing through even with the welder on the lowest setting. It may be necessary to cut further back in places and try again.

Nevertheless after a full day of cutting, grinding and welding we'd managed to replace three tiny sections of bodywork. This is slow work!

Then I decided to tidy up an older weld in the nearside wheel arch and found this

It appears that someone has managed to weld over a rusty hole somehow. That's quite an impressive feat. Further investigation made the hole bigger and revealed although this is the worst part, the rust extends into the seam below. That's a really complex section of bodywork to repair too, which is presumably why it was bodged in the first place. For now I've dealt with the issue mostly by trying to ignore it and doing something else instead.

I get the impression there might be more of this sort of thing to come.