Quick update on the passenger side body repairs – still moving steadily forwards!
The bottom of the A-post was suffering from a combination of rust and another dodgy previous repair from yours truly, so I cut it all back to good metal.
The wheel arch was a little bit worse than I had initially assessed it to be – this wonderful multi-layered bit of patching is all getting cut out as well!
With that mess all purged I cleaned back all the flanges on the central membrane, ready to get the new outer sill welded in.
I fabricated a new repair section for the missing bit of wheel arch, somewhat tricky with the compound curve in that area, but quite happy with it. After a test fitting with the door and the front and back wings clamped in position to check the fit, I then plug-welded in the new outer sill.
Here’s a closer view of the wheel arch repair once it was all cleaned up and primed. I’ve already ground back just enough of the plug welds to enable final fitting up of the rear wing at this point (I probably won’t bother grinding back the ones that will never be seen again!).
Final job for this stage was to reconstruct the bottom of the A-post. I made a cardboard template for each of the 3 sides, transferred them to steel and butt-welded them to the A-post, and then plug-welded the new flanges onto the sill. Here’s the end result, pretty pleased with this – very satisfying to be re-doing another previous bodge that has bugged me for so long.
Just need to clean up the last few welds, and then it’s on to fitting the rear wing.