Left wheel arch

Having made a start on the rear end, the next job in view was the left rear wheel arch.

It seemed like an easy job of stripping back, derusting and painting over, but it ended up being the same as both corners. The more I looked, poked and prodded, the bigger the job became! It became obvious that the left side had taken a significant side swipe at some point as there seems to be a lot of filler here. You can see the where the rust had developed under the filler on the right in the photo below. Not too much, but enough to cause future headaches.

With the same goal as the left corner, I kept prising the filler off in the hope of finding the edge of the damage. It just kept going. I was again amazed at how thickly this had been applied. You can see the comparison of filler thickness with a fat screw driver shaft in the photos. I don't really want to keep all this filler. Questions came wondering about the quality of work of the last repairer!

At this point I just kept at it and so have failed you with a lack of progress photos. I took a lot of filler off which covered most of the area above the wheel arch. Just above the inner arch I found some holes drilled to pull out the damage. I'll weld these up as they should have been at the time of the repair. They are full of paint for now.

 There was not a lot that could be done to improve the damage (other than replace the panel) so this area was striped back to metal and given a good coat of protection until I get to panel replacement. The lip of the arch is very straight but the panel above is rough. You can't really see that so well in the pictures though.

So now I'm happy, Ive made a good start on a long project. This progress will also keep me in the good books of the other people who use this driveway. Don't want to leave it just sitting there, taking up space, uncared for and gathering dust. I reckon that I should find an easier, more satisfying job for next time............