Since my Viva has been painted the red it currently is, there has been a crack on the passenger wheel arch just below the rear door. Ive removed the paint only to find the crack goes into the filler below and i thought "its just a tiny crack in the paint, im not taking the filler back too!" And so it was painted over and the crack reappeared.
During the restoration, we found the wheel arch had some work done previously but not to the highest of standards which is causing this to appear. Since we didnt have a MIG welder, filler was just put over and it was forgotten about.
Now im getting close to the end of my course at college, i want to do a colour change and remove all the dents and rust bubbles and especially cracks in the paint around the wheel arch!
I asked about doing some work on it in the body shop and eventually, today was the day!
The side trim and mudflap was removed and i attacked it with a DA sander with P80 since it was the lowest we had.
As i removed more and more filler, i was beginning to realise how much filler was in and how distorted the panel is.
Since it seemed to be held together with a series of tack welds, i made the decision to redo the repair attempted by the previous person. This meant finding the edge of the repair...
This turned out to be more than a quick repair, but doesnt it always?
The wheel arch had been replaced entirely but not aligned properly meaning at the top, there was almost an inch of body filler and some places, surface rust and paint under the filler. Large pieces of filler just cracked off in one piece in these areas.
The wheel arch trim and the sill trim were the next pieces to be removed.
I had already stepped up to using a grinder with a soft pad to speed up the filler removal.
Rust holes were found at the rear of the wheel arch but surprisingly, there was no rust nearby so that was a bonus!
Unfortunately, the time flew by and i wasnt able to begin cutting or welding today so I mixed some high build primer up and covered the exposed metal and filler until im next in the workshop on wednesday.
Ill be continuing to remove filler, paint and rust at home until then!
Let this be a lesson to you! If you see a crack in your paint, pretend it doesnt exist!