When I started this adventure I never thought I would be getting this savage with my beloved VW. If I did have any insight into the extent I would eventually be going to, I think I would have been too overwhelmed to even make a start!
Anyway, let me back up and go over the steps I took to remove the passenger side front quarter panel. Firstly, I removed the bonnet cable guide tube having carefully noted its position and orientation on the quarter panel. It was brazed on in several places and I will hopefully do the same (another skill I will need to learn) when I reattach it back to the new panel. The Dremel tool with mini grinding wheel was great for this delicate job:
With all the brazed welds either ground down or cut through, the guide tube came free without any trouble:
I then need to take care of a dodgy old 'repair' at the bottom of the A-post (nothing to do with me by the way). It was annoyingly seam welded to the inner arch as opposed to spot welded:
The angle grinder made fast work of it. Oh look, it appears to be another crappy old Veng repair panel:
Cut around the top of the panel underneath the point where it meets the scuttle panel:
Had to locate and drill out a bunch of spot welds hiding at the bottom of the spare wheel well. Conveniently, I didn't have to bother with this step before as the same section on the other side had entirely disappeared due to rot:
After a lot of patience I had the panel off:
To finish off it was a case of removing the few remaining spot welds to free the inner fuel tank and space wheel well structure, which I wanted to keep together as one assembly:
Having this section free of the car means it will be far easier to clean up and make repairs:
...And so this leaves me with a significantly shortened car, the advantage of which is that I have now liberated a couple of extra feet of precious workshop space, haha.
