I finally replaced my front right wing!
I paid 50 euro for a used wing, delivered, in good condition... and then another 100 euro to colour-match and repaint it... Not cheap, but the bodywork is now much, much better.
(Some of you guys are finding whole cars over there with good bodies for 200 quid, so there's an idea of how much cheaper you lot in the UK have it... )
A little story there... when they repainted my brand-new second-hand wing the first time, they used metallic paint.. right base colour but I don't have metallic paint on the car.. oops... I had to tell them to respray it again, which they did immediately (24h and pick up) and the paint now matches perfectly. At least I have peace of mind knowing I've got an extra layer of paint protection on that wing - and they fixed it without any fuss or extra cost to me - so bonus, really.
Getting the entire assembly off was not too hard, I had help and we did it in a car park with some cardboard on the ground to protect the new paint once the bodywork was off the front of the car.
On the back of that panel I found some ugly stuff.... most clips missing, everything stuck back together with epoxy - not a complete bodge job, I think whoever fixed it was working with a completely wa****ed front end and did their best. Externally, it didn't look as bad as it really was. However I'm glad the worst of it is now replaced with a like-new proper solid panel.
Behind all this I also found that part of the metal frame where the impact bar is bolted, has crumpled ever so slightly - probably by design - and that's the main reason for the front body panel being slightly out of alignment with the hood. However it's not the end of the world, I'm minded to leave as-is, or try straighten it myself in the future as it's really only cosmetic.
I also found the left hand light cluster has a broken top mount point, which explains why it wobbles ever so slightly in it's space. Again, no MOT failure and it's not going to fall out anywhere, so I'm cool for the moment with that.
Finally, I took the weatherseal I removed from around the engine bay and cleaned all the old glue off of both the rubber and the car with Acetone, a plastic scraper and a toothbrush, and put the weatherseal back on with brand new 3M double sided automotive tape. It took hours, but it's stuck down much much better now.
Overall, a very informative disassembly, but nothing really there that I didn't expect to find.
I took a couple of photos but my 5-yo iPhone ran out of battery before I got the front end off properly. Sad. I'll post any pics that I did manage to take (if informative), later.
