replacement rear arches - tips

[steve bain]

so i have ordered my new arches from Chris (cheers Joost) and hopefully they are on their way. Lots of people have replaced their arches on here, so any advice, tricks, tips, cock ups?

So far i know:
Cut as little as possible out of the car, cut the arch to fit. is there a clever way of getting this super accurate, or is it a matter of just trimming a bit at a time?
tack in place and let cool, tack in the middle of the last tack. let cool and so on.

Should i joggle the panel? will is reduce the chance of warping. I don't have a joggler, but will buy one if required. Assume it would make it far easier?

My inner arches look ok (but then, so did the outers before i started digging!) so i was thinking just patch where required, or would you buy a mk1 golf inner arch repair? will it even fit? i still plan on slicing the lip off and welding the inner to the outer so the bit that is missing doesn't matter too much.

or should i just get stuck in and see how it goes?

thanks in advance.

Steve

[steve bain]

Just read poppy's built. Makes sense to me so I will do it like that, except I will cut the arches back between 10 and 2 and seam weld to the winners. Just need to buy a joggler now. £30 seems a lot for a tool I won't use very much!

[mark1gls]

One tip I can give you is make sure it all lines up as the mk2 Storm I have in the garage someone replaced the arch and did not fit it right so when you put the plastic wheel arch back on and try to fix it to the fixings in the arch the front is about 10mm to low and the rear part is to high, so I guess it will need to be cut again and another one put on!

[steve bain]

Sound advice. Trial fit the plastic arches. Makes sense really. I'm thinking about running kitless for a bit. Seems wrong though as all storms had a kit...

[steve bain]

Just read that message again I wrote. Seemed a bit rude. Wasn't meant to. Really was good advice!

[james butler]

not sure a joggler would be a good idea. because of the curving shape of the wing you may find the step the joggler puts into the metal will cause the wing to straighten out and lose its shape.
the only thing i will warn you now is take it seriously slowly when welding as the outer skins are incredibly thin and prone to warping with heat.
when i repaired my arch i welded repair pieces in by overlapping the old arch over the new then skimming the difference with filler. but to be fair my arches were no where near as bad as yours, so was a lot easier for me to repair mine.
im still curious about how you are going to weld the new outer arch to the inner arch lip. normally i would plug weld these for lack of a spot welder.
but i seem to recall you said your inner arch lip was "crispy" so are you still going to cut them off?
i would have thought it would be quite hard to get a neat weld round the entire arch to join the inner with the outer.