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My other half has a wee polo auto 1.4.
She loves it and so do I, i mean its hilarious when you put you foot down and the DSG box plays roullette with the gears but generally its been a good egg.
Now its getting the standard acne round the wheel arches etc and an unnoticed slightly misaligned door has worn the paint on the sill with a bit of surface rust shining through.
I'm a veteran of shit rusty bangernomic and was of the opinion that wheel arches etc should be left until your hand is forced and either they need replaced or the car is run into the ground. But this is all based on my own cars being CHEAP and worth heehaw. Turn out wee auto polos hold their value a bit more than i thought.
so is there any merit it getting wheel arches sorted now? Can they be repaired successfully or is that them set on a course of chasing tin worm? the upper sill area is a slightly different issue as i can probably sort that without looking terrible or atleast it'll be hidden obviously door needs sorted etc to stop it happening again. OR is the sensible approach to let it do its thing and deal with it only when it starts to let down the currently perfectly reliable car?
if its just a bit of blistering where the paint has cracked where it bends over the arches,it might be a hell of a lot easier to knock that paint off now, while its solid and redo it, rather than waiting till the arches need proper welding work.
but as a colleage of mine said, do as little as you can get away with to any car. some pillock in a pickup truck could write it off tomorrow and you've just wasted the time and and money getting it sorted.
i would do what was needed to stop the rust as far as reasonable, but in a diy fashion. Door had dropped on my transporter as you described, (someone had clearly been hanging on it to get in an out of the car) but the hinges were far too expensive for my palette, so i made a shim out of a bit of scrap metal and slipped it behind the bottom hinge to lift the door straight again. Ran it like that for 10 years problem free.
Rub down the metal and touch it up to "as close as possible", rather than worrying about a proper repair job.
Just had a similar decision. This was on a Fourtrak I bought, knowing the wheel arch was bad and price adjusted by £400 to reflect this.
Removed the plastic wheel arch cover to expose a couple of small holes and a ling of bubbly paint. A quick clean up with the wire brush on the angle grinder exposed the extent a little better.
It was then £60 for the patch panel and £250 to get it welded and waxoiled.
I would have welded it myself but a friend who is a much better welder than me offered which I was glad about as their was an awkward hole inside the wheel arch which he did at the same time. Apparently the whole job took over 10 hours, the arch was tacked and then stitched in place in a couple of hours but then it was all of the 'fiddly bits' as he put it.
Photos to see extent of rust? How many miles?. If you can DIY it - go for it. With a body shop you are looking at £££
Cheaper to get it sorted sooner rather than later. Shop around, bodywork costs vary quite a lot and cost of the job doesn't necessarily correlate to quality of job. I';ve used a local body shop who are much cheaper than the larger places and they've always done a great job that lasts too.
Had minor wheel arch rust sorted for no more than a couple of hundred quid before. And more recently a large dent in the wife cars tailgate pulled out and addressed for £350 where a larger body shop wanted £1400!! No harm in getting some quotes.
You could at least get some rust converter on all the bits you can see an slow the process down. Then either rub down and hand spray/touch up. It won't look perfect but will get you more life out of the car for little outlay.
what year Polo? you can get painted wings on ebay for about £100 a side on a lot of the 2000s models (9N & 9N3)
How old is the Polo? Reason behind that a work colleague has 07Mk5 Golf and got a pair of replacement front wings fitted by VW main dealer under the 12 year anti rust warranty. It hasn't seen a dealership in years or had 'yearly inspections' and he didn't have too much pushback from VW.
IIRC VW sandwich a layer of absorbing foam between the inner and outer skins that holds water.
My 04Mk4 wings have gone and are £180 painted from a place in Scotland via eBay.
if there is rust bubbling thru then IMO the wing will be like lace once you remove all the rust as its come thru from the inside. the only repair is new wings or part wings
The photo of my truck shows what happens when you clean back some bubbles of rust. Also you can see where I painted the cleaned back bit with Aqua Steel rust converter to leave weldable metal.
How old is the Polo? Reason behind that a work colleague has 07Mk5 Golf and got a pair of replacement front wings fitted by VW main dealer under the 12 year anti rust warranty.
2008 so it's just slipped out. God damn it.
I'll grab a photo later. It's only just hinting at rusting that's why I wondered if it's worth intervening. Based on previous it's got a good few years before I can put a finger through it.
However I have just seen a spankers new wing is 35quid so I won't be ****ing about with a flap wheel and trying to patch a hole.
Ivll sort the door sag and tidy the rust patch on the sill for preventative measures and see what's what.
Might fix the electric window and rear wiper too..