As posted earlier I've had the issue with rust attacking the LHS boot strut mounting even though I've tried to keep the (hairs breadth!) drain channel free. In mine it silts up even with dust in the atmosphere being washed into the channel from rain showers, let alone the general crud that accumulates when using the car.
Here are images of how it was looking, in the first couple of images the car had been sitting on my drive for perhaps 3 weeks (?) and prior to that the channel had been cleaned and was free running! You could actually see the metal around the body joint flexing around the strut mounting point - horrendous!
RHS was unaffected.
On Monday (after having had a chat with Phil (Bodyshop manager) and Dave (owner - who used to have a GTR) at Prestige Parkway in Manchester, car went in for some surgery! The plan was to remove bumper, cut out the offending rusty metal, shape a replacement piece and weld it in, then make an OEM finish and paint it,
If you have ever wondered where that water actually drains to, look here. This is with the plastic bracket that seems to be the root cause having been removed. Some of the crud is the mounting mastic, but there is clear build up of debris in the seam of the wing/boot.
On the RHS, this is before they removed the offending bracket.
This shows the new plate after being shaped , a new rivnut having been welded inside and the plate then welded in place.
Painted.
Reassembled, as you can see they improved the drain channel by simply removing a small portion of the plastic bracket (on both sides).
Have been very impressed by the work done and the care and attention to detail from Prestige Parkway, as they said - they wanted to make sure this was a permanent solution to the root cause and not just a fix to the end result of a poor design. Now with a proper drain channel I hope the water runoff will actually be strong enough to wash debris straight thorough and not accumulate in the hidden seam.
Car was ready for collection today (Thursday, although I wasn't able to get there, so tomorrow I'll have it back), effectively 3 days "end to end" but obviously at least part of that was spent waiting for paint to harden before polishing and re-assembly.
Happy days! Their next job is to attend to stone chipping on front bumper.
David