£180 bid for a 2010 Brazilian-made VW Fox therefore £306 all in which is cheap. Category N (Non- structural) as well with only 53K on the milometer. Photos showed that the front bumper was cracked with a misaligned bonnet that normally means that it should be category S (Structural) recorded as there had been movement in the slam panel. Furthermore, the passenger door scraped against the nearside wing however, on collection, it started and drove fine and a mate even had a disguarded Fox front bumper behind his garage !
The driver’s side headlight had been pushed in with cracked brackets so a scissor jack and soldering iron were retrieved from the bowels of the garage to firstly straighten the front panel around the headlight and secondly to bond the plastic brackets back together. Now to align that bonnet…If I can only motivate myself to align that front bumper as well as paint it ?
The damaged front bumper was eventually wrestled away from the car after altercations with two stubborn rivets attached to bolts which hid beneath the front wing edges. I gave up being patient with them after our mediator, WD40 achieved no headway. Remaining silver paint was discovered in the garage from a previous Skoda Fabia wing respray and on it went to hide the blue that adorned the used Fox bumper.
After cleaning the black grille and foglight blanking circles, a shiny VW badge was transplanting from the damaged bumper to complete the process. That bonnet did get back online – to an extent but remained high towards the passenger side. Loosening 10mm bolts around the passenger wing gave some movement to stop it snagging against the passenger door and all was complete.
The V5 logbook took five months to arrive because of the Covid – related lockdown and I have just discovered that DVLA have cashed my £25 cheque weeks after the VW went to its new owner, Harry from Devon. I thought the sale wouldn’t go ahead after said test ride passenger immersed his feet literally in the rear foot ‘well’ – the rear window mustn’t have been sealed properly. Anyway, it’s gone despite its wrinkled offside bonnet brow after also having a new MOT (two tyres and handbrake adjustment) but it should have been despatched long ago – and it should have been categorised as category S – for definite !
Words and photo are copyright of Sotiris Vassiliou
October 2020
