Today, a friend who is something of a master welder and fabricator extraordinaire came over to assist with the dubious metalwork of the Daihatsu. Not only is he a gentleman of distinction, he's also a dab hand with the grinder and MIG welder. While I plied him with thin tea and pork products, he cut away the rusty grot on the car and expertly let in lovely shiny new metal bits. Today's popular areas included "the passenger side rear inner arch" which formerly looked like this

Then this

then THIS

But now, THIS!

grot chopped out, new metal let in, ground back, and zinc primer'd in anticipation of a coat of either black enamel or bitumen paint shortly. BUT THATS NOT ALL

We also spotted a nasty bit of rust in the passenger side seatbelt mount, which was cut out and a new fillet welded in.

We then turned the car around (more on this later) and he attacked the deeply dubious drivers side chassis rail. The concern here was that it looked mega crusty, mega close to the spring mounting. It looks like we caught it just in time, and cut back to bright metal  without needing to lop the spring mount off

There's some surface rust, but nothing a liberal dose of Vactan and Dynax wax won't sort out once this has had new metal let in. Sadly, bad light stopped play for today, but we got about 75% of the work done today. Next up is fabricating new metal for the drivers side chassis rail, and treating a couple of nasty looking, but superficial grot spots on the inside of the boot

Hopefully, these will be dispatched late next week/weekend and I can then reassemble the interior, and get a set of tyres ordered to replaced the aged current set - then its escalate to DEFCON 4 and book it in for an MOT test. We'll have sorted all the major defects from the last test, and I'm reasonably confident of a pass with just advisories for a few bits thing time round.

What I did notice while turning the car around was that the ICV I hastily re-assembled a week ago has stuck open again and the idle is up again. I have a very well lubricated spare, but what will be easier to deal with I hope is the AliExpress one which should* arrive here during the week this coming week. I can fit that to the polished throttle body and hopefully it will behave for the MOT.

I also need to sort some insurance for it as well. But mega progress has been made today, and I'd still be in a massive bind were it not for the skills, patience and kind offer of assistance from a knowledgeable friend (one far more talented than I will ever be!)