spare wheel well/rear panel joined

I've been doing lots of bodywork welding on my car recently. One of the areas was the rear of the spare wheel well. I found a poor quality previous repair, which I've removed and repaired again. I found a small panel which joined the spare wheel well to the rear panel, I thought this was a 'bodge' so I cut it off! (It was a low quality thing and it had rusted anyway). But looking at bodyshells recently, I see that this panel is in fact a standard fitting. It seems to me that its a rust-trap though. My question is, what's the purpose of this panel and what's the consequence of not having one?

Presumably it?s just a brace for the rear lower panel to stop it flexing and having a wobbly bottom like you used to see on Ford Mondeos on the motorway

Paul - it just stops the rear panel flexing in the middle. If you grab hold of the bottom of your panel now, you'll be able to wobble it about. You're right though - it is a rust trap !  I would make a new one up if I were you. From memory they're slightly triangulated (tapers in towards spare wheel well) and have two holes close to spare wheel well to allow water out (in theory anyway……..)
Cheers,
Mark

Can you still but this piece from VW? Guess maybe the lower part of rear panel could vibrate without it? :dontknow:

Early-1800 said

Presumably it?s just a brace for the rear lower panel to stop it flexing and having a wobbly bottom like you used to see on Ford Mondeos on the motorway

You just beat me to the post there. I like the Mondeo comparison !  Do any of them NOT have gaffer tape holding the rear bumper together I wonder ?!?

Great, thanks. Unfortunately, I've already repaired the area, its not a big problem to scrape off the primer again but I've applied seam sealer which I don't want to catch fire or anything, so I might just leave it for now. At least I know its wrong now!

Paul

This piece comes already attached to original repacement rear panels (Rich will confirm).  I doubt very much if it is (or even was) available as a separate piece of VW tinware.  It is as m6m62 says, a simple parallelogram (tapered) shaped piece which has stiffening flanges either side.  It would be a simple task to crawl up someone's (golf!) nether reagion to take dimesnions and reproduce the part your-self.

Cheers

The part is available as a seperate part from VW.
I had a quote for the bit when I priced up genuine VAG rear tyre wells. :wink: