Well today I managed to do this job in a little over three and a half hours from start to finish with only a short break for a cup of tea and cheese on toast
The two parts cost me £27.71 inc vat (in total) from Peterborough Audi.
Didn't have my camera to produce a 'how to' but did make a note of the number of screws removed from each part/section of the job. For me it went a little bit like this . . .
Firstly I removed the off-side wheel arch liner.
This consisted of 11 torx screws (one of which was slightly longer than the others) and three poppers.
Next I opened the rear door and prised of a bit of trim between the door aperture and sill at the bottom (just at the end where it met the bottom of the wheel arch). I did this to gain access to a countersunk type torx screw underneath which screws into a white piece of plastic.
In the same area is a small section of sill / bottom of wheel arch. I undid a countersunk type screw underneath at the bottom. I was then able to slide this small section of sill / bottom of wheel arch out of the way.
Next I undid the screws holding the wheel arch in place - starting with 2 domed-head type screws which I had revealed when removing the small section of sill / bottom of wheel arch. Then there were 12 torx screws. Finally 2 slighlty longer torx srews which were at the back of the arch and 'deeper' more 'hidden' than the others.
I was then able to pull the wheel arch off the body - manipulating the arch around a screw hole type thing bottom right.
Then I tackled the other side (near-side) arch liner. There were only 9 torx screws, 2 of which were slightly longer than the others. 3 Poppers again.
Repeated process for near-side small section of sill / bottom of wheel arch. And again for the Wheel arch itself.
Then onto the screws underneath the rear bumper - 2 underneath on offside then 2 (smaller torx) each side of centre. Don't recall their being a screw or more underneath on the nearside?
Lastly I prised off the rubber seal along the bottom of the boot opening then prised off the small section of black trim along the top of the bumper. This revealed the final 6 torx screws holdiing the rear bumper in place. Once removed I was able to pull the rear bumper off.
During this process I could tell the previous owner had been aware of the leak and knew what area it was coming from as someone had attempted to seal around the piece of black trim on the top of the bumper in the far right corner.
Anyhow the actual plastic vent type things looked in good shape - no distortion to the thin rubber flaps. Perhaps the rubber seal around the outside was not as good as it should have been? They were the original ones from over 10 years ago as I could see the clock type date mark on them.
When removed the rear right vent did appear to have a small wet patch where water may have been trickling through to the back side behind the vents and down into the body of the car.
I was hoping to see an obvious failure somewhere but couldn't
Anyhow, fitted the new ones and made sure they clicked into place and put everything back together.
Didn't have any screws left over so that was good - got it all to line up neatly so looks good - it helped I hadn't washed the car for a while so could see where the clean/exposed parts were and dirty/hidden bits were.
Going to wash the car tomorrow and see what happens, and again when it's raining. Fingers crossed!
