I knew the bumper iron was dodgy at best, since the front indicators were held in only by the wires which were cable tied so they didn't fall out under braking.
So.... Took the front bumper off
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Then took the bumper iron out of the bumper, and shook all the rust flakes out of the bumper:
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Kind of scary to see this. Glad I'm getting it sorted now.
This is what the chassis looked like:
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AWs don't normally rust there, so I guess this must've been caused by the bumper iron rotting, and the flakes just sitting inside the chassis rails.
This is inside the chassis rail:
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Wire brushed all the rust and vacuumed inside the chassis rails to pick up all the crap, then hit it all with cold galv.
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Once the cold galv set, hit it again!
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The 0.9mm steel plate that is gonna cover up the biggest section of rust damaged chassis:
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Welded in and cold galved again:
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Some of the smaller holes were just filled in with welds.
All painted and starting to look better:
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Now, you cannot buy a new pre-facelift (Mk1a) bumper iron, and with searching high and low not having turned anything up, I took what remained of my bumper iron to a Metal Fabricator and asked him to quote me up. I was told he will ring me within 3 days with a quote, and I said I'll let him know if anyone else from the Mr2OCNZ would be keen, maybe we could make a few and bring the costs down.
Having not heard from him, I rang him after a week to inquire about it, and he said "yeah yeah, I'm in the process of pricing it up. I'll call you after the weekend". That was the last I heard from him, and TBH I couldn't be f**ked chasing him up after that. I wonder if he'll ever ring me...
Through TradeMe I found a guy up in Mangawhai who was parting out a few AWs and he said he'll have a bumper bar. So I drove up there that weekend, and unfortunately he didn't have a pre-facelift, only a few Mk1b bumpers and irons. Having heard from a few people that it is possible to fit a Mk1a, I decided to grab it. He didn't have the lower part of the bumper because they all had rusted out on his ones. But I did score the lower lip from the same car, in poor condition, but fixable in the near future.
Dummy fitting the facelift bumper iron and bumper, with pre-facelift lower fascia:
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Looks doable, only a few mounts needed to be made up for the lower fascia, as they had different mounting points to the bumper.
So prepared the bumper iron (cold galv) and all the bits and pieces needed to attach it all to the car (cold galv)
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Just painted the bumper satin black, eventually will get it matched up to the car.
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Finished product:
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Mk1b bumper with iron, Mk1a lower fascia and lower lip.
Rust content of AW11 =
decreased significantly.
Interesting note:
I dummy fitted the facelift bumper iron into my original (pre-facelift) bumper, and it fit into the foam insert with no problems and the mounting holes lined up for the bumper. Minor difference where the towing hooks are under the bumper, but a little trim of the bumper would sort that out.
I think it's a viable option to use the facelift bumper iron with the pre-facelift bumper.
])
Probably due to the twisted bumper and the strong winds that Saturday morning 
