If you can swop out a rear cross member without dropping the tank for many reasons your deserve immortal status in the Magic Circle. That looks like a solid and honest job to me, but what do I know. A ponce could have spent a fortnight on the flap disk making it look like one piece
if that’s the biggest issue I’d buy it 
Far too much money for a TD5 IMO, let alone a 300tdiThank you for the thoughtful replies. I am less put off knowing it's easy enough to redo some poor welds like this. The next thing I am struggling with, to answer some of your questions, is the mighty asking price of 25k ('95 300tdi, 90k mi) which seems tall even if it is as tidy as they claim. Probably out of my range I'm afraid, though the wife did offer to downtrade her vehicle to help make it happen
