Most people who encounter rust issues in and around the drip rails think their only choice is to shave 'em off. This will hopefully give you other options....



Last year some rust repair in the roof of a 55 wagon led me to fabricating a section of drip rail as well. Here's a profile of the section:




Here's my fabrication of the repair pieces at the time..........









Piece is then marked and cut for the top "hem"









Flatten the hem






Followed by a slight bend in the apron brake to form the radius









Test fit







Another recent project called for more gutter fabrication. The issue I had with the one for the 55, a quick glance at the profile shows a slight kick up on the bottom just inside the face of the drip rail......



Where my replacement came straight across the bottom...........



Now I'll be the first to admit there's always room for improvement, and this was one of them. I remembered the Pullmax Lockformer tooling I had bought off Ebay a couple years back, and knocked the dust off. In looking at the tooling, I thought it may just work.



I made a pass with a piece of scrap 18 ga................



Marked and trimmed the top edge for the hem............







The hem gets flattened out..........



..........and is inserted headfirst into the apron brake. The apron clamps down just inside the tooling mark you see



A finished sample, and comparison to the old original:





Yeah, I like that much better....

 

That is some really nice work! I'm guessing you needed more than a hammer-n-dolly to make these drip rails. :-)

 

True, but most heating/AC sheet metal shops should have a lockformer so you could get a piece bent up locally.

 

Excellent info & pictures. Thanks.

 

OK, enough practice, here's the real deal installed. I guess you could consider this the "final practice piece", complete with 3 clearance holes for the window weatherstrip screws and various plug welds.





Oops, still need to finish the roof patch!







Test fit and installation of the drip rail:











And there you have it. Hopefully it will help someone along with a similar repair.

 

Awesome work although I cut mine off and shaved them, but that's the look I wanted anyway.

 

Very nice, I ahve to get a lock former on ebay now...