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56 Roof is rusted all around the gutter. I have a donor that is in good shape. The gutter on mine is bent but looks ok. The donner was cut off on all four post. What is best cutting mine off at the post and installing the donor or taking just the roof skin off each by removing the spot welds. A friend who is an auto painter said, take the skin off, no big deal. I purchased a 3/8" spot weld cutter the started looking at the spot weld points. In the gutter they are about 1/2" apart. If I used the cutter on each it doesn't appear that there would be much material left. I've seen some old threads on this subject. Anyone tackled this lately?
My roof was rusted out in the drip rail area mainly on the drivers side front corner and along the front edge of the roof. I decided to remove the drip rails and smoothe the cab. I used an air powered cut off wheel to remove the drip rails all the way around the cab. After this I removed about a 2 inches from the front of the cab roof from door post to door post and welded in new metal in small squares until all the area was filled in. Depending on how bad your roof is rusted this isnt too bad to do just time consuming.
I agree with your painter friend...always remove/replace panels the way they were orginally installed if possible, makes a much cleaner job in the end. As an added note, the door frame, the drip rail, and the roof skin all meet at that one seam...if you seperate that seam then you will be able to clean and repair all panels at the same time and thereby ensure no future rust in that area. This was one of the weaker areas on these trucks, so any chance you have to correct the factory's mistake is well worth taking.