Thread: Anybody know how to shave a drip rail?

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Hey guys, at the Cruisin for the Cure car show this weekend I saw a 37 Ford tudor humpback with shaved drip rails. Rather than just smoothing it off, a detail was added that keeps the contour and looks pretty nice. Anybody have any experience, details or pics of how they did this? Not sure if I will do it to my 37 but I'd sure like to know how they did it just in case. Thanks!

Randy

Not real sure where the original drip rail was or what it's configuration was, Randy.....from this picture it appears that they either pounded the upper edge of the OEM rail in, or cut the old one off and added this one---kind of a triangle shape or????

As for taking the old one's off, are they formed from the side and roof portion meeting together in a flange, or are the OEM rails just an L shape tack welded to the outer skin????

When I was working on my 57 I think the gutter was a seperate part sandwiched between the roof and sides. If you were to remove it you would have to do it in sections or loose the whole thing

Originally Posted by cffisher

When I was working on my 57 I think the gutter was a seperate part sandwiched between the roof and sides. If you were to remove it you would have to do it in sections or loose the whole thing

Yuppers, if they're an integral part of the roof, then they must be cut off in sections--I usually do about 3", skip 3", etc.---then weld the cut out areas before cutting any more or you'll have one giant mess!!!!!

It looks to me like they just cut them off to leave that slight bead, then molded them in to get the smooth detail. Like Dave said, a small section at a time.

Randy - I thought we had discussed this?

But, the original drip rail is sandwiched between the roof panel and the side panels. You can grind, cut or what ever then weld it solid - not for the faint of heart - and replace it with whatever, if anything, or not.

I just looked at a bunch of photos that I have and all but the 'glass bodies still have some version of roof rails

Originally Posted by IC2

Randy - I thought we had discussed this?

But, the original drip rail is sandwiched between the roof panel and the side panels. You can grind, cut or what ever then weld it solid - not for the faint of heart - and replace it with whatever, if anything, or not.

I just looked at a bunch of photos that I have and all but the 'glass bodies still have some version of roof rails

Hey Dave, we may have discussed it at some point on "our special thread" but after seeing 3 different 37's at that recent car show that all had shaved drip rails and smoothed roof seams, I thought it was a worthy topic to explore further.

To completely shave the drip rail on a bulbous 37 sedan body would look kinda goofy to me, but to replace the rust-proned drip rail with a smooth, yet defined detail like in the pic above looks pretty sweet. I thought a discussion of how they actually did it might be interesting and beneficial to anybody who might be considering this modification.

There was a gray 47 Ford tudor featured in Rod & Custom or Streetrodder magazine a couple of years ago that had this done. They mentioned that they cut off the original drip rail and welded a piece of 3/16" round stock in it's place then shaped it into something like you see on the 37 above. It got rid of the hard to clean, hard to paint, "u-shaped" drip rail but retained that detail line that accents the big round body.

I haven't stripped my body yet, but I think my drip rails are in pretty good shape. So, I doubt that I'll add this to my list of things that will further extend finishing my car but I sure think it looks pretty cool.

If I remember correctly, we also discussed whether or not to weld up the seam where the roof meets the deck lid area. I still vascillate on that one too.....