HZ gutter rail removal

[Wilson1985]

Hey guys,

Just wanted to see if there was anyone who had removed the gutter / rail from around the top of their panel van? is there any structural problems with doing this? or do they not matter as much? as there is a bit of surface rust around them and wondering if it is worth trying to fix or just cutting them off as they tend to just fill with water anyway.

Cheers.

[Valencia]

You can cut them off but the end product looks terrible

[Flamenco_not_Flamingo]

You can cut them off but the end product looks terrible

Like Valencia said, you can, just shit house look in my own opinion but if that's what you want mate, all good, its your car, feel free, no judgement here.

[Innuendo]

Removing roof guttering on a non Sandman doesn't upset me. I wouldn't do it to a genuine Sandman. This was a semi common custom treatment for show vans in the day. On some it looked really cool, on others it looked like an afterthought and didn't tie into the cars theme at all. Then of coarse came the dreaded rust and lots Vans had the gutter removed in a bodgy way of dealing with the rust and really tarnish the custom scene. In the end it is quite do-able but you need to tie three panels together. The best way I have seen is to place solid round bar 4mm into the panel bubble from behind and stitch weld followed by 6mm solid round bar over the top and again stitch into place. When grinding the gutter away along with the panel bubble you expose the 4mm round bar and this makes for a solid area for full seam welding on the exterior.

[Valencia]

Lot of work for little gain imho

[wbute]

Probably best to not cut corners. Anyone who sees a freshly done up van minus gutters knows straight away to move along. Sure sign of dodgy rust repairs elsewhere.

[razsandman]

A good sheet metal worker can fold up section of straight gutter no problem corners not so easy... . I had a thread going on a HZ i was doing that had a complete gutter replaced on one side. Think its in the replica sandman bit.

[RodneyHZ253]

http://s1025.photobucket.com/user/je...o9ses.jpg.html

Not a fan of removing gutter personally but this van looks great I think it's because of the side pipes ,rims and lowered you don't notice the gutter are missing
I also think that if the RMS or police got nasty they could defect because the roof would be structural . I do realise that plenty of people may disagree with this comment but is getting that way any deviation from standard need engineer report.

http://s1025.photobucket.com/user/je...o9ses.jpg.html

[Innuendo]