Drip Rail Fabrication

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 using BFH as needed






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....

 

thats NICE good work man

 

i took the easy way and cut it off a rusty car with solid drip rails..

niiiiiiiice work man!!!

 

Nice comparo!

 

Thats some fine fine metal work there...

And to think I just got lazy and took the drip rail off my car....

 

Thanks guys. I had seen a few posts on drip rails, but most were on shaving them off, not saving an original. Thought I'd throw this out to show they could be done. .......and I know not everyone has a lockformer tooling setup, but most sheetmetal shops (heat /AC) do, so you may be able to find a local shop that can bend some metal up for you.

 

And now for the final segment, Here's 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.

 

Great....now, do one that bends around a corner, like on the back corner of a wagon roof! I'm not looking forward to that job....

 

very nice work!