Drip Rail Hack Job Repair

[Raiph]

Hi guys, I'm new to the forum and I'd like to ask for some advice. I just bought a 68 Camaro and the previous owner must have thought himself to be a body wizard. Among other awesome modifications he decided he was going to attempt was to shave the drip rails with a cut off wheel and boy did he make a mess of it. Now I've read up on how to correctly shave these drip rails but I'm not sure the best way to go about fixing this mess. if I bought new drip rails do they come with enough material that I could cut the hacked up pieces out and then weld clean metal in? How would some of you more experienced guys handle this?

[jlcustomz]

First of all, factory drip rails were the time period way of attaching the roof skin to the door area. So you're not gonna just find those 2 sections of metal new.

My first concern would be cleaning up ALL the rust that formed from what looks like the unfinished repair sitting outdoors, then see what you really got to work with.

The windshield pillars generally get a filler strip added to the sides to fill where the add on portion of the driprail was. On my g-body, I may just make a custom bent strip of metal to overlay the whole pillar & weld in place.

On the main driprail portion, the correct method is generally to cut off a few inches at a time down to where the 2 sections of metal meet, tack weld & cut a few more inches to keep the roof skin from moving . Hard to see what you really have there with the rust to determine what I'd do next. I'd probably grind the edge straighter first & determine if I need to add some more welds or cut & patch in new metal at the edge of the roof skin, a few inches at a time.

There are several threads on shaving ist gen Camaro rails you can google. one was a printed article. At least that can help you envision what they should look like.

If you can't do perfect welding & shaping, remember that a small high spot is worse than a low spot when it comes time for body filler. In any rough areas, I'd first use a coat of USC all metal filler on clean raw metal before using polyester fillers.

Since no one else replied yet, I figured I'd give you some direction, but this definitely will take some metal fab , welding, & bodywork skill to correct.

[MuscleRodz]

Cut the roof off so you can install new drip rails, the front drip rail on the a pillar just screws on so you should be able to easily replace that portion.