Project OCD (I bought a car to build tools???) - '67 Mustang Coupe

[modmotor46]

The quarters are finally welded in...woohoo...there actually is light at the end of the tunnel!

The next hurdle is the drip rails. I had removed an eight inch section of the drip rails on each side as they were beat up and rusted out in places. I debated on completely cutting them off, welding and smoothing out the roof but at the end of the day - the drip rails are one more aspect of old cars that make them unique - to me they're definitely worth keeping/saving. That being said, short of finding a good donor set in worthy shape, no one makes a set for the coupes. I had bought a set of fastback drip rails a while back to use a section out of but they're not even close! They were at least an eighth of an inch narrower and the inside lip didn't match.

Time to put the shop tools to good use. I ended up making my own and felt I should post the process I used in the event someone else needs to repair their's ;-)



I started by forming what would end up being the inside lip that the drip rail moldings attach to. Here the lip was formed using a step die on my bead roller.


Next I bent/folded the metal back over the step formed above to start forming the actual drip rail lip.


I then clamped the piece in my vice and carefully hammered the rail section down and over to form the final lip.


Once the lip was complete, I put the piece back on my metal brake and bent the 1/4" radius that allowed me to weld the whole thing in place. (note: the 1/4" radius was created using a custom die I made that fits my metal brake. basically it is 1/4" round stock with a slot milled in it that fits over the angled die on my metal brake).