Quote Originally Posted by IC2 View Post
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.....