About a month ago I attempted some drip rails for a Jeep Cherokee, and did further refinements today. May give someone ideas on making your own if a repair is needed..
Just a test today to see if I could bend up some Jeep Cherokee drip rail to match the small sample I was sent in the mail. This was done with 18ga crs using the bead roller, mag brake, and press brake. The layout details needs just a bit of tweaking, but I think it may just work...
Just as a follow up to this drip rail, the dies I used in the original attempt had about a .07 offset. I didn't want to alter their size as they get used once in a blue moon for sheet metal offset, like I did for the 55 Chevy truck windshield panel.. So I decided to make another set, and based on the dimensional difference between the good sample and the trial piece, it looked like I needed to add about .04 to the offset, or .110 total. So here are the new dies...
I again used the "backstop" die, and had to go back and trim a bit more off the width of the lower die to get the drip rail height correct.
Then the "backstop" die was radiused to use with the skateboard wheel in providing the radius for the front face...
Then a few passes with the tipping die to fold up the front face...
The ends wanted to fold much more than the rest of the trial piece, so rather than continually readjust the tension, I sacrificed the first inch or so and just cut it off in the band saw.
Here is the outer portion formed, the height is about perfect, this is using die width and back stop to regulate dimension...
The offset also turned out much better. The sharp bend on mine wasn't quite as tight together, but we'll see what the Jeep guys say to this version.....
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