A little back ground on me. I'm a hobbyist. I've successfully painted a couple of projects, one was a fiat spider that was taken down to bare metal and repainted with PPG epoxy, 2K surfacer and BC/CC in metallic silver. It came out beautiful and got lots and lots of compliments. I spent close to a year reading this and other forums before I sprayed the first drop of paint.

A little background on the project. It's an 05 express van painted white with the typical peeling factory paint. I bought it from state surplus with 34K original miles on the clock about a week ago. It's going to be a service truck so my expectations are repaired and professional looking. I'd like to get 10 years out of it.

So, to the nitty gritty; I hope the pics below post correctly. Roof is the only area with rust. Plan is to mechanically remove the rust, strip off the old paint that's barely hanging on, epoxy, then top coat with a SS 2K. The question I have is about the factory seam sealer, should be a closeup in the last pic. The rust goes right up to the sealer and the old sealer is cracking. The sealer is extremely thick, seems to still be intact and the cracks don't appear to be very deep. I think I could probably sand/grind the cracks out without too much effort or loss of thickness.

So the question I have is, how would you guys approach the drip rail and the old sealer?

what I've done is. I made a sharp chisel like tool kind of curved up at the end and used it to dig it out. the more you can dig out the better. after you get it scraped out get a 4" flat twisted wire wheel for a 4" grinder stick the wheel in the gutter and clean it out. I almost always sand blast the gutter as the ones I work on usually had rust in them. but once you have it clean spray a couple coats of epoxy. this can be done when you do the roof area. for the sealer get some self leveling gutter sealer. I've always used Lord Fuser it works great BUT you need a special gun to apply it. check what you can get, you'll want at least a urethane 1 part or a 2 part type. you'll like the self leveling sealer.

Jay D.

That seam sealer looks like it's very hard. You might try applying
some heat with a propane torch; that may soften it some...
Also when applying the new sealer, mask off the area where the
sealer is applied to get it smooth and neat...