What Rain gutter should I buy?

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Alex, I have a nice rain gutter that I just removed from my cracked top. If you are interested I could sell you it. It is still in one piece, but from moving around one seam is starting to get flimsy. Still better than having to fabricate all the seams on a new gutter. I also have the windshield attachment piece. It has cutouts for top mounted wipers. I also have a pristine fiberglass top that I was going to replace the gutter with this one if you are interested. It doesn't have a headliner. PM me if so.

Jeremy
 
If you can get a good used one, that's definitely your best bet. I have a new in the crate one, believe it's the last one in existence, but it's expensive.
 
Pic of overall underside seal area.

What the top side looks like (needs some sanding and POR15 but it is solid all the way around)

Closeup of seam that is cracking (easily repairable, with the CCOT one you have about seven of these to join)
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jb2073 said:
Has anyone had experience with this vendor?

Landcruiser Specialties on the Web

Looks like the custom tops are a complete replacement to include the gutter.
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I've had some work done at this shop. The owners name is Tim and he is a stand-up guy. I'm not affiliated but I liked his work.

Also, I bought a fiberglass raingutter from him and I am currently in the process of redoing my hard top with the new raingutter. I intended to write up a separate thread but here are a couple pics and some info. that may be helpful.

The raingutter on my old hardtop was shot (totally rusted out). I drilled out the rivets, pulled it off and and cleaned up the silicone from the fiberglass dome.

Next, I clamped the new fiberglass raingutter to the cruiser and marked my holes.
Once the raingutter was attached, I started to fit the old dome. Some material had to be removed from the raingutter and the dome but eventually it fit. Next I resined and bonded the dome to the new raingutter and the last picture is how it sits now with extra weight from around the garage on top.

Hopefully, I didn't oversimplify this because fitting the top was tricky. However, I have no fiberglass experience and so far I'm getting decent results. Plus, I figure that if my raingutter is fiberglass, NO MORE RUST PROBLEMS. (at least in that area...)

Hope this helps.
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AndyM

Very interesting!

Do you mind if I ask how much the fiberglass raingutter cost? Also, do you have more pics/closeups of how you glassed the gutter to the top? Did you just use resin between the gutter and top to glue it together, or did you also use some glass cloth to strengthen the bond?

I'm not very far away from Portland, just north of Albany, so a one piece gutter would not be too difficult to transport.
 
handcannon said:
AndyM

Very interesting!

Do you mind if I ask how much the fiberglass raingutter cost? Also, do you have more pics/closeups of how you glassed the gutter to the top? Did you just use resin between the gutter and top to glue it together, or did you also use some glass cloth to strengthen the bond?

I'm not very far away from Portland, just north of Albany, so a one piece gutter would not be too difficult to transport.
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So the raingutter isn't cheap - $295 (Link - Landcruiser Specialties on the Web)

But I compared that to the SOR cost of a finished top with fiberglass raingutter - $2700 and figured that I would virtually have the same product for a lot less.

Again, I'm not a body work guy but I did a lot of research. What I did (based on what I read) is to scuff up both surfaces that would come into contact with each other, the inside channel of the raingutter and the underside of the dome with some 40 grit sandpaper.
Next, we foam brushed on a resin/hardener mix.

Once both surfaces had the resin mix applied, we added some high density adhesive filler to the resin mix until it was roughly the consistency of peanut butter. This stuff has a pretty quick curing time so we had to move pretty quick at this point. We spread the goop into the outside 1/2 edge of the raingutter (see pic) and dropped the dome on top.

After this, we took a couple of zip-loc bags and filled them with the mix. We cut off a corner on each like a pastry bag. I worked around the outside, my friend worked on the inside basically "caulking" in the edges all the way around. Wearing disposable nylon gloves, I just ran my finger along the edge to clean up and smooth out the excess. This stuff dries like a rock so you don't want much build up that needs to be sanded down. And "no", I didn't use any glass between the 2 surfaces.

Finally, we clamped the front edge all the way across. We used some garden stakes that I had laying around so the clamp would have something to bite down on but any type of dowel would work. Also, we put wax paper between the garden stakes and hardtop as to not permanently bond the garden stakes to my top:crybaby:

The product I used is called West System #105, #205, and #404.

Hope this is helpful.
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AndyM said:
So the raingutter isn't cheap - $295 (Link - Landcruiser Specialties on the Web)

But I compared that to the SOR cost of a finished top with fiberglass raingutter - $2700 and figured that I would virtually have the same product for a lot less.
Click to expand...

I have an SOR one piece fiberglass top and I also sell steel raingutters and I can tell you that the piece from SOR is one piece of molded fiberglass. It is not a fiberglass gutter riveted to a fiberglass top. Definately not worth $2,700, but still a nice piece.
 
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