Morris Minor Owners Club

are they truely necessary as they seem to make a nice place for rust to exsist and thrive do they actually have any real job. its okay i don't have a van and i'm not planning on buying a perfect original and hack them off its just i want to know what they do.

umm,they hold the roof panel on!i went to look at a van once where someone had kindly removed the gutters as you describe to get rid of the rust issue....but done nothing to attatch the roof to the sides!

oh so if they were got rid of the van back would become a complete panel

only if the roof was welded onto the sides somehow.otherwise they are two panels with one loose one

De- guttering is a common mod on Minis and maybe lots of other classics too. The gutters were there as a seam/join and also to channel rain water (notice on modern cars how the water comes flooding in when you open a window if its raining?) You can remove them if you wish but (as said above) you would need to weld the roof to the side panels and dress back the elds to a neat finish.

I took the gutters of my van some years ago and welded a fillet in to hold on the roof all the way around. I left the bit of gutter above the doors though to stop water ingress. I have to say if it is finished properly it looks very smart. Nice smooth lines. Hopefully I can find a picture and scan it in here, unfortunately this all occurred in the pre-digital age.