Removing roof guttering on a non Sandman doesn't upset me. I wouldn't do it to a genuine Sandman. This was a semi common custom treatment for show vans in the day. On some it looked really cool, on others it looked like an afterthought and didn't tie into the cars theme at all. Then of coarse came the dreaded rust and lots Vans had the gutter removed in a bodgy way of dealing with the rust and really tarnish the custom scene. In the end it is quite do-able but you need to tie three panels together. The best way I have seen is to place solid round bar 4mm into the panel bubble from behind and stitch weld followed by 6mm solid round bar over the top and again stitch into place. When grinding the gutter away along with the panel bubble you expose the 4mm round bar and this makes for a solid area for full seam welding on the exterior.