If you have one of Tone's shop manuals look in there for how to get the roof rails off. I'm starting to get some paint bubbles under my passenger side rail and I looked into how to get them off so I could address the rust. You are absolutely right; they are NO fun to get off as you have to get the headliner out first to get to bolts that hold the rails on. If I'm going to go through that kind of trouble then I'm going to do some other stuff at the same time (dynomat) and probably lay the VX up for a few days.

If you don't have the shop manual you can download it from Tone.

Let us know how the cladding paint works (with pictures :bwgr.