I got a call from a nice lady at the Vermont DMV this morning, who was processing my application for the Travelall registration and needed an extra $4.50 to complete the paperwork. I read my card over the phone and she told me plates would be in the mail today, followed by the registration a week later. HOLY CRAP
Author: bill
Action Photo
Here’s a shot Bennett took before we really started tearing into the red bus.
Travelall Workday 1
I got started early on Saturday to prepare. First I humped all my tools outside and got the garage and the truck opened up. Then I organized all of the parts and tools and pulled the battery off the trickle charger. Then I pulled Autolite 303 plugs out of the Travelall and replaced them with a used set of 10,000 mile Autolite 85’s from my Scout. 303’s are what all the parts catalogs recommend for SV engines, but my experience has been that they are garbage. Feeling optimistic, I then swapped out the old ignition barrel with a new one I’d bought from RockAuto.
Brian showed up around eight, and we ran out to get coffee and donuts. Stephen and Bennett showed up a little after that, and we tried starting the truck—but nothing happened. Bennett began diagnosing what I’d done to bodge up the ignition system while Brian, Stephen and I began tearing out some of the useless mechanicals on the engine: the A/C system came out completely, the aftermarket cruise control was removed, and part of the trailer brake system. By noon we had the ignition problems sorted out and paused for some pizza and beer. Then we began diagnosing the starting problems.
The starter worked fine. We actually removed the passenger wheel and a bunch of the metal shielding along the inner fender to expose the starter and the engine stamping boss, and jumped the starter several times to chase down the electrical gremlins. When Bennett had the key sorted out we worked our way through the system with a tester to find the coil was OK but we weren’t getting spark to the plugs. I went around and swapped all the plug wires out with no change.
After a lot of tinkering, cleaning, and testing with the distributor we finally broke down and ran to the store for a new cap and rotor. We got the engine to catch several times but it didn’t run—we were frustrated at this point because we’d come so close. But the sun had gone down behind the house, the wind was picking up, the battery was running down, and it was getting cold, so we called it at about 5:30 and packed things up. I left the trickle charger on the battery to recover and brought my tools inside.
We do have a few new discoveries: The engine is more than likely a 266, but we have no way of knowing for sure: there’s no stamping on the boss like there are in more modern SV engines. And having pulled the valve cover off on the driver’s side, I have to say I’ve never seen a cleaner, newer looking valvetrain in my life. That’s VERY encouraging. More and more I think this was a municipal vehicle of some kind that was driven very sparingly, and then someone came along and built it into a summer camping vehicle. So the 40K miles on the odometer may be true mileage.
Either way, it was great to hang out with friends, spin wrenches and drink beer, and spend the day outside messing with old iron.
Workday Prep
I got a bunch of goodies delivered for the Saturday workday: I picked up a fresh battery at the auto parts store, and Rock Auto dropped off a set of spark plug wires and a new ignition lock last night. Amazon delivered points, a condenser, and a carb rebuild kit. The spark plugs should be here sometime next week, which is kind of a bummer.
I also grabbed a new tub for all of the stuff I’ll be collecting as I work on the truck, and a pair of small plastic plugs to hopefully close off the two holes in the roof. The first thing I’ll probably tackle Saturday morning is replacing the ignition lock—provided the one they sent is the right size—and then pre-oiling the cylinders. Hopefully with Bennett’s help we can diagnose and get the rig running; I’ve got pretty much everything we’ll need.
I also got a bunch of helpful advice on the forums about some questions I had. The first big news is that the doors actually do lock—the whole mechanism is cleverly built into the handles. What you do is: get in, close the door, and push the handle down. That locks the door. Then you pull it up to unlock and unlatch the door. It’s a little inconvenient to have to lean in and lock the back doors, but it’s also kind of cool to not have visible locks. I also found instructions to get the doorhandles off: you basically pull the escutcheon back and push a pin out of the post, freeing up the handle for removal. Now I can pull all four door cards off and see what the door interiors and glass scissors look like.
Somebody also mentioned that my rear door latch was probably flipped, which would be the reason why it won’t latch, so I pulled it out of the door and looked it over. It’s not engineered the same way the tailgate latch on the Scout is (which lends itself to being spun internally, like overwinding a watch); it looks pretty much impossible to spin further than it’s supposed to go. So I replaced it and moved the latching post on the door outward as much as I could—and that did the trick. So now the rear barn doors close properly. I’ve got to pull one of the door handles off and figure out what lock barrels I need to replace all three locks on the same key.
Meanwhile the IH fridge in the garage is stocked with beer; I’ve got the engine resurrection toolkit collected on the workbench downstairs, and I have to put the new battery on the conditioner overnight. The boys should be arriving sometime around 9AM tomorrow, for which I’ll have warm coffee and donuts. I can’t wait to play with trucks!
Slightly Less Redneck
So this is technically a 1965-66 grille, which means it fits slightly differently than a 1963 grille. What this means is that it’s a tight squeeze on the top and bottom; I had to use a set of vice-grips with a wide paddle jaw to bend the mounting surfaces inward to get it to fit. The big issue are on the sides, next to the headlights, where the sheet metal isn’t recessed to fit the edges of the grille. It may be that this is a temporary fix until I can lay hands on a 1963 grille, which is concave and indented on either side. Or, maybe I can source a 1964 grille shell to replace this one, which is pretty crispy on the passenger side.
Walkaround
I had beautiful weather on Sunday to spend time going over the truck and cleaning up the garage for our workday next weekend. The garage is swept and the workbench is mostly clean. All of the tools are put away and the fridge is clear for cold beer.
Outside I opened the Travelall up and started going through it, trying to answer some questions I’ve had. This time I took my GoPro out with me and shot some video; this walkaround contains most of what I found.
- There are no interior door locks on this truck. The rear doors have no locks I can find at all, and the front doors lock with a key—but there are no pulls or latches inside the truck. That’s going to make security interesting. The ignition key goes to the PO’s old boat, and just happens to fit in the cylinder.
- The gas tank looks to be in good shape. There are no obvious holes or leaks I can see. It’s held in with three straps and looks like it would be reasonably easy to drop and clean out. There’s also what looks like a drainage hole at the rear. At some point the entire rig was undercoated, and that likely saved things from dissolving.
- Both cowl vents are crispy. I pulled the cowl cover off to get into the vent area and put the borescope down there; they are both surrounded by debris which I vacuumed out but I think they’ll have to be cleaned and addressed immediately if this is going to stay outside. I’ve got an idea for a temporary baffle made from thin sheet steel and secured with seam sealer; it’ll depend on how well I can get my hands inside the cowl.
- The rear wheels came off easily, and the drums look fine for what they are. There are brake lines that join to a T fitting and head up to the front, so I’ll have to chase down where they go and see if they make it up to the master cylinder. I haven’t opened that yet, but next weekend I can dive into brakes.
- The A/C system looks pretty simple to pull out. The belt to the compressor goes to its own pulley, so it should be easy to cut that, unbolt the compressor, pull all the hoses out, and remove the dryer can.
- The Kelsey box under the dash appears to be a brake controller unit, which I’m happy to disconnect and remove.
- The top was repainted at some point; from the looks of things it left the factory red, may have been painted white at some time, and then was painted red again.
- The front cowl is in lousy shape. There’s rust-through on the passenger side next to the marker light, and the marker bucket itself was filled with dirt and leaves. The metal around the edge has dissolved so there’s only one hole to screw into, and there’s no ground anywhere.
So for the workday next weekend I’ve got to run out and pick up a battery, new plugs and wires, and a set of points for the distributor. My focus is going to be getting it running; anything on top of that would be gravy.
Cleanout
I’m trying very hard not to continually obsess about working on the red truck. The weather has been unusually warm this week and it’s all I can do not to ditch work and go attack something with the angle grinder. I’ve got a long list of tasks to accomplish before I can really get into things, but the important stuff is being handled: I sent a package of documents to the Vermont DMV so that I can get a registration back from them; with that (and the Vermont plates) I can then go to the Maryland DMV and transfer the registration to a legal Maryland title.
I had some time between the end of the workday and sunset today to get into the Travelall and start cleaning things out. I was pleasantly surprised at how much I was able to get rid of and how good things actually look underneath. The first order of business was to put some new shoes on the front; she’s been sitting on jackstands since Tuesday and it really makes the whole place look redneck. I picked up the tires and had them back on the hubs in about ten minutes; a set of General Grabber LT’s in the correct size really make things look much better.
In an effort to make it look better sitting in the driveway, I reached out to a guy on Marketplace with a 1965-66 grille in really good shape and arranged to buy it and have it shipped from Buffalo. With some clean chrome it’ll look much less derelict. It’s not the correct grille but it’ll do for now until I can source the right one (which is concave and which I actually prefer).
I’d started last weekend tearing out all the upholstery and it was pretty easy to continue. First I bagged up as much of the loose crap as possible and made a pile of the bigger stuff on the driveway. Continuing up to the front of the cabin I got the rest down off the edges of the cab roof and pulled the headliner down in sections. The carpet over the wheel wells came off pretty cleanly—I’m lucky it was cold this evening because the glue basically just gave up. The rear carpet came off the floor in one sheet. I unscrewed and removed both of the trap doors behind the front seats.
Up in the cab I used a utility knife to cut the rubber floormat out completely to get my first good look at the cab floor. Both sides have been patched at some point; the passenger side is worse. It’s rusted through in one place that I can see, right in the center. I used a shop-vac to get all the loose paint and rust out. The driver’s side has some kind of patch material over the metal that I can’t identify, so more research will need to be done there. The transmission tunnel looks to be in great shape.
Travelalls have wooden floors over the rear section—it’s a sheet of (probably) 3/4 plywood covered in rubber sheeting of some kind. This rubber is disintegrating in strips of 1″x3″ or so and will need to be scraped out, probably with the aid of some heat.
As I mentioned earlier, the wheel well is in fantastic shape for an East Coast truck: there’s some rust there and I can see daylight through one of the seams, but it’s not completely missing.
When that was all done I washed the rest of the grime off the windows and got all the debris ready for a trip to the dump. It’s good to see what we’re dealing with and now I can start listing and subdividing the tasks.
I’ve been organizing a work day at the house and reached out to a bunch of local IH friends. There are several who can’t make it but want to get together this year, so I’m going to take on the role of coordinator again and see if I can get some regular meetups happening. The core group of Bennett, Brian, and Brian will be here for the day, and an old acquaintance Will will stop by with his kids for a quick visit. Will was the guy who had a gorgeous 1968 Travelall he offered me back n 2014 when I wasn’t ready to take it on, but look back upon and wish I’d bought.
I also joined a Facebook group for 1957-1968 Travelalls (called Round Body Travelalls) and I’m waiting to be approved; hopefully there are some good leads on parts and tips for working on them to be found. I posted a new build thread on the Binder Planet but haven’t gotten much response yet; I think I’ve got to show some progress.
Carb and Distributor
Doing some more research, I’ve identified two key components of the engine.
The carb is a Holley 2300 with a manual choke, sitting under a gloopy oil bath air filter. A manual choke! I was half-shocked to find this, but I continually have to remember this thing is from 1964 and I’m actually lucky it doesn’t have a magneto instead of a generator. The carb is crusty and covered in mud dauber nests, but complete. I wonder which control on the dash feeds to the choke? I’ll bet a couple of dollars that’s one reason she didn’t start when we tried it. An inexpensive rebuild kit is sitting in the Rock Auto basket, along with new Autolite 85’s and wires.
The mystery distributor is a Delco cast iron body unit, according to Mike Mayben over at the IHPA forums. In his words, “I personally think that these distributors were the best units used, extremely durable as compared to a Holley.” Well, that’s good to hear. Where I can find parts for this remains to be seen; I think I’ll test it first for spark before throwing parts at it.
I got in touch with the owner of the blue truck with the gas tank in back and asked him if he was interested in parting it out (it’s been up since October and he’s dropped the price once). I inquired about the big stuff—the windshield, doors, power steering unit, and bench seat, as well as the gas tank. He’s still got it and gave me a price for the tank but doesn’t want to part the truck. I looked back at the video I shot, and reviewing the footage I notice it’s not in the perfect shape I remember it being. New poly tanks are $~350. I figure five hours in the car to save $250 probably isn’t worth it unless I can grab a bunch of other stuff, so I think I’ll pass.
Research and Progress
From the research that I’ve done this morning, I think I’ve got some vague information on the new truck. Looking at the JDPower site for a valuation so that I can apply for a title through Vermont, the best match for what I’ve got is a 1964 C1100 Travelall Custom Wagon. In 1963 the model numbers were in the 100’s, and in 1965 the models changed to D prefixes. My truck has Custom badges directly below the windows, and there was a 1100 emblem on the driver’s side fender, which checks out. Single headlights continued up until 1968 but the grilles were restyled every year, and my style (single headlight with a trim ring surround) looks like it was switched in 1968.
The title situation is a bit confusing but I’m working my way through that process; I may consider using a professional service just so I don’t fuck it up, but I think I just need to slow down and take my time. From all accounts it’ll take a month or so to get results back.
I wrote to the Wisconsin Historical Society this morning and they say the backlog is about 4 weeks, so that ball is in play. Usually I go through one of the Light Line dealers, so this will be a new approach.
As near as I can tell, the paint code is simply just IH 2150 Red, which IH painted every tractor and combine up until they were bought by CASE. Which is a bonus for me, as I can walk into any Ace Hardware and buy a spray can of IH Red off the shelf; I’ve actually got one sitting in my stash downstairs to test this theory out.
Meanwhile, I ordered two new tires from Tire Rack to be delivered to a local NTB, where I’ll drop the old ones off to be mounted properly. The truck is currently up on a pair of jackstands under the front axle, and I’ll hopefully have the tires mounted and on the truck by Thursday afternoon. One thing I noticed pulling the studs off the tires is that the driver’s side studs all spin backards, like my father-in-law’s ’66 Chrysler (and strangely one is a smaller diameter than the others). So I’ll have to mark the reverse studs somehow and make sure I’ve got some spares.
Finally, I’ve got to figure out what I’m going to do about a separate weblog for this truck. I could just create a category called “Travelall” here and call it done, but it helps to have things subcategorized, and Scout brakes are completely different than Travelall brakes, for example.
Barn Find 5
Yesterday afternoon, after spending much of the day working around the house, I sat on the couch and checked my email with the dog curled up next to me. I hit Marketplace and did my usual search, figuring I’d see the same ragged out Scouts and a couple of trucks before signing off. Cycling through my search terms, a new listing caught my eye, and the location made me sit up on the couch: Middle River, about 20 miles from here. The picture was of a red IH Travelall of unknown vintage sitting in the side yard of a house, listed for a tantalizingly low price. I immediately messaged the guy and about five minutes later added my phone number, then continued about my day.
A few hours later the seller called me and we set up a meet for first thing Monday morning. I got my usual kit together: a magnet, a flashlight, a strong screwdriver, a 15/16″ socket on a long bar (to put on the crank bolt to see if the engine is free), my $30 borescope, and some gloves. At 8:45 I was sitting outside his house with a cup of coffee, and he waved me into the yard to look it over.
What I found was, as always, worse than the pictures showed, but strangely better than all the other rigs I’ve seen around here. It was a mid-60’s C1100 with Custom badges on the doors. The seller told me his brother had bought it years ago and had it towed from Virginia to his house, where it sat outside for years before it was moved last week and put up for sale. The paint was rough all over the outside; there were blooms of open rust on the doors and fenders. The driver’s rear quarter was crispy around the wheel arch. There was obvious bondo in several spots. The passenger’s rear corner was crunched at some point. And the grille was completely missing. One thing that didn’t show in the photos online was that the passenger’s rear glass—the most unobtanium part of a Travelall—was cracked in several places. The windshield also was cracked in several spots. There were no brakes, but he transmission and clutch weren’t frozen.
Inside, someone had pulled all the seats out and replaced the rear bed with a custom carpeted platform, then bolted two seats of indeterminate origin in the cabin. There was custom upholstery bolted to every surface—walls, ceiling, over the rear doors, and over the windshield. But the dash was clean, the dashpad was in one solid piece (also a shock) and the switchgear all looked to be in decent shape. Under the floormats, the front floors were intact but very damp.
We talked for a good long time about cars and health and life as I looked it over, and he brought a battery out to see if it would catch. It had an International V8 of some size with an aftermarket AC unit plumbed in, and all the moving parts were present. It cranked right over, which was a good sign, but we couldn’t get it to fire with two different coils. The distributor was like no other I’ve seen on an IH motor; I was dumbfounded as to what make or model it was. As we talked, his phone beeped and beeped; he sheepishly showed me a list of 30+ inquiries beginning with mine from the previous evening. He said he’d been swamped with messages since he posted it, one guy even calling at 5AM.
I thought about it for a few minutes and asked him if he was flexible on the price; he thought for a minute and brought it down $250 less than the listed ask. I shook his hand and a deal was struck. This truck has no title, so I did a bill of sale purchase; I’m going to have to do the Vermont title thing to get it registered correctly here. But this came in at a fraction of my budget, so I couldn’t pass it up.
I’d done some research on towing companies the night before so I had a good one to call, and within 1/2 hour a rollback was beeping down the street to where we’d pulled it out of his yard. After heading back under the tunnel to the house, I moved cars out of the driveway and the tow operator dropped it to the side of the garage where it’s out of the way. The rear bumper on this thing is gigantic, and there’s a heavy duty hitch welded to the frame below.
After getting some lunch and work done in the house and giving the dog a well-needed bath, I figured I’d take advantage of the 60˚ weather while I had it and busted out the pressure washer to blast off several years of grime, moss, and flaking paint. This also removed one of the crumbling aftermarket trailer lights mounted above the barn doors. As I cleaned black gunk off the roof, I found a 1″ diameter hole in the center from some kind of radio aerial and figured I’d better cover that before tomorrow’s rain hit. I sanded the edges down with a wire wheel and used some basic painter’s caulk to seal it with a plastic lid. Temporary, but effective.
The passenger’s front tire is garbage—it would never hold air—so I jacked up the front of the truck, put it on a stand, and pulled the tire off. It’s a 16″ rim with a LT215/85 R16 mounted, so I threw it in the back of the Scout for a weekday dropoff. Tires this size are pretty plentiful, so I’ll see if I can find something inexpensive.
Because one of the barn doors wasn’t closing all the way, I got a screwgun out and popped the screwcaps off the upholstered panels and removed them. I was shocked to find both doors in almost perfect condition; the metal looks as good as new, even underneath. They don’t close perfectly, but they’re not held shut with a ziptie anymore either. Intrigued, I took off the rear driver’s door panel to find that door in similar shape. The passenger’s rear panel was hiding some serious dirt and debris, and was wet to the touch—so I was glad to have that one off and not collecting more moisture. Then I got caught up in pulling a bunch of the upholstery off the walls and made a pile of smelly dusty crap in the center of the truck. By 5PM I knew I had to stop, because I had more work to do inside the house, so I buttoned everything up and called it a night.
I’ve got a long list of things to tackle now, but the first one is going to be writing to the Wisconsin Historical Society for the Line Set Ticket on this rig to see where it’s from and what it came with. Then I’ve got to find a new tire and get it mounted so that it’s off the jackstand and on its feet. And I have to start the titling process to get it in my name, plated and legal.
Meanwhile, I messaged the guy up in New Jersey with the blue pickup to see if he would sell the NOS gas tank he had sitting in the bed of the truck; hopefully he hasn’t sold it, because the ad is now down.