Author: bill

2024 In Review

In January, I was looking at pictures of pretty new upholstery for the Travelall and making plans to clean up the seatframes for new foam. It’s December and I’ve just now got the seats finished and installed in the truck; in the months between I got a lot of projects done. Here’s a recap:

Early in January I finally got around to making some T-shirt designs for Travelalls and Scouts, set up a Threadless storefront, and did some initial posting on social media. The response was pretty good; I need to make a new push this coming year, as well as update some merchandise.

I got serious about building out a YouTube channel for the red truck, and started posting videos about every two weeks. The channel points back to the Threadless site, and I get a couple of orders a month. Also, I made a dedicated Instagram feed for the red truck.

From January into February, in between cold snaps, I finished sanding and painting the passenger fender I rebuilt the fuel hose port on; that project went much better with the experience I’d gained doing previous bodywork projects. The fender is now hanging in the garage waiting for some other parts to be shot with IH red, and will then get clearcoat.

March was a big month: I took possession of an unwanted, untitled green Travelall in Pennsylvania with a ton of help from Bennett, and we dropped it in the driveway in front of the red truck. This project sort of took over the next two months as I worked to tear it down and part it out before the neighbors complained and had me hauled it hauled away. I had the entire truck stripped down, the parts organized, and the carcass ready for towing by April 30. And I made a crisp $100 on it!

Also in March, I ordered and got a used, tested and labeled wiring harness from the Scout Connection, which wound up being for a later model year. I returned it for a proper 1962-62 harness which was tested and labeled, and later on in the year I pulled the dashboard from the red truck, cleaned it up, and swapped the new harness in place. Putting it back in was easy, as I’d already taken two of them apart, and when I tested it out about 80% of the electrical system came back online.

The firewall got cleaned up and covered in heat matting, an upgrade I found very useful in the Scout, and during that process I finished cleaning up and painting the cowl vents I’d fabricated in 2023. I also pulled the heater box out and disassembled the whole unit. The rear of the box had a fair bit of rust damage, so I welded new sections on to the sides and back, reassembled with new hardware, and got it ready for paint.

August was a big month. First and foremost, Brian and I drove the Scout 1200 miles round trip to Harvester Homecoming at the IH plant in Fort Wayne, Indiana. We had a great time, met a bunch of new people, and were lucky to have good traveling weather, although our first evening at the event ended in a downpour that had us running for the exits. The Scout ran great, but I noticed she was leaking a lot of oil out the underside at speed.

When I was back, I took a week off from work and spent a couple of days prepping the roof for primer and paint. I’d left it sitting since last summer so it needed some attention before fall. I re-worked the sections that needed help, finish sanded the whole thing, and shot it with pro-grade primer from an HVLP gun. When that was cured I sprayed it with two coats of two-stage PPG white, and I think it turned out really good.

I worked on cleaning up each of the doors, installed weatherstripping, welded over the mounting holes from old mirrors, and rebuilt both of the West Coast mirrors I’d bought last year. They got mounted permanently on the truck.

Finding vendors willing to work on old iron is hard. I wanted to use the same guy who installed the passenger side glass to replace the dry, cracked gasket on the driver’s side, so I spent the money on new rubber and his expertise to have it put it in.

In September I had some gray single-stage paint matched from the old door cards and sprayed out four replacements as well as the heater box, then sprayed it all with a matte clear coat. I really like the results. When they were cured, the heater box went back in over the heat matting and was hooked up to the engine.

I donned a Tyvek suit and scraped all of the fiberglass off the roof, treated it with Rust Converter, and installed some lightweight heat/sound matting.

With those things done, and looking at another month of reasonably decent weather, I got a wild hair up my ass and dropped the fuel tank to survey the underside of the floorpan. The fuel tank is in fantastic shape, and got wire-wheeled, cleaned out, and repainted. The passenger floor, which featured the worst rust remaining in the truck, was trimmed away until I found clean metal. I welded a new sheet in place, and cut sections of the lower firewall out until I had good metal there.

I came into possession of a second steering column, this one from a manual steering/column shift truck, and an electrical steering unit from a Nissan Versa. This is the starting point for an electric steering conversion sometime next year.

Before Thanksgiving, I dropped the Scout off at a transmission shop nearby who had been recommended by another truck guy I met at our local Cars & Coffee. She’s been there waiting for a spot in his bay since then. He got her up on the lift two weeks before Christmas and recommended a new seal kit for both the transmission and the transfer case. While he had those two off the truck, he sent me pictures of the flywheel and clutch, and recommended we swap those out while we were at it. As of December 26 he’s got all the parts he needs to finish up the job.

With the weather getting colder, I got materials in the door for the seats and spent a couple of weeks redoing the upholstery on all four sections. This involved tearing down the rear upright from the green truck and using that frame, but all of the other frames I’d prepared worked out perfectly. When that was done, I bolted the lockbox in the back of the truck and installed the seats.

In between all of that, there are a million other smaller projects that got done. The frame under the passenger side was needle-scaled and painted. The adhesive from the old carpeting has all been removed. The door locks up front have been replaced. The front bumper  from the green truck was installed. The license plate light got mounted on the rear door. The outside lights all got dedicated grounds run to the body. I’ve got turn signals and headlights, but the high-beams still don’t work and they cancel out the running lights.

Looking back on it (and looking at it in the driveway) I can see a lot of progress this year. The first year, a lot of the labor was hidden but this year I can see big cosmetic improvements happening. The push for this coming spring will to be getting it on the road. I know the transmission is good, because she’ll move when she’s in gear and I bump the starter; for some reason the clutch pedal isn’t working. More on that later.

Posted on   |   by bill   |   Leave a Comment on 2024 In Review  |  Posted in Inspiration, Progress, Travelall

Locks and Drinks

I got to work disassembling the crusty barn door handle from the NY Travelall a few weeks ago. The first step was to soak the whole thing in some Evaporust, as the entire thing was seized up completely. After a couple of days I was able to see bare metal again, and with some light tapping I got the retaining ring off the back, revealing a spring-loaded piston (the element that makes contact with the latch mechanism). This needed some soaking as well. When that was ready, it just took a few taps with a hammer to release the collar to free up the rod inside. Next I had to get the lock cylinder out. This took some judicious use of a drill, and once I had destroyed the pins, I was able to back it out and clean everything up.

It turns out that the original cylinders I saved from the red truck will work with this assembly, so I spent some time fitting the lock into the barrel and getting the mechanism to work.

I’m stumped by one very important thing: The lock will stay in the barrel when it’s locked, but when it’s open, the cylinder falls out of the mechanism. This reminds me of my initial attempts to make the new cylinders work in the doors, but there’s no mechanical stop to keep the barrel in the cylinder here.

I pulled the lockset out of the red truck and got things disassembled to the point where the lock cylinder is still in the handle; I’m nervous about drilling it out for some reason. I did bust out my old lock picks to see if I could bump the tumblers, but after about fifteen minutes working on it I was only able to clear a bunch of dirt out of the cylinder. So I’m going to work up my courage and drill it out this weekend to see if I can get the spare lockset to work. Doing some research, I was quoted $90 to rekey the cylinder by a local locksmith, while a second set of new locks keyed to the same number is less than half that, shipped. So there are options; I just need to wait on the next paycheck.

And, speaking of paychecks, I started developing an idea for a cupholder, something the original truck never shipped with. This is a simple piece of metal with two cup cutouts, bent to sit directly in front of the bench. It will mount to the crossbar underneath so it’ll move forwards and backwards as the seat is adjusted. I put together a cardboard template and knocked it together in Illustrator to have the design quoted at Sendcutsend. It’s only about $35 to have it cut and bent, and I can handle the rest of the assembly myself: I’ll weld a thin lip around the bottom edge for extra strength, and a vertical support underneath to keep it from bending. Then it can get a coat of the interior gray and some clearcoat.

Posted on   |   by bill   |   Leave a Comment on Locks and Drinks  |  Posted in Travelall

Cold Weather Projects

It’s been hatefully cold this past week, and we’ve had a full pre-Christmas schedule so there hasn’t been much I could do on the trucks. However, I did eyeball the rear valance panel sitting in the rear bed and it sparked an idea. I brought it and the panel from the green truck into the garage, set up the welder, and started pounding the twisted metal back into place. When it was all flat, the holes were smaller and circular, just large enough to be a pain to close up, but too small to find easy plugs to fill.

Cold, cold welding in my janky-ass garage

I used the copper backer and started slowly filling each of the smaller holes, then cut a square hole around the really mangled section in the center. When I had the settings dialed in, I cut square sections out on the sides, and plugs out of the green truck valance to fill things in. Ordinarily I would have just fabricated my own, but these have a compound curve as they push out to the edges that I figured would just be easier to cut out of the spare piece.

After some trimming I got them both tacked in and then spent the next hour jumping back and forth with a couple of welds on each side, then swapping to let things cool while I tacked on the other side. As of Sunday evening the piece is a bit warped in the center and needs some flattening, but the main welds are complete. Tomorrow I’ll get it straightened out, then wire wheel off the surface rust and old paint, and skim it with some filler.

Posted on   |   by bill   |   Leave a Comment on Cold Weather Projects  |  Posted in Travelall, Welding

Clutch

I’ve finally got the initial word back on the Scout from the transmission shop. They’ve got her up on the lift and have pulled the transfer case and transmission to reseal everything, and the owner called me with some pictures of the flywheel, which looks terrible.

Those cracks are Not Good

He suggested putting a new clutch in while we’ve got everything apart, which is not cheap but probably worth the time and money now that it’s torn apart. I found a rebuilt kit at IHPA, and they hooked me up with a used flywheel which is going out for resurfacing before they send everything to me.

Given that I’ve gotten 15 years out of a used clutch with no idea of its condition when I bought the truck, I’m not as bitter as I could be; she’s given me great service for years and it’s probably time she got some driveline love. I’ve also had a transmission mount in my parts bin for about four years that I’ve meant to install which is going to the shop with the other parts.

Posted on   |   by bill   |   Leave a Comment on Clutch  |  Posted in Repairs

Be Seated

I want up having a bit more time this weekend than I originally planned to work on the seats in the truck. The first thing to do was to finish up the base of the front seat and get that ready to install. Then I cut material down and fitted it to the seat back from the ’63 frame. Looking it over in detail, I remembered that two of the coils directly behind the driver were missing, probably rusted out. Instead of trying to figure out how to fix that, I decided to tear down the ’67 seat and rebuild that one—a decision made easier knowing that I needed the chipboard IH installed to make sure passengers don’t put their knees through the vinyl.

So, I pulled it out of the truck and tore it down in the driveway. After wire-wheeling the rust on the bottom from a pretty sizable mouse nest, I sprayed it liberally with rust converter and let it dry. Later, in the basement, I used the material I’d pre-cut and started stretching the fabric over the frame. This seat probably took the most effort to actually put together, but after I started in the middle and worked my way out to the edges it came together really well. Then, I carried it back out to the truck and put it in place temporarily to see how things look. I’m really happy with the way the whole thing has turned out.

Suddenly, the interior of the truck looks legit:  The color of the piping matches the gray of the door cards perfectly. The seats are comfortable, and feel strong when I’m sitting in them.

So now I’ve got to do some finish painting and clean up on the seat back, run more hog rings along the bottom of the front seat, base, and paint the frame from the green truck red to match the rest of the truck and I should be able to seal that stuff up.

Posted on   |   by bill   |   Leave a Comment on Be Seated  |  Posted in Seats, Travelall

Welding and Seating

We were busy with lots of fun Christmas activities this weekend so my opportunities to work on the truck were limited, but I hit a big milestone Sunday evening. First, I’ll mention the delivery of a brand-new welder from Eastwood, which I was finally able to unbox and use on Saturday evening as the sun was setting. With that, I was able to weld the filler hose bracket onto the front firewall, a captive nut on the bottom of the rocker to mount the fuel tank, and a captive nut on the passenger kick panel to mount the fender skirt properly. After that I found that the fuel hose I’d bought from Amazon—after waiting three weeks for Summit to send me a notification that wouldn’t be able to ship one until 12/28—was 1/2″ too big. I have no idea how I messed that up, but the correct size is on the way.

Returning to the bench seats, I’d started the upright to the rear bench last week but stalled at the corners, as they didn’t resemble the one on the spare ’68 bench I have for reference. But when I returned to the seat portion and realized I had to tuck the fabric behind the metal hinge mounts instead of covering them, I understood how to finish both seats off and how the pattern worked. It took some work but I got the upright 98% finished (I think I might have to try to sew one seam up by hand). Then I consulted a reference photo and connected both seats with refurbished bars and mounted the seat in the truck. I really like the way this looks and I’m excited to get the front seat started.

Posted on   |   by bill   |   Leave a Comment on Welding and Seating  |  Posted in Seats, Travelall

Thanksgiving Picking

Up in New York State to visit my family this Thanksgiving weekend, I reconnected with a guy near my sister’s house who has a lot full of antique iron in some fields off a back road. He’d advertised a Travelette late last year which I was interested in picking over but when the green truck landed in my lap, my plans changed. In February he said he also had a ’62 Travelall panel van in rough shape (he sent me a few pictures) so I figured I’d take a few hours and finally go check it out (the Travelette has since been purchased). I packed my standard recovery kit: tools, torch, PBblaster, impact gun, pry bars, and cold weather gear. I also bought a cordless angle grinder based on previous experiences, but left it in the box in case I didn’t need it.

If you didn’t know where to look for his yard you’d never find it, but what a collection he’s got. He’s heavy into Studebaker, Willys, and old Chevrolet, but there are all different makes sprinkled in. After carefully edging past an ancient Hudson, we cut some brush back and crawled through a hole in the fence to reach the truck.

It was beached next to a dually 50’s Chevrolet truck and a bathtub Nash that was sinking backwards into the dirt. The Travelall was well-used and picked over pretty good, so there wasn’t much to see there; I grabbed marker lights, the rear barn door handle (now I can soak this, disassemble it, and rekey it for the red truck) and the ’62 grille and headlight surrounds, which are in very good shape. The steering column was completely gone as was the manual box, so that was a bust.

I walked through the section I was in and came upon a ’68 pickup with a cap in very good shape. Both doors were inaccessible so I couldn’t get into the cab, and lifting the hood revealed column-shift manual steering, so I didn’t go for that. But the sheet metal on the front clip was in miraculously good shape. Both turn signal buckets were solid and the metal behind them was too, so I talked with the owner and made a deal on the entire nose. He agreed to let me cut it out as opposed to trying to remove all the fasteners (both of the fenders were garbage in the usual C-series way).

So I unfastened what I could, pulled the radiator and drained it for him, and cut both sides out as carefully as possible. I found that my normal-sized 20V batteries weren’t big enough to keep the grinder going for long, so I’ll have to get a pair of larger ones when these are worn out.

After about an hour I had the sheet metal free from the truck but had to cut the bottom mount bolt out to get it around a big homemade bumper. This took several trips back and forth to the garage, where he had my charger on a long extension cord. Then I had to jimmy the clip backwards to scoot it under the top lip of the same bumper. With that out, and a set of perfect taillight buckets, I hauled my finds back to the car and gave him my cash.

He then took me on a quick tour of the collection, where he’s got even more stuff across the street in another field, including a beautiful old cabover IH tractor, several C-series pickups, and a B-series Travelall that used to be a civil defense vehicle. There were rows and rows of Studebakers, a beautiful porthole Buick, Packards and Nashes and a Morris Minor minus its convertible top. The collection went on forever. These kinds of yards are all but extinct up here in salt country, so being able to spend at least five hours there on a snowy Friday was a lot of fun.

As for my new parts, the top of this nose is in rough shape, but I should be able to graft the bottom on to my existing sheet metal. The area around the turn signals on my truck is the worst rust besides the cowl vents I repaired last summer, so having some good metal to work with was worth the effort. I’ve got several taillight lenses, a perfect bucket, and several front lenses. And the ’62 grille and matching dual-light surrounds. All in all, not a bad haul.

Posted on   |   by bill   |   Leave a Comment on Thanksgiving Picking  |  Posted in Junkyards, Purchasing

Weekend Recap, 11.24

I spent Saturday down at Bob’s with my brother in law, working to get the Chrysler back in the garage. The engineering problem I faced was how to push a 4,300 lb. car back up a slight incline into the garage, while also moving it laterally by about ten feet. The solution I came up with involved a hammer drill, several concrete bits, lag bolts and barrels, and a cheap Harbor Freight winch with a remote.

After loading up on the supplies, Glen and I opened up the shiny new garage door and set up for the installation. I measured out two holes for the baseplate and had him start drilling while I assembled the winch. After a couple of tries with different bits and an adjustment in hardware which required a return trip to Lowe’s and a stopoff for tacos.

When we got back, the new bits we bought made relatively short work of 45-year-old concrete, and I was able to anchor the winch into the floor. I pulled the battery from the Chrysler and used that for power (it’s been on a tender since I bought it) and we played out the line to the back of the car. The winch wasn’t powerful enough to pull the car by itself, but with three of us pushing, it was the extra power we needed—as well as a safety measure in case the car got away from us. I hauled the wheel over hard to correct the position and then we pushed/pulled the car up about 3/4 of the way inside. With that done, we jacked up each corner and put it on the dollies so that we could push it to the far side of the garage, as out of the way as possible.

Sunday morning I got out to the Travelall and cleaned off the inside roof with acetone before covering the whole thing with Rust-Stop. While that cured, I pulled the driver’s wheel and cleaned the outside face of the driver’s inner fender with the wire wheel. That was covered with Rust Encapsulator, and while that dried I painted the frame with chassis black. And while the can was open I painted the frame on the passenger side where the gas tank will go.

Inside the cab, I used some chalk to mark out where the sound deadener was going to go, and cut a sheet of kraft paper to test the measurements. After some adjustments I flattened the first sheet out and aligned the center with the centerline of the roof, and peeled a little of the backing off to set it in place. It took some work to get everything oriented correctly, and then I peeled one side off to set it permanently. Give or take 1/8″ on either side, I got it aligned almost perfectly; using the long edge to align the second and third sheets, I made it to the back of the truck centered on the rear doors.

By that point it was getting dark and cold, so I closed up the truck and moved into the basement to work on the base of the rear bench seat. After reviewing some how-to videos to refresh my memory, I cut burlap, foam and carpet padding down to fit the seat and attached the burlap to the frame with some hog rings. Then I stretched the cover over the bench as best I could, working to get the scallops in the back edge into place.

Stretching the cover and clipping it in with the hog rings is exactly the same process as stretching a canvas or mesh for screenprinting: start at the middle of each edge and work your way outwards. Again, the trickiest parts were the indents where the seat is scalloped to avoid the wheel wells, but I realized I could compress the whole seat by kneeling on it and used that to pull the fabric around to the attachment bars.

Overall I’m pretty happy with the results for my first attempt. I put the carpet padding on top of the foam, but Jeff tells me it’s supposed to go underneath, which is what I’ll do with the upright part of the seat. For this I wanted it to be firm directly underneath, and I wasn’t aware there was a firmer foam available for the seat when I bought my materials. I’ve got to carefully add some small holes for the four hinge bolts and the bump stops, which makes me nervous, but Jeff tells me it should be fine.

So next up I have to disassemble the upright for the rear seat and prep it for covering, which means I have to hit it with the wire wheel and spray it down with Rust Converter.

I’m headed north to see my family for Thanksgiving, and there’s a junkyard near my sister’s house with some ancient IH iron, including this rusty Travelall panel truck. I’m not sure what to expect, but he says he’s got other IH stuff in there somewhere, so it should be a fun day for bushwhacking. I bought a cordless angle grinder on contingency but I’m going to leave it in the box so that I can return it if I don’t need it.

Looking at the dashboard, it’s a ’62 or earlier, so it’ll be interesting to get a look at the front clip. At first blush the stuff I see that would be worth something would be the barn doors, but they look pretty rough. Just looking at this photo, the things I see that might be worth picking would be:

  • The barn doors, if they’re salvageable
    • if not, the mechanisms—latches, the rear handle, etc.
    • The windows
  • Any of the chrome—the rear taillights, for example
  • the rear doors, if they’re salvageable
    • Any of the interior mechanisms from these doors—scissors, latches, etc.
    • Chrome brightwork, interior steel surround
  • Either of the bumpers, if they’re in good shape
  • Front wing windows, if they’re OK.
  • Steering wheel/column, if I can get it out

I have no idea what the rest of the truck looks like, but I’ll see when we get out there. And even if the whole thing is a wreck it’ll be fun to go looking.

Posted on   |   by bill   |   Leave a Comment on Weekend Recap, 11.24  |  Posted in Junkyards, Seats, Travelall