Jeff posted these up on my Binder Planet thread yesterday and shot me a text: the covers are done, and he’s going to get them packed up to ship and send me the invoice for the balance. I think they turned out great, and I’m excited to get them in hand. I think this will be the next job I tackle after we get back from our vacation.
Now I’ve got to borrow a set of hog ring pliers from my brother-in-law and order some rings from Amazon.
I heard from Jeff this weekend on the Travelall seats (actually, while I was trying to pull the dash off) when he texted me a picture of the top half of the rear seat in progress:
I’m doing mine in gray over black because my dash and door cards are gray, but I’m going for something that looks like this (in tan over gray):
I don’t think the vinyl Jeff got is as marbled as the stuff in the reference photo, but I’m excited about moving the seats forward.
As of Friday night, the passenger side quarter panel is off the truck. I’m still trying to sort out how I might get the axle out from under the truck and still have someone haul it away, but it’s not looking promising. In the worst case I’d either have to forego keeping the axle or pull it and beg Bennett to help me haul it back up on his trailer and off to a scrapyard.
In the meantime, I’m eyeing the inside wheel well covers, wondering if I could drill out the welds and pull those in one piece…
In other, better news, I shot Jeff an email on Friday after I realized I have a perfectly good front and rear 1967 bench seat just waiting for new upholstery, and asked him if that made any difference in fitment. He called me back on Friday night, somewhat relieved, because his patterns are for 1968 benches and he feels better about shipping the covers to me as is. So when he’s got time he’ll finish up the covers and send them down, and if UPS can avoid losing them, I can buy the foam and get started building the seats.
It doesn’t sound like Bennett is going to be able to make it to Nats with us this year, but I think Brian is on board for a ride-along with me. He’s not interested in taking Slowflake so I offered shotgun in the Scout. I’ve got to start organizing parts for sale to see if I can make some money bringing them to Ohio; I figure the tailgate might bring some money if priced properly, and I wonder if anyone would be interested in the heating unit in its current shape. There’s more in the pile but I’ve got to go through it all to see.
I’ll follow up with a written wrap-up later, but here’s the video.
I posted the latest update video on the Binder Planet the other day, which contains a review of the wiring harness I got from the Scout Connection, and a couple of friends there confirmed my suspicions: the new harness is from a 1962 model (the last year of the A/B-series dashboard design) where the fuse panel was mounted down under the dash on the firewall. From what my friend Ray tells me there are other differences and most likely this one won’t be compatible with the dashboard on my truck, so I’ve got to get back in touch with them to figure out next steps. At this point I’ve got two spare harnesses—the one I bought from Marketplace, which is actually from a pickup, and the one from this ’67 Travelall in the driveway, which I have to pull out. I’m kind of tempted to pull the one out of the Red bus and send that along for reference; I’ll have to see what they say when I call.
On Wednesday the weather was warm enough for me to go out after work and fool around a little bit under the hood of the green truck. I’d sprayed a bunch of the bolts with a fresh can of PBblaster so the washer bottle holder and jack mounts came out easily, as did six of the eight bolts holding the radiator in place. While I was under the hood I pulled seven of the eight plugs out to see what the cylinders might look like, and found they were all dry with a light fuzz of rust on a few. I put them all back and looked over the brake master cylinder, which is a much larger unit than the meager dual-pot in my truck. The reservoir front was full but the rear was empty, and the gasket looked clean—go figure. I originally thought the brake and clutch shared a cylinder but found a separate, smaller IH-stamped pot off to the right of the brake master with its own plumbing to the slave cylinder. Amazingly there was fluid inside and it all looked clean.
Thursday morning, before my alarm had even gone off, I lay awake in bed unable to fall back asleep, and one of the many unconnected bullet points rattling around my brain read: What’s the Baltimore County code for vehicles in your driveway?
Well, it turns out it’s not good news.
428.1. – Vehicle storage on residential lots.
So.
I went out and slapped the modern Maryland tag on the green truck for the time being. I’ll keep pulling it apart from the inside out and hasten to get it out of the driveway as soon as I can.
Friday evening after work I bundled up and went out to see if I could easily get the front bumper off, with the intention of swapping it for the crappy white one that came on the Red Bus. It’s held on with some ancient mismatched bolts of unknown origin and the frame setup on this truck makes it much harder to access the nuts under the cowl area. I hosed them down with PBblaster and moved on to the battery tray, where I got the side support and second horn out (the horn on the passenger’s side works! so that will get swapped into the Scout) and loosened the radiator enough to lift out once I’ve drained it.
I also transferred the list from my iPad to the window of the truck with a grease pencil so it’ll be staring me in the face each time I go out there and I’ll have no excuse for jumping ahead to something shiny. Let’s see how well that works.
Sunday I had a full day to work in on the green Travelall, and made some good progress with the teardown. The focus right now is getting the front panels ready to remove, so I chased after the problem bolts on the passenger fender (under the eyebrow and up on the firewall). With careful application of penetrant and heat, I was able to get the apron sheet metal off the inner fender, allowing for better access to the firewall. Turns out the fuel filler on this side goes to nowhere; there’s no tank under the passenger side.
The radiator came out easily. It turns out there was no coolant in the system at all, so all I had to do was cut the hoses off and the whole unit came out quickly. Later on I’ll rig up some pressurization system to test it for leaks, but for now it’s stashed safely in the garage. The engine still won’t budge, although I still haven’t put a bolt on the crank yet. I pulled seven of eight plugs to see how they looked, and they all came out dry and slightly carbonized. A borescope down a few of the driver’s side cylinders showed a lot of carbon on top of the pistons and some light rust on the cylinder walls. I’ll probably throw some Marvel Mystery Oil down the plug holes to see if I can get the engine to spin, but it’s not my top priority right now (and I’ve got a spare 345 in the garage anyway).
The fender came off after a whole lot of calisthenics and careful use of the cutoff wheel, and apart from the rust at the edge of the eyebrow it looks just as good as the driver’s side. I also loosened the bolts on the inner fender, which all came out easily. The front cowl looks like it’s ready to come out as well—there’s just one heavy bolt at the bottom that ties into the frame that needs to be removed.
I then hooked up the battery from the Red Bus, and saw no smoke or flame from the wiring. A flick of the tailgate window switch moved the window down about 2″ where it stopped in place, so I walked around and shot the tracks with lithium grease, then helped it down as much as possible. Moving back and forth from the switch to the window in that way, I got it to move all the way down into the tailgate. At this point, however, I can’t get the tailgate to release with the latch. I shot it with penetrant and hopefully that will loosen things up; otherwise it’s got a date with a big Phillips-head driver and/or a cutoff wheel.
Finally, I pulled the shiny chrome bumper off the green truck and swapped it for the clapped-out white bumper from the red truck, and that improved things 34%. It’s not in perfect shape; someone put hooks on the bottom side and used it to pull things, so it’s bent up a bit, but it’s not completely twisted like the white one is.
Next up will be getting the heater box out of the cab and the brake assembly from the engine compartment. The latter is still full of clear fluid so I’ve got to find a clean way of draining it without eating a hole in the driveway. I’m going to pull the brass junction block from the firewall and any other hardware I can for that system.
Then I’ll see about getting the tailgate off. Friends from the Binder Planet tell me I should be prepared for how heavy it is; I have no idea what to expect.
Meanwhile, I got a package from the good folks at the Scout Connection, which contained a used, tested wiring harness for the Red Bus. They sent me a harness for a 1963, which looks substantially different than what I’m seeing in my cab. From the layout of the wires and their lengths, it looks like the fuse panel on this one mounts somewhere up under the dash on the driver’s side firewall instead of behind the glovebox door like my truck. The bulkhead connector is correct, and they labeled every single wire, which is awesome for me to base my reconstruction on. Between this new harness, the one I got from Marketplace, and the one I’m going to pull off the green truck, I should have (hopefully) everything I need to swap in a working electrical system.
From what little UPS has told me, my seat covers are gone. I had to go to the location I mailed them from and ask, and the guy went into the back of the office and looked and claimed they cut me a check at some point for $100 plus the amount I paid for shipping. Which also hasn’t arrived. So I have to organize a meetup with Jeff somewhere between here and Pittsburgh to hand over the seats.
My spare fuse block made it out to the Scout Connection on Wednesday, and Dave called me to let me know it’s actually not the right fuse block for my truck. I asked if we could swap it for a correct used spare and call it even, and he was happy to do that. So that process should be underway, and hopefully I’ll get a harness in the mail sometime soon. I can’t wait to open that Pandora’s box get that process started; having a working electrical system is one of the three biggest obstacles to getting this girl on the road.
I bought a basic hammer and dolly set from Harbor Freight on Saturday morning and got to work hammering out the dents in the driver’s fender. It took a bit of time to understand how the tools worked; there’s a hammer with a small contact area on either side and a flat spoon for wider areas, as well as two solid steel dollies for the backside. I started with the hammer and quickly realized it was too small a contact patch, and switched over to the spoon almost exclusively. In a couple of hours I had the edge shaped correctly and most of the valleys flattened out, as well as the overall curve of the fender re-formed. Hanging it on the truck I was pleased to see it matching up with the body line really closely, and the panel gap looked really close. After a few more adjustments I re-hung it to confirm everything aligned, and then got things ready to skim some filler over top.
Sunday morning I had a little free time so I used the orbital sander to knock off the high spots in the filler and then skimmed a second coat over the fist; the filler portion of things is going to take a lot of time (as the other fender did) to flatten the large areas and also match the curve over the fender.
I’ve had a bunch of shorter clips in the hopper for a while, and figured I’d collect them into something resembling an update.
On the project side of things, I used a heat gun to remove all of the old bondo on the driver’s side fender, then cut off the pop rivets used to hold a crappy patch in place installed Back in The Day.
When I had that out, I cut a larger square out to get things ready for a proper butt-welded patch. The other thing I had to do was to try and bend the rear edge of the fender outward and back into original position. At some point somebody really bashed it inwards so it never looked correct when it was hung on the truck. I was able to get it mostly back into place, and used my everyday hammer to do some dent removal. At this point I want to get an actual bodywork hammer and bag to pound out the larger dents instead of trying to hide sins with filler.
Once I had that cleaned up, I cut down a section of metal and tacked it into place. I’m going to have to finesse the bottom edge a little bit—or grind this off and re-orient it further down—but it looks like it’ll go in pretty easily.
I spent a couple hours last weekend looking at the spare C-series wiring harness I’ve got tacked to a board vs. the diagrams in the service manuals, with a goal of trying to identify what I’ve got and to possibly refurbish it for the truck. In the manual there are two model years provided, those for the C100 series and those for the D1000+ series. With a lot of studying and some magnification I was able to track down some of the cable runs from the fuse block to their endpoint at the bulkhead connectors.
The easiest ones to follow were for the headlights: two green wires marked 18A and 18B, which didn’t change between the two model years. I put a multimeter lead at either end and tested for continuity, and was please to see things worked. I found and tested a couple more but got stalled when I was trying to compare what I found at the end of some of the bulkhead connectors to what the diagrams said, and stepped back to have a beer and a think. This wiring harness is in decent shape and is about 90% complete, but there are several runs that end in clipped wires before they get to a connector, which means I don’t know where they lead or how they connect to the truck.
I decided to do some product research. My first call was to Super Scout Specialists, who sadly told me the guy they had building their wiring harnesses is no longer with the company. Next I (gulp) called Travelallparts.com, who have harnesses listed on their site for $2-300 more than SSS does. They confirmed the price and told me I should consider a blade fuse upgrade to the kit for an additional $300. Then, on a hunch, I called the Scout Connection, with whom I had excellent luck finding the brake part nobody else was able to identify. Dave took my information and when he called back gave me a great price for a bench-tested used harness, minus the fuse panel. I told him I’d send him the spare fuse panel I have on my workbench, and we set up the deal.
Having a mostly working electrical system will be a huge upgrade to the truck; right now it starts and runs without any fusible links at all, which is still a bit mystifying to me, as are the working fuel and amperage gauges and the single brake light that worked before I disconnected the leads to the aftermarket trailer brake.
In other news, the box of dilapidated seat covers I sent Jeff last week have gone completely missing via UPS. On my visit to mail off the fuse panel (which was insured), I asked them to help me track it down, but they still don’t have any information.
Jeff gave me a ring early in the week and asked me to send him the existing overs off the seats I have because he’s worried what he has might not fit correctly. So I went out at lunchtime on Tuesday and quickly pulled the covers off the rear bench and front vertical section, wrote where they came from, and boxed them up to be UPS’d up to him. I would like to have spent more time taking pictures of how they were assembled, but I was up against the clock and weather, and wanted to keep the process moving.
Jeff said I’m welcome to come up to his place and he’d show me how they go together when he’s got them completed, and it’s looking more and more like I might take him up on that offer. I’m sure I could figure out a lot of things on my own but I’d rather have an expert show me the right way first before I ruin anything.
The other thing I did on Saturday was to cut and fit two sections of steel to the corners before welding them into place. I have no idea why they would have kept these parts separate, and I figured sturdier is better in any case. A spray can of Rust-Stop helped me reach all the sections the brush missed, and with that the front bench is ready for upholstery. Next I’ve got to clean off the rear.
On the fender I got all of the low spots mudded out and sanded down, then used fill & sanding primer to identify any last trouble spots. When I was satisfied with the way things looked I used some 1000 grit to polish it up and then sprayed on two coats of rattle-can IH Implement Red to cover things. Overall it looks very good, and there’s only a drip around the fuel inlet port I have to smooth out. The next step will be to scrape all the old undercoating off the back, wire wheel any remaining rust, cover it with Encapsulator, and then spray on some undercoating.
I took the driver’s side off and started knocking off all the Bondo I’d applied in the summer as well as the stuff it came to me with; I’m going to take it back down to bare metal and start over again. This time I’m going to cut out the bad metal and riveted patch and try to get it as close to the original as I can while I keep looking for replacements. This one is going to take a lot more time to fix.