Category: Travelall

Finally, Some Wheel Answers

Desperate for some answers, I tried something radical on Tuesday. I pulled the 15″ spare tire out of the back of the truck and put it on the driver’s side front hub. After warming the truck up in the driveway, I took it out for a run-up on the highway toward the airport. And it was stable! Only the slightest shake in the steering wheel but no death wobble at any speed. I had the truck up to a high of 64mph and the vibration didn’t get any worse.

So this rules out anything still wrong with the suspension—the last remaining tie rod or the sway bar bushings, although I’m going to replace those in any case. It’s definitely the wheel, and now I’ve got to find a replacement for the one I swapped out. Brendan at IHScout.com told me they’re around $100/ea, which is a hell of a lot better than $600 for a pair of new wheels and tires. For now, the 15″ tire is still on the truck, and she looks kind of stupid.

I uploaded three new designs to the Dugan Heavy Industries storefront this afternoon: a flat side, step side, and Travelette, all C-series trucks. I still have to develop a design for the D-series, but that will come later.

With the power steering pump on the Scout fixed, I’m now in a position to try to figure out what the next big project might be. I’ve gone out to the garage a couple of times this week and farted around, unsure of what to tackle next. Some of these things are going to take multiple weeks, and some are going to take an afternoon. So to clean the cobwebs out of my brain, let’s list them here, in order of easiest to hardest and order of importance:

  • Fix the upholstery on the front bench seat. Some of the padding on the top of the seat under the vinyl has shifted and I don’t like the look of that, so I have to cut a bunch of the hog ring clips off and move the padding around. I’m going to do this while it’s still warm, in the sunshine, and that will make stretching the fabric much, much easier. This will take a couple of hours.
  • Move the electronic fuel pump down closer to the tank and replace the fuel filter. I’m told these pumps like it better when they’re down closer to the outflow port on the tank, which makes sense. And the filter is pretty gross right now. This will only take a couple of hours.
  • Install hooks and latches on the rear bench seat. I still have to install the chrome latches on my seat, and Bill C. just sent me some measurements from his truck. Between those measurements and the general location of the latches, I should be able to figure this one out. This one should only be a few hours.
  • Replace the wing windows. Both of my wing windows are delaminated and stained around the edges, and the driver’s window does not stay open. I’d like to replace these with the two out of the green truck, which are clear but probably need new rubber. This will involve breaking the interior of the door back down to its base parts to slide the triangle into place, unless I can find a way to squeeze just the window portion out of the frame and squeeze the replacement in. Each door will probably take an afternoon; I have to pull the door cards off (again), pull the window out, and then jimmy the wing window units out.
  • Fix the mechanical fuel pump. I’m still not sure what the deal is here, but I’d love to delete the electric pump—as much as I hate sitting and grinding the starter until the fuel hits the bowl. I also have to put the borescope into the engine block and see if the gear inside is intact. This will take longer than I want it to.
  • Build a roof rack. I have the aluminum channel for this, and a simplified plan. I also know that my abortive attempts to TIG some scrap aluminum together was done in an unprepared way. So I’ll do some more test runs and see if I can get some decent beads together, and try again. This is a long-term project.
  • Fabricate and weld a new driver’s floor. This will probably be one of the easier jobs on this list, as difficult as it sounds; cutting out the old floor shouldn’t take long, but cutting and fabbing the new pan will take a little time. I’m also going to cut out the rotted support at the corner and weld my new one in. This is a long-term project.
  • Strip, sand, fix, and prime the spare doors and hood. I’ve got a quartet of doors sitting in the garage that I’d love to swap on to the truck eventually with a fresh coat of red paint. And the hood is in better shape than the one I’ve got—I probably don’t need to do any paint stripping, just clean up and scuff the surfaces before shooting it with primer and paint. That would go a long way to cleaning up the look of the front of the truck—minus the grille surround, which is the dog’s breakfast. Another long-term project.
  • Fabricate a grill surround from the two I have (??) I’ve got two 1968 surrounds that don’t fit the shape of my grille insert, so I’d have to figure out how to bend that metal—but the good one is solid around the indicator buckets, which is where mine is crumbling. This is a pie-in-the-sky project.
Posted on   |   by bill   |   Leave a Comment on Finally, Some Wheel Answers  |  Posted in To-Do List, Travelall

August Video Update

Here’s a recap of everything I’ve accomplished in the last month, which has been pretty quiet compared to previous years. There are a lot of small improvements to both trucks as well as a recap of the workday and review of the power steering pump installation.

I’m about 78 viewing hours away (2922 out of 3000) from being eligible for monetization of my channel, which means I could connect my merch site up to YouTube for a more direct sales pathway. I’ve been slow on posting lately, so I’m going to try to get another video up next weekend to see if I can cross the threshold.

Posted on   |   by bill   |   Leave a Comment on August Video Update  |  Posted in Friends, Repairs, Travelall, Video

Workday

I organized a workday with my local truck buds while Jen was down at her Dad’s house on Saturday, and I think we did really well with the projects we wanted to tackle. Because of scheduling and timing, I offered up my driveway for the event, which meant we broke the local record for number of Internationals in one place at one time. Bennett pulled up in Heavy D with a plan to drop the driver’s side gas tank, which has been peeing Peer-Pressure style for the last couple of months. David drove his ’68 pickup over—the longest he’s driven it on the road so far—with a loose plan to tackle a couple of different projects. My intention was to swap a new power steering pump into Peer Pressure to try to fix a constant leak.

After our customary shoot-the-breeze over donuts, we all got to work. Bennett got me started on the pump and then moved to Heavy D, while David started cutting metal to fabricate a set of tank straps. I was able to get the pump out pretty easily (save one mount, which uses a bushing to surround the bolt) and used a $20 Amazon tool to get the pulley off the old pump and press it on to the new one. With that done, it was simple to re-install, fill the reservoir, prime, and do a test run. There were no leaks, and I called it good.

Meanwhile, Bennett had to pull his driver-side fender off to get to a couple of the bolts to his tank, but once that was done, dropping it went quickly—so fast that I didn’t get the chance to help him out. He and I then hooked up my timing tools to David’s pickup and using his ears, the RPM meter, and a vacuum gauge, he was able to smooth out the idle and make the engine run much better.

We had a little less luck on Darth Haul; without a timing light (I have purchased two from H-F and they have both died quickly) it’s hard to get the idle correct, but we used the same combination of vacuum and RPM to try to smooth out and lower the idle speed. I’m getting a lot of dieseling at shutdown, and I suspect that maybe the plugs are too hot, which will be the next thing I check.

Bennett had to take off at that point, so David and I ran to get a slice of pizza, and then I got him set up with my MIG welder to assemble his tank straps. I gave him the basic instructions and put the first one together, then handed him the welder. He was really psyched to get some practice after I had the settings dialed in, and when he finished, we ground the welds down to make the metal as smooth as possible.

By that point it was a little before 5PM, so I loaded some tools into Darth and followed him back to his house, just to make sure he got there OK. I also got some half-decent footage of two red Internationals on the road together, which was pretty cool.

Posted on   |   by bill   |   Leave a Comment on Workday  |  Posted in Friends, Travelall, Welding

Still Wheely Unbalanced

Trying to sort out the death wobble on the Travelall is beginning to drive me nuts. Two weekends ago I swapped the front and rear wheels on the driver’s side, and on Sunday I swapped the wheels on the passenger side. Before I did this, I put cameras in each wheel well and ran the truck up to 65mph. At speeds between 50-60 the wobble appeared, but above and below that, it was fine.

Thinking maybe I hadn’t tightened the wheel bearings enough the last time I pulled them, I tightened the castle nuts one notch and locked everything back down. A third test drive found that there wasn’t any change. At this point, I’ve got two directions to follow.

  1. More research. One thing I noticed in the footage was that the tires were more offcenter than the wheels. I’m going to put cameras aimed at the edges of all the wheels next to see how stable they all are, and that will tell me a lot about what the best next step will be.
  2. Suspension. The long tie rod on the driver’s side is still original to the truck, and is the only one I haven’t replaced yet. The bushings on the sway bars are all original as well, and need to be swapped out. This could be a simple fix, but I’m not sure it’s the culprit. These parts will run about $200.
  3. Wheels/tires. I’ve been focusing on the wheels this entire time, figuring that a balance would smooth things out—but these are trailer tires, which really aren’t meant for passenger vehicles (I know, I know, shut up). Actual LT215/85R16 vehicle tires will fit on these wheels, and I can find them for as low as $145/ea.

I did have a bit of success with another long-standing project: I drilled and wired a door switch into the driver’s side A-pillar and successfully connected it to a new LED dome light, which gives me a blinding amount of visibility after dark. This took a couple of attempts, where I was connecting the hot power lead to the switch like a dumbass, and after thinking about it overnight, I realized I was wiring it backwards. I tested it first and then spent an hour fishing a ground wire through the A-pillar up to the roof, successfully hiding it from view. Now I’ve got to wire the passenger side door to the same circuit, and add another LED light to the rear cargo area. I also need to test the headlight switch to see if the rheostat works correctly and triggers the light or not.

Another small cosmetic thing was to use a wire wheel to clean the four aluminum sill covers from the green truck, which were pretty gross, before installing the one on the driver’s sill with the remainder of my stainless screws. I’m going to put the other three in as soon as I’ve got the hardware.

A separate unrelated search brought me to the Grote website, who were the OEM manufacturers for all of IH’s turn signal buckets and lenses back in the day. Curious, I looked at taillights and found that they offer a 4″ round LED taillight that looks remarkably similar to the lights on Darth and the 800. If these are the same size, I think I could simply pull the taillights out of Darth and swap these in without needing to add a resistor or any other electrical trickery to get them to work. Update: My taillights are 6″ wide, so my dreams of a sealed LED have been dashed for now.

I also found a different vendor who sells headliner fabric for  $17/yd, but it’s not the pegboard-style stuff that came in the truck. I still haven’t been able to find a flexible but stiff-enough board to use to replace the original perforated chipboard. There is perforated fabric I can spray mount over hard backer board, but it’s 3X the price. What I may have to do is beg or borrow something that will emit steam so that I can heat and bend 1/8″ chipboard into the shapes that I need.

Posted on   |   by bill   |   Leave a Comment on Still Wheely Unbalanced  |  Posted in Electrical, To-Do List, Travelall

Wheel Talk

Following up on my last post, I ran out to Frederick on Sunday to pick up a pair of NIB steel 5×4.5 wheels from a nice gentleman named Tom. After measuring the backspacing and offset, I went ahead and pulled the trigger anyway—all four were only $75—but even before I fit one on the truck as a test, I knew it wouldn’t work correctly. These wheels are 6.5″ wide, and the offset is the same as the wheels I’ve got, which means there’s an extra 2″ of wheel inboard of the hubs; this means they’re too far inward to actually mount to the truck without rubbing against the body. My initial thought was that I could buy 1″ or 2″ spacers to get them to fit, but then I’d also need longer wheel studs, and that was getting more and more expensive and time-consuming. So, I discarded that idea.

But, this did give me some good information to jump off from. These wheels are made by Dorman, and they did offer other options in this wheel pattern, but most all of the ones available are direct replacements for OEM wheels and don’t have the correct offset. Some more looking turned up a set of Wheel Vintique steelies at 16″ and 6″ wide with the correct offset; the only problem is that they’re $200/ea. So this will be a save-up-for-it thing, and I’ll keep my travels local until I can make the purchase.

In the meantime, I picked up an OEM International seatbelt retractor from a fellow on Marketplace. Darth Haul only has non-retractable lap belts, and when I got the green truck it came with two of these retractors on the back seat. They are essentially a C-shaped springloaded device that coils up the belt when it’s not buckled. I put them on Darth up front, and they do a great job of keeping the seatbelts inside the truck and away from scraping along the pavement. Of the two I inherited, one was rusty and the metal tabs that hold the belt were weak; it works, but it would be great to have two solid units up front.

I bought a new power steering pump for Peer Pressure, which will be here Tuesday; swapping this in will be part of the weekend’s chore list so that I can keep her from piddling all over the driveway. I think I’ve got the right fittings for the Hydroboost setup, but some further research is required.

On the merchandise front, I made a bunch of updates to the new T-shirt storefront at Fourthwall, which I’m happier and happier about every day. I’ve already made a bunch of sales there—the first customer, who bought a Make Scouts $500 Again shirt, wore it to the Rocky Mountain Roundup, and within a couple of days I had three more sales from Colorado. The entire setup of this storefront is so much friendlier and equitable compared to Threadless, which was pretty much a joke. I wish I’d known that earlier.

I also set up a VERY simple page at duganheavyindustries.com and built a draft page for the cupholder. I’m still finalizing some stuff, but I’m going to put a feeler post out on a couple of the Facebook groups to see if I can generate enough interest to make the initial investment—I figure 5 committed buyers should be enough to have 10 sets made, and that will recoup the costs. I sourced the shipping boxes, so the last thing I need is some way to take payment. WordPress has all kinds of e-commerce plugins available, so I’ll have to see if that’s worth the time—or if I just do Venmo and roll the dice.

Posted on   |   by bill   |   Leave a Comment on Wheel Talk  |  Posted in Future Plans, Products, Purchasing, Travelall

Shaky

Death Wobble. It’s an issue Jeep owners of a certain era are very familiar with: in solid-axle suspension setups, when elements like track bars, ball joints, tie rods, or wheel bearings wear out, the entire steering setup will start to oscillate and quickly shake the front of the truck to the point where it becomes uncontrollable. While I know my wheels are out of balance or bent, I’m beginning to suspect there’s something wrong with the suspension on the truck as well, which gets set off by the uneven wheels.

I’ve been through about 75% of my front suspension so far, having upgraded the springs, replaced 3 of the 4 tie rods, and repacked the wheel bearings on both sides; at this point I don’t know what else I need to focus on. I know I’ve got bushings that need to be replaced on the factory-installed sway bar, which could be the culprit, but I’m not sure that’s the issue. I called the Scout Connection to see if they’ve got the fourth tie rod—it’s a nonstandard length, about 9″ from edge to edge, going from the steering box to the lower arm on the driver’s hub—and bushings for the sway bars. I was grasping at straws at first, and thought I might look in the MT-118 Parts Catalog I’ve got on the shelf for kicks, when I was surprised to remember it’s for all of the C-series trucks, not the Scout II like I thought. So I was able to give them the part numbers, which is handy, and they’re going to call me back.

In the meantime, I’m going to swap the passenger front and rear wheels and see if that makes any difference at speed. The next thing to try will be throwing a set of $100 light truck tires on the two front wheels, in the off chance the trailer tires I put on them are just out of whack.

Posted on   |   by bill   |   Leave a Comment on Shaky  |  Posted in Travelall  |  Tagged

While any major projects have slowed to a crawl, I’ve quietly been putting miles on the Travelall over the last couple of weeks. I’ve had her out for a couple of trips over 20 miles each, and she’s come through with flying colors. Last weekend I ran a bunch of errands with her and the only issues I found were the ongoing balance issues with the tires, and the engine sometimes dieseling on shutdown.

The second problem is due to a couple of issues, I suspect: I do have to retard the timing just a hair, but the main cause is due to the choke cable binding somewhere so that after the engine is started and I push it back in to open the choke, it’s not opening all the way—and the mechanism keeps the idle higher than normal. So she’s running a little hotter than she should, even though the temp needle stays pegged to the cooler side.

On the semi-positive side, I had a credit on the books with IHPA for my clutch core so I used that to get a set of window channels and felts for the rear doors on the truck. When I bought the fronts I wasn’t aware that the rears aren’t usually sold separately, so they had to do some wrangling. The company that makes the fronts doesn’t like to split the kits up so they went with their second supplier, who shipped them directly to me. After I looked the kit over, I was not as impressed with the fit and finish of the first kit: the channels aren’t backed with metal, nor do they have the clips IH used to mount the top section; the felts are thicker than OEM, come without the mounting clips installed, and are pre-drilled in the wrong locations.

I pulled the driver’s rear door apart, took the original metal channels out, and test-fit the new ones. They are flexible, so they don’t cradle the window firmly in the middle of the track, and they’re about 1/8″ too wide to fit in the original metal channels. The felts are mounted differently on the rear doors than the fronts; here they clip into the chrome trim ring on the outside and a black trim ring on the inside—which requires removal of both. The black ring is easy to take off but the chrome ring requires delicate surgery to pull off without bending. And because the chrome ring is on the outside, that’s the most important side to install.

With plastic trim tools I was able to gently pull the lower chrome section off the truck, and after drilling holes in the right locations, I fed the clips through and fastened them with a pair of needle-nose pliers. Re-assembling the door, I found that with both felts installed, the window was unable to rise past them; they’re too thick. I left the felt attached to the black trim ring and pulled another ring off one of my spare doors to swap onto the truck. With just the outer felt installed, the window went up and down—but the metal clips were scraping along the window as it went up and down. And the window was not moving smoothly after I put the door card back on.

I then broke down the passenger rear window on the Travelall and installed the channels and felt on that side, being sure to add a liberal coat of white lithium grease to the scissor and all of the door mechanisms. On this side, I put the felt on the outside chrome channel and then added two strips of rubber to the back of the inside black channel to keep the window from rattling—and that seems to do the trick. The window is quieter now, which is great, but I’m not impressed with this kit at all.

Last Saturday, I drove the Scout out to the store to pick up some oven cleaner, and sprayed a generous amount of that over the power steering pump, the steering box, and everything under and around it covered in oil and grease. She’s been leaking for some time now, and the reservoir was empty before I left the house, so this has been on my mind for a while. Steering boxes are very hard to find these days, and replacements are expensive, so I was nervous thinking about how much effort and money it would take to replace.

With the engine hot, the gunk broke up quickly, and I cleared it off with the pressure washer. With that done, I was able to see the frame on that side clearly for the first time, and noted that one of the previous owners had done some decent welding on the frame, bump stop and shock mounts. I sprayed the bare frame with rust-stop, then covered  that with chassis black, then ran the truck up for a little bit, parked it, and waited.

Last Sunday afternoon I did a careful inspection of the steering box, and I don’t see any leaks, nor do I see anyplace it could be leaking from. I noticed liquid dripping from above it, on what I think is the front of the pump, near the pulley. It’s hard to get my big fat head down in there to look closely. New pumps are about $150, so I’ll pick up a new one and swap it on.

Posted on   |   by bill   |   Leave a Comment on   |  Posted in Repairs, Travelall

On Fumes

It was a very hot weekend, so my motivation for being outside was very low, but I did push forward with some small tasks on the Scout—and I put about 80 miles on the Travelall in two separate trips.

I had started pulling the evap fittings apart on the Scout last week, but what I needed was about 16 feet of thin-diameter fuel hose and a handful of new brass barb fittings. ACE hardware always comes through with the right stuff, and I was able to plumb three of five fittings in on the truck before I had to get the jack out and drop the tank about 4″ to access the ones on the top. When I had those all in place, I squinted multiple times at the diagram in the service manual, and I think I connected all of the hoses in the right locations. This evap system is supposed to do a couple of things: reduce fumes and emissions from the tank, but also provide a couple more vent pathways to prevent overfilling when adding new gas to the tank. We’ll see how that shakes out. If it doesn’t have any effect, then I’ll consider dropping this tank completely and re-installing the steel tank, which should seal up at the sender location much better.

I didn’t do much to the Travelall other than drive it, although two wiper blades came in at NAPA and I found a spring for the spare wiper arm to cobble something together. I still have a new one coming in tomorrow, which will get installed on the truck, but now I understand how it’s assembled. She’s running like a champ, but I still have to sort out the issue with the wheels.

Posted on   |   by bill   |   Leave a Comment on On Fumes  |  Posted in Repairs, Travelall

Post-Nats Video Update

Here’s a long-delayed video update covering everything after Nationals to now, including yesterday’s excellent Travelall update: The truck is starting again, after I ran out to the 800, stole the ignition switch from that, and swapped it in. As I was testing the old one I found that the lock barrel was just spinning inside the switch, which is very much not supposed to happen. This was the unit from the replacement wiring harness, so it was probably 60+ years old, and definitely due for a replacement.

Posted on   |   by bill   |   Leave a Comment on Post-Nats Video Update  |  Posted in Travelall, Video