Category: Travelall

Shiny White

What you’re seeing there is a coat of Bright White 2-stage auto enamel on the roof of the Travelall about an hour after shooting it last night. Overall it went on very smoothly—I dialed in the gun pretty quickly and had it laying down a clean pattern, but I didn’t use the drywall stilts to move around. They proved to be cheap junk, so they are going back for a refund. I think the paint went on pretty evenly but most likely I’m going to wet-sand the whole thing and shoot the second half of the can on the center section just to be as thorough as possible.

Today (Wednesday) I have the guy from the glass installer coming back to re-install the driver’s side window with a new gasket, so after I’d shot the roof I had Jen help me take out the glass, which went quickly now that we’ve done it four times. The steel around the window edge is in absolutely fantastic shape—I only had to sand rust out of two dime-sized spots. Seriously, it looks like it just rolled out of the factory. I used a nylon sander to remove all the adhesive on the inside edges, washed all of the dirt off the outside edge, and sprayed a coat of IH rattle-can red around the bottom lip. Keep your fingers crossed for a successful installation today. It’s supposed to be 95˚ so hopefully the heat will be on our side.

Posted on   |   by bill   |   Leave a Comment on Shiny White  |  Posted in Paint, Travelall

Primer and Paint

I took the week before Finn went back to school off and visited my family in New York. Returning home to get her ready for school, I spent a good part of Friday finishing the wiring work in the truck.

Saturday’s progress wound up being two steps forward and one step back. Actually, on Friday, I had most of the day to fool around with the dashboard and finishing up the electrical work, so I put the big rubber grommet on the bulkhead connector and tried to get it through the bulkhead. I want having to take the entire hood off so that I could sit on the air cleaner and work a screwdriver around the edges of the grommet along with a whole lot of dish soap in order to get it through the metal. Then hooked all of the connections back up and noticed that there were some really crappy spices on a couple of the wires so I broke out the electrical gear and cleaned those up with proper splices and heatshrink tube. Unfortunately, when I tested the electrical, I found that my turn signals are not functioning anymore.

I fooled around with the wiring for another half an hour to try to get the signals to light back up, but decided to pivot to the roof in order to get it ready for paint. Last year I spent a lot of time sanding out all of the rust spots and dents, filling them with body filler, and sanding everything smooth. It had a coat of rattle-can primer over top of everything but as we all know primer collects water and I wasn’t able to get it painted before things got cold. So the whole thing sat under a car cover all winter and spring. Looking at it this summer, I noticed that some of the filler was bubbling and there were some rust areas coming through, so I got out the grinder and cleaned out all of those areas and refilled them.

While those areas were drying, I cleaned up the sections of sheet metal under the drip reel, and around the back doors. I had to make the ghetto tent even more ghetto by lifting it off the ground with cinderblocks, in order to be able to work on the edges of the roof. A couple of inexpensive Harbor Freight LED lights hung from the center post made things easier to see. I also figured it would be very difficult to drag something around to stand on the entire time I was painting, but I was annoyed to find you can’t rent drywall stilts anywhere around me. So I ordered a set of cheap stilts from Amazon. That way I can raise myself up 24 to 36 inches and simply walk around the truck while I’m spraying it. Unfortunately they didn’t come the day they were promised, and showed up on the porch three hours after I had sprayed the top with fancy enamel-based primer.

The painting process went both better and worse than I was expecting. With the white paint I bought for the roof I got a midrange HPLV gun for solvent-based paint. I’ve had a bunch of experience with an HPLV gun shooting latex paint on the house, so I knew most of the ins and outs of how to get the gun working the way I wanted. Mixing the paint was a new challenge though, and dealing with oil-based materials made cleanup a bit trickier, but the paint went on pretty smoothly and now I have an idea of how much to mix for the entire roof of the truck.

It’s supposed to be sunny for the next two days and then damp and rainy for a stretch after that, so I’m going to try to sand it down this evening and prep it for shooting white paint on Wednesday evening if I can really hustle. Having the roof painted will free up a lot of other things, and I won’t have to worry about keeping things covered so much anymore.

Posted on   |   by bill   |   Leave a Comment on Primer and Paint  |  Posted in Paint, Travelall

I See The Light

I’m continuing to make slow progress on the electrical system in the truck. At first all I had was a starting truck with most of the panel lights working. After replacing more of the connectors, I was able to get headlights and taillights working, as well as the right rear blinker. There’s some kind of short in the left side preventing it from blinking—indeed, using the blinker on that side kills the light completely. And screwing the dash panel into the dash itself killed one of the dash lightbulbs that originally was working.

I pulled a front marker pot from the green truck stash and another from a pile of cheap parts I got at Nats, and tested them out on the bench. The grimy unit from the green truck worked so I hooked that to the truck and tried it out, with no success. I’m going to have to pull the circuit tester out next to see if there’s any power getting out there at all.

I’m still waiting on the firewall grommets, so I switched to doing some light bodywork on the driver’s door, grinding a bunch of rusty spots out and cleaning all of the residual holes left from various mirrors. I put the copper magnet behind the largest of the holes and welded them all up. After a coat of body filler, I sanded them smooth and got them covered with rattle-can IH red.

Meanwhile, I got the Scout ready for our trip west. I stocked up on consumables—oil, coolant, various fluids, belts, and other stuff. I pulled out my milspec snap kit and added a pair of snaps to each side of the door bar flaps on my original Kayline top to keep it from flying away on the highway. With a quick wash and topoff on fluids, we’re ready to hit the road on Thursday.

Posted on   |   by bill   |   Leave a Comment on I See The Light  |  Posted in Travelall, Video

It Works

This is just a test of the system; I don’t have the dash officially installed (still waiting on rubber firewall grommets) but I got a package of replacement connectors for the last two firewall plugs and swapped out the old brittle ones. Because I couldn’t help myself, I hooked things up and tried it out. The turn signals trigger the dash lights, so there’s clearly something not connected correctly, but the truck starts off a new ignition barrel, and none of the fuses blew!

Posted on   |   by bill   |   Leave a Comment on It Works  |  Posted in Electrical, Travelall

Heater Box, Take 2

Here’s a progress report on the Travelall heater box. When I last left off, I had welded two patches into the bottom and the corner of the box and head ground down all the welds so that the metal looked pretty clean.

The next step was to put some filler on the metal and try to smooth things out. The first coat went on roughly and I sanded things down to figure out where the hotspots were. Using the hammer and dolly I knocked a couple of high points down and straightened a major valley in between the old metal and the new metal that had formed when everything got really hot during the welding. With that straightened out, it was easy to put a second coat of mud on things and get things smoothed out better. Over the course of Saturday afternoon I was able to get a final coat of mud on things and smooth it out to the point where hitting it with 1500 grit sandpaper has it looking really clean.

As you look at the photo above, you’re actually seeing the box upside-down; the welds on the side will be mostly hidden by the A-pillar wall and the curved section will be under the passenger’s feet. Barely any of this will be visible, but how it looks matters to me, so I’ll keep working on it.

The next order of business was to officially test the blower motor out. The wire leads are shielded so it’s hard to get test leads inside the plastic, so I found an orphan pigtail with an old Packard male lead at the end and used that to make a solid connection. When that was hooked up the blower motor came right to life, and each of the hot leads (one is for high-speed, the other for low) worked as advertised. So I cleaned up the blower cage, greased the spindle, and put that aside for re-assembly. Having already rebuilt a Scout II heater box, that experience has been super-useful with this one because I know exactly what I’m getting into and I have 9/10 of the parts needed to finish this one properly.

Looking ahead to August and Harvester Homecoming, I wanted to address something that’s been on my mind for a while: a proper cleanup of the cooling system on the Scout. I’d drained it when I put the radiator in but never actually flushed out the block, so I had the folks at Jiffy Lube down the street handle that for me—for the extra money I figured it would be a lot more environmentally friendly than just dumping it out in my driveway. From there I headed down to the Eastwood store in Pasadena to get a new bottle of Rust Converter and found they were having a car show out in the parking lot. There were a ton of immaculately restored Camaros and Corvettes and the odd bubble-top Chevrolet; a couple of beautiful lowered Beetles represented the import crowd. I heard several people call out the Scout as I pulled my junk up just outside the ribbon tape, and went in to get my supplies.

The truck ran super-cool the whole time I was on the road; the only time the temp gauge climbed was while I was waiting in some traffic on 695 and even then it wasn’t too bad. She definitely likes to keep moving to keep air flowing, which is no big surprise.

Posted on   |   by bill   |   Leave a Comment on Heater Box, Take 2  |  Posted in Radiator, Travelall

July 15 Update

Here’s a compilation of work I’ve done on the trucks before and after our vacation, starting from the heater box, moving through electrical, and finishing with some welding on the heater box.

I’ve gotten the wiring to the point where the dashboard is in the truck but I can’t hook everything up permanently for want of two rubber grommets for the smaller bulkhead connectors and several Packard 56 connectors I don’t already have, so I ordered a handful more this afternoon in the hopes that they’ll be here by the weekend.

The heater box came out more easily than I thought it would, and is in better shape than I was expecting, but still required repair. I cut two sections of metal out and welded new metal in, and bathed the interior in Rust Converter until I ran out (I’ll be picking more of that up this weekend). Once that’s completely treated it needs a skim coat of mud to cover the divots and bumps, and then I’ll paint it up and get it ready to re-assemble. I think I’ve found a local paint shop who can scan my existing paint color and mix me a pint to match. I’ve also got to figure out why the blower motor won’t work when I test it on 12v bench power and source some more coolant hose.

The other thing I ordered were a set of floor mats for the Scout, knowing that we’ll be driving through the August heat to Indiana. I figure having something else between us and the engine heat will be well appreciated. And, having something to cover the heat matting will also be welcome. I’m hopeful they’ll be here in time, but they’re handmade and the maker estimates 3-4 weeks before they ship, so it may be a futile exercise. We’ll see.

Posted on   |   by bill   |   Leave a Comment on July 15 Update  |  Posted in Inspiration, Purchasing, Travelall, Video

Weekend Update, 7.15

Before I left on vacation, I took a little time to pull the heater box out of the Travelall to gauge its condition and access the firewall behind it. Overall it’s in good condition (much better than it deserved to be, given how bad the cowl rust was) but still needed some work. 

I’ve been installing heat matting on the vertical surfaces of the firewall, starting in the center, and worked my way to the outside edges after the heater box came off. I had to use a wire wheel to get the adhesive from the original insulation off, and then slathered everything with Encapsulator for good measure. 

We then went on vacation for two weeks. I took the family to Portugal, where we spent week driving to see some of the sights. The rental company gave me a shiny manual Peugeot for our travels. I got so used to the European shift pattern that I came back and immediately forgot where reverse was in the Honda and Scout. 

I also came back with COVID and missed out on working on the trucks while I was recovering, but got back to my projects the following weekend. The first order of business was to break into a big box from IHPA full of window rubber which had arrived while I was away. This contained the outer gasketry for each of the doors as well as rubber for the rear curved glass on the driver’s side which needs to be replaced. 

Both of the rear doors on the red truck have terrible aftermarket gaskets that have dried into brittle crust, so I focused on the driver’s side rear door to start. The old rubber came off with a plastic scraper and I used acetone to clean off the residue.

The recommended stuff is 3M 08008 Weatherstrip adhesive, which I applied around the top three surfaces, and then pressed the gasket in place with some clamps. I had to look under the driver’s door to see how the other gasket went in place, and when I figured that out I used encapsulator to clean up that section before installing the rubber.

At first I wasn’t planning on reinstalling the dashboard—I’m waiting on the two small rubber firewall grommets to come in before I can put it in permanently—so I used the original wiring harness to practice putting the large connector in place. This was not successful, so I need to reach out to some of the pros to ask how to do it correctly. (I did actually put the dash in place and start connecting some of the easy things because the heater box and plenum are out).

It’s very hot in Maryland right now and I didn’t want to spend a ton of time sweating in the truck, so I sweated in the garage working on the heater box. Rust had eaten away at one of the corners and bottom of the box, so I cut a section out from the bottom and another section from the side.

I used the edge of a large hinge to form the wider curves on a scrap section left over from the seat cabinet project, where I’d already formed a 90˚ lip on a metal brake. I cut the other section out of 18 gauge and used the hinge and my vise to form the bends and curves for the corner. 

I really need to either learn to slow down when I’m tacking together metal with the MIG or just break down and buy an inexpensive TIG for finish welding; I’m getting the metal too hot and not getting the best results possible. Plus, I really want to practice more TIG welding. That being said, it’s not too bad—nothing a light skim coat of mud won’t fix. 

The interior of the box needs to be bathed in Rust Converter and then sprayed out well, and I have to sort out why the blower motor isn’t working with 12V from my bench tester. The radiator unit itself is fine, apart from needing a new hose, and this can get put back in pretty easily. I’ve got plenty of foam tape left over from a Scout II heater box overhaul, actually, so that part is covered.  

Posted on   |   by bill   |   2 Comments on Weekend Update, 7.15  |  Posted in Electrical, Travelall, Welding

Some Light Weekend Work

We spent most of the weekend cleaning the pantry and basement out to eradicate Plodia interpunctella, more commonly known as pantry moths, so I didn’t get a lot of driveway time, but what time I did have I used wisely. During breaks when the paint was drying I went out to the spares pile and pulled a connector off the original A/C compressor from the Travelall, which I then used to connect the inlet and outlet hose of the heater core together. With that off it was pretty simple to remove three bolts holding the heater box to the firewall and pull it out of the truck. It’s in very good shape, actually. Being bolted to the firewall against fiber insulation for sixty years definitely meant the back of the box was going to be rusted, but it’s in much better shape than I was hoping. There’s a hole at the bottom right side, directly under the cowl vent, where water was dripping down and through. But the heater core is solid, the motor, blower, and motor mount are solid, and the flapper still works as advertised. I put some penetrant on the screws holding the back panel on, and with a little help from some vice-grips was ale to get them out. I’ve got to blast the inside of the box, cut out some bad metal and weld some new sections in place. The motor needs to be tested, and I have to find a gasket to go around the top of the box that meets up with the cowl vent. But I can continue working on the truck while that’s sitting on the bench.

Then I wire- wheeled the rest of the insulation and glue off the passenger’s firewall and got it ready, first with some rust converter. When that was dry I slathered rust encapsulator over all the seams, joins, and rough spots I could see, including the inside of the cowl vent I wasn’t able to touch last summer. When that dried I covered the gaps with seam sealer. Then I got some more cardboard out and set up a template for each side of the firewall out to the A-pillar. Starting with the passenger side I cut out heat matting and set it aside. Then I flipped the template for the left side, cut it down to fit all of the controls under the dash, and cut out some matting for that side. Everything under the dash is going to cure overnight and if I can get away for a little time tomorrow evening I’ll fit the matting in.

In other news, I happened on a stash of C-series interior parts for sale on Marketplace and messaged the seller, who turned out to be Don, an old International guy in his 80’s. He’d sold his truck and was now selling off the remainder of his stuff. We talked on the phone for a bit, and he told me his last truck was a ’63, which is where most of the parts came from. We struck a very good deal on a set of exterior doorhandles, ’63 door strikers (different than later years, so that was a win), a dome light, interior door handles, two of the green lenses in the dash for turn signals (one of mine was bad) and a set of front turn signal lenses and frames. He told me he’s got more stuff stashed away, so I asked him to let me know when he digs it out.

Posted on   |   by bill   |   Leave a Comment on Some Light Weekend Work  |  Posted in Progress, Travelall