Category: Travelall

Baltimore has its own peculiar accent, and I have spent the last thirty years perfecting my impression of its odd mixture of southern, West Virginian, DelMarVan and redneck patois which makes oil sound like oll and sink sound like zink and leads to interesting sentences like Dose crabs smell turrble, lake dere spereled. Amboolamps is a favorite of the Lockardugan household and we use it whenever we can, along with po-leese and farfarter.

In any case, this Travelall ambulance showed up on Marketplace last week to be parted out, and I contacted the seller to see if any of the sheet metal was worth saving; he told me it was all junk. If it had been closer it would have been worth a road trip up just to look over (and possibly to save the rear set of doors for spares) but Massachusetts is too far away to entertain that idea and I think he wants to sell the whole thing together.

The interesting thing here is that additional section they installed between the two doors to lengthen the truck—from the looks of things that metal was some of the first to start breaking down. This would have been an amazing truck to save about ten or fifteen years ago. Dat’sa shayme, hon. 

So stock rear curved windows are impossible to get as it is. Where was this fellow planning on buying his? Priced at $2750 on Craigslist.

Bennett got the Hudson registered last week and sent us some video of a test-drive out on the road, and it motivated me to finish the process on the Travelall. Saturday morning I figured I’d run down to the Motor Vehicle Administration and get the title and plates sorted out. What I didn’t know was that they’ve gone to appointment-only, so I left without getting anything done. Knowing that Vermont closed the title loophole and hearing from friends that it’s now next to impossible to get a title for anything without one, I wanted to get the truck as legal as possible before any further clampdown occurs.

This morning I returned with an appointment time and all of my paperwork in hand, and was first in line at the title window. After looking over my Vermont registration, then taking it back behind the window and conferring with three other people, the lady helping me sent a copy of it upstairs to check the serial against a list of stolen and problem VINs. It came back approved within about five minutes, which surprised the hell out of her. From there it was smooth sailing; she gave me a set of 50-year antique plates and then registered my vintage plates to those, I paid the title fee, and walked out with the registration and a new set of plates. Most importantly, my Maryland title should show up in the mail next week. And with that, the value of the truck just skyrocketed.

Meanwhile, with the weather getting colder and the amount of daylight coming to an all-time low, it’s hard to be outside making things happen. By the time I get out to the driveway I’ve only got about six hours of good warm time to work; at 4PM the sun is low behind the house and the driveway is already cooling off.

Sunday’s plan was to lay out the wiring board I set up in the basement and start tracing out wires from the cut-down fuse panel I inherited. I cleaned off a contact on one of the headlight bulb connectors and tried to find connectivity between that and one of the eight black wires behind the dash, but couldn’t trace it. Neither wire in the connector worked, but it was cold and I wasn’t thinking clear enough. I should have traced the wires from that connector to the actual headlight to see where its endpoint was.

After that I pulled the dash gauge panel out and unscrewed the speedometer cable, which was remarkably easy to do. All of the Scouts I’ve ever tried this on have fought me like a dog with a bone, and usually drawn blood. With the panel out of the way I could see all of the wiring behind the dash better, and now I can make some kind of plan to test that stuff out.

While I was thinking about my next move on wiring, I pulled the passenger rear wheel off and hit all of the frame and exposed metal on that side with the needle scaler to remove any surface rust, then brushed on encapsulator to seal it. Pretty much everything under the rear half has been done with the exception of the inside of the main frame rails. For that, I want to get the girl up on a lift and spend an afternoon underneath cleaning everything out, because it’s very hard to reach when it’s on the ground.

I had to stop at about 2 to go out and run errands, so I warmed up the Scout and loaded Hazel in the back to copilot. We had a lot to accomplish, so it wasn’t until about 4 tht we got back home, and by then it was getting cold and I had a pie to bake. So I cleaned up my tools, measured the two bumpers for modified mounts, and put the cover back on the truck.

A post popped up on Instagram earlier this week featuring a blue Travelall in pretty rough shape, offered by Barnes IH up in Pennsylvania. He said it was probably a parts truck and showed a few pictures, and I was lucky enough to see it only a few hours after it went up. I talked to them the following morning about some of the stuff I was interested in—mainly the factory A/C unit, which looks incredible and would be the perfect centerpiece to an A/C upgrade in the future. I also asked about the heater box and the chrome side spears along the body. He told me he had someone down south interested in buying the whole thing and he’d get back to me.

It turned out later that guy bought the whole truck, but they have an entire C-series power steering setup (and inner fender!) available for a reasonable price, so I’m going to jump on that in the next couple of weeks. He said he’s also got a chrome spear set squirreled away that he’s got to check on; this isn’t necessary (my truck didn’t come with it) but A little more bling wouldn’t be a bad thing.

In the meantime, I’m on the hunt for an original C-series A/C unit. Look at how beautiful that thing is. I’m pretty sure I could modify a Vintage Air system to work with a unit like that; the trick is to find one in good shape.