I dropped the Scout off at a new mechanic this afternoon. This is a fellow down past Annapolis, who came recommended by a fellow Scout owner I’d met through the Binder Planet, who owns a rig that’s currently torn down into pieces after a botched restoration attempt by a local shop. He’d sent me to this new fellow with nothing but good words, so I decided to roll the dice, as I can’t find anyone local who I like or who knows older vehicles. We found his shop up at the end of a new access road, and I started feeling good; it’s a tidy new construction 3-bay behind his house. He stepped out of the garage and we shook hands. He asked me to start it up and give it some gas so he could listen, and immediately nodded his head and said, “yeah, that’s an exhaust leak.” The inside of his shop was just as clean as the outside, and I felt even better. It’s going to take some effort to get the manifold off without snapping bolts, but that’s why he’s the pro and I’m paying him.
Future Projects
September is here, and Finn is back in school, and the mornings aren’t quite as warm as they were a few weeks ago. I’m looking at the fall as a time to wrap up some of my current projects and the winter for tackling some new ones where I don’t need to be outside. To recap, here’s where we currently stand on the Travelall:
The cowl area is complete; now the windshield needs to go back in and I have to put the hood back on in order to close the truck up for the winter. I’d like to install new weatherstripping around the doors as well, but I’m going to work with what I’ve got.
I took some time to troubleshoot the starting issue—she was starting normally for a long while and decided to stop the week I worked on the cowl. On Sunday I ran through all of the basics—tested for spark, filled the carb bowl, and made sure the choke was working correctly—and finally got her to light off but not stay running. I knew the fuel lines were all clean; they’re brand new all the way back to the tank. So I replaced the fuel filter I’d placed between the pump and the carb, which was full of black sediment, and lit her off again. She caught and suddenly ran more smoothly; fuel was spurting happily into the filter where I hadn’t seen anything before. I’d hooked a couple of 4″ PVC pipes to the tailpipe pointed out behind the garage so I let her run for five or ten minutes to get warm and see how the engine responded. I topped off the radiator and waited until the top rad hose felt hot; I don’t have a working temp gauge in the truck so I don’t know if the thermostat opened. I’ll put a laser sensor on it next time I run it and see where the filler neck reads. I didn’t have time to test the clutch or brakes, though—and I already see one leak at the junction above the rear axle.
With winter approaching, I’ve got three projects in mind, two of which I should be able to tackle indoors and out of the elements:
- The top is still a patchwork of primed spots; I’d like to get one full coat of primer on the whole thing and, ideally, spray the whole top out with IH red. With the weather getting colder this may be tricky, but if I’ve still got the canopy over it I won’t have to worry about dew or leaves falling into new paint.
- I’ve got two full bench seats waiting for new material. This will start with burlap over the springs, several layers of strong foam, and new upholstery. I’ve got an IH friend who specializes in period-correct patterns and materials, and he’s teed up to produce some vinyl coverings for me. My brother-in-law has hog ring pliers and all the rings I need to complete this project, which is fantastic.
- Thinking ahead to lockable storage in the truck, I surveyed the rear bed to see if I could sink a steel lockbox into the floor in the center or on either side of the rear axle. Unfortunately, because the frame was an offshoot of a pickup truck design, it wasn’t engineered for space efficiency. The frame and axle take up a huge amount of space toward the front of the truck, and the beefy hitch mount running up the middle prevents me from dropping a deep well at the back. It’s not out of the question; there’s space above the hitch bar where I could drop a 30″w x 15″l x 5″d metal box in the middle of the floor, and I may well do this. It’s just not very deep—unless I build it with a hump in the middle. More planning will be required.There’s a guy on YouTube who has the same model Travelall who replaced the factory tube cage holding the rear bench with a lockbox, taking advantage of ~2376 cubic inches of space. I’ve already started sketching out some plans for a similar box made out of 1″ square tube and a bunch of the 16 gauge sheet I’ve got sitting in the garage. My plan is similar to his in that I’m planning on two top-mounted doors accessible from either side, using piano hinges and flush-mounted truckbox handles. The axle hump takes up a fair bit of the space inside, but having someplace to lock tools and parts is key. I’ll probably buy another 40MM ammo can and use that for additional storage in the rear section.
Steps Forward and Backward
So I watched all the videos and I made the plans, and Saturday afternoon I asked Jen to help me set the windshield in place so that I could start installing it. What I found was that we couldn’t get it oriented on the bottom lip of the windshield frame correctly, nor could we get the top centered without the bottom sliding out of the lip and everything going to hell. I tried several times, even pulling the guide rope out of the channel (they tell you to stuff a 1/4″ rope in the main channel and use that to set the whole thing in place once it’s properly seated) but we couldn’t get it to work. So I requested quotes from about six different glass companies in the area to see if anyone has a specialist who can come out and put it in for me.
I did finish spraying out the cowl, for the most part, and took a wire wheel to the grate inset. When I had that down to bare metal I hit it with etch primer and then a coat of red. I’m going to buy some plastic screen and zip tie it to the underside like I did with the Scout grille to keep crud out of the cowl. Then I had Finn help me put the hood back in place and screwed that back down to make things look a little cleaner. It needs to come off again and get a thorough wash, sand, and rust treatment on the underside, but for now it makes the truck look a little more presentable.
Then I hooked two lengths of 4″ PVC pipe I had behind the garage up to the exhaust to send that out and away from the house, and tried to start the engine. No amount of cranking would do the trick—I put a bunch of gas in the carb and opened up the choke, but couldn’t get it to catch. I’ve got to do some serious troubleshooting tomorrow to see if I can figure out what the problem is.
After much stopping and starting, I’ve got six Quick ‘N Easy roof racks prepped and ready to install. To recap, three were in great shape, and three had various bolts frozen in place from long-term corrosion. I finally got the right size bolts for my tap and drill and finished setting those up this afternoon only to find out that aluminum and stainless steel don’t play well together. So I have to go back out and find steel bolts in the correct size and I can call this project done.
Lessons Learned
Having spent seven full days on a serious sheet metal project, here are my takeaways:
You can never have too many angle grinders. I’ve got three, and I ran a cutoff, grinding, and wire wheel primarily. If I had to do it over again, I’d have a fourth with a flap disc. The brand is unimportant; two of mine are the cheapest Harbor Freight models sold, and that’s what I’ll buy for the fourth. A splitter block for the extension cord is also key. Making sure the grinding wheel isn’t dull saves a ton of time.
Conversely, Harbor Freight sells a long pneumatic 3″ cutoff wheel which I found to be absolutely useless. It wasn’t strong enough to cut through anything and spent most of the time in the box. However their 2″ pneumatic orbital sander came in super-handy for tight areas.
My Eastwood 140 MIG was absolutely outstanding. It’s an inverter type so it’s easy to carry and move around, and the controls were dialed in perfectly. I’d bought an extra spool of wire but found I didn’t need it, which was a shock given how much wire I was using to fill things. I would recommend this welder to anyone.
My garage is small, uneven, and filled with stuff, so I worked out in the driveway for the majority of the project. I have a plastic folding table which became my workbench, and with an assortment of clamps and cardboard it worked out perfectly.
Having a fridge out in the garage was also key. Cold drinks throughout the day were essential for keeping cool and hydrated.
If I’d had more time, I would have taken the entire dashboard and heating unit out of the truck. I did try to remove the heater, but wound up spilling coolant all over the fucking place, and I still couldn’t figure out how it was supposed to come out, which put me behind schedule. So I re-connected it all and worked around it. It can be done, but I wish I could have done it better.
I don’t have a planishing hammer or beanbags (proper metal-beating tools) but I made do with an old Plomb hammer, a rubber mallet, a deadblow hammer, and Dad’s old green vise. I also screwed a Harbor Freight metal brake I got at a yard sale to the floor of the garage and used that for the larger bends, once I sourced a fat piece of aluminum bar for the backing plate. With those simple tools I was able to bend all of the metal exactly how I needed to. I’m going to have to figure something out for when I need to bend metal to replace the floorboards, as they’re wider than the 32″ brake, but I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.
Patience is key. I got carried away with my tack welds when I burned in the main vent sections, and they warped. I slowed down when I did the outer cowl repairs, and had better results. When I do repairs to the outer sheet metal I’m going to have to force myself to slow way down and take my time. This will be especially true when I put the cowl back on—I’m going to have to walk back and forth from one side to the other until it’s all done.
I’ve hung the front fenders on the truck with a single bolt for the last several months, and it makes things much, much easier to pull them off when I’ve got to get close to the engine. I have no idea when they’ll go back on semi-permanently (both of them will be replaced when I can source better ones) but for now they’ll remain temporarily tacked in place until I’m ready to button everything up for a while.
After all of this, I’m not afraid of sheet metal repairs at all—unless they involve compound curves I can’t replicate. There’s a section of rust behind the driver’s rear wheel that I can’t wait to dig into once the cowl is complete. But I would love to fool around with an english wheel and a bender…
I desperately want a larger garage, with a cement floor and a long, well lit workbench.
This project was exhausting. I was gifted with the most reasonable weather I could have hoped for—averaging 80˚ and sunny, with a constant breeze blowing through the yard. If this had been a normal August in Maryland, I’d only be halfway done and in the hospital with heat exhaustion. Even so, I came inside each evening and pretty much collapsed; my watch tells me I averaged about 4 miles of walking and ~8,000 steps a day. I would start immediately after walking Hazel and work until it got too dark to see. Big huge thanks to Jen and Finn for giving me the space to focus on this exclusively.
This was the most fun I’ve had on a project in a long, long time, and I’m very satisfied with how it turned out.
8 Days in August
Here’s a narrated video I put together of the work I did on the truck from the time I pulled the windshield out to Sunday evening. This was fun; I learned some new tricks in Final Cut Pro and practiced camera placement.
Major Surgery, Parts 6-8
Thursday’s progress looked kind of misleading because I was working on lots of fiddly stuff, and I did a terrible job of taking many pictures. I started the day camped out in the garage because of threatening rain clouds, so I started by working on a patch for the cowl itself out of some 20 ga. steel. When I had the pattern the way I liked it, I laid it on top of the cowl and cut around it, then trimmed it with the grinder and cut some notches in the lip.
Carefully bending it at the same curve, I tacked it into place and then used my patience to finish welding it in. While that cooled, I busted out the sanding gear and cleaned up the other sides of the cowl to even things out.
When I had that in place I banged out some of the obvious bends with a hammer and skimmed it with some body filler. As that dried, I flattened the original air baffle from the driver’s side and traced two patterns out on some fresh steel. I bent them both according to the pictures I’d taken on disassembly, prepped the vertical face of the inner cowl, and welded them both into place. Then I put both flappers in and hooked the vent cable back up to the driver’s side—I still have to drop the heating unit out to refurbish that, and there’s no easy way to reconnect the cable up unless it’s out of the way.
There was lots of sanding, priming, sanding, and priming, and I used some ACE Rust-Stop International Implement Red to coat the entire inner section of the cowl.
On Friday I got lots more little fiddly bits done and ready for welding the cowl back in on Sunday. I skimmed some body filler on the welding seams on each side to smooth them out so that when water runs down to the drains it won’t get stuck in the texture from the seam sealer.
The cowl is prepped for welding and will probably need some touch-ups to the body filler after heat warps some of it, but that’s OK. I did a test-fit to ensure it isn’t warped and that the welds still line up.
I also worked on some Scout stuff too; I still have to adjust the timing and do some minor maintenance.
On Sunday I welded the cowl back in place. I test fit and trimmed and test fit and trimmed and then clamped the crap out of it and started tacking it into place slowly.
By about 5PM I had the whole thing in, the welds ground down, and a coat of etch primer on all the bare metal.
The perimeter of the windshield frame has two coats of IH Implement Red in preparation for a clean new gasket and brand new windshield. The bottom of the cowl has some Bondo that I skimmed over the welds, and that will get smoothed out before I paint the rest. Now I just have to screw up my courage up to attempt the window installation.
Major Surgery, Parts 3-5
I’ve been so busy on this project, I’ve made some basic updates to the thread on Binder Planet but I’ve been too tired to add them here, so here’s a dump from the last three days. The weather has been fantastic since Sunday—clear skies and mid 80’s with no humidity to speak of, so it’s been a rare treat to working outside all day. I burned through all of my backed up podcasts by Monday morning, so I switched to an audiobook loaded on my iPad and I’ve been enjoying listening to that while I work.
On Monday, I began the day by cutting out and replacing a section of structural 18 gauge steel on the A pillar after flooding the cavity with rust encapsulator. I used a cheap brush from Harbor Freight to get in there and hit every surface I could touch.
When I had that cleaned up, I put the main vent section in. This part went pretty smoothly; I’d etch primed and seam sealed the underside on Sunday eventing, so I got it where I wanted it and burned it into place. Then I put the section in behind it. Things had shifted somewhat between when I’d cut it and when everything got hot, so it didn’t line up as cleanly as I would have liked. But I can close those small sections up pretty easily. There’s a small section at the far right and a larger one on the far left, and left them for Tuesday morning.
After cleaning up the edges and knocking down the beads, I started working on the lower mounting lip. This took a lot of test fitting and tack welding and banging and cutting, because the cowl mounts to this and then the top corner of the fender bolts to it, and there are a lot of complex curves in the original sheet metal that have to fit just right. I made the decision to go for close enough and figured I can shim things out if I need to. Again, this is my first major sheet metal project, so I’m learning as I go. The wing got welded into place, and I knocked the edge down to a smooth curved corner. This got cleaned up with a flap wheel and skimmed with a light coat of seam sealer so that the water will just drop over the edge. The circle-X is where the drain hole will go.
As of Monday evening I was about 24 hours into it in total, including pulling the cowl and windshield, and my hope was that I could keep the momentum going.
On Tuesday morning I finished off the passenger side, cleaned, it, etch primed it, and smeared everything with a liberal coat of seam sealer.
Then I went over to the driver’s side, cut an even larger hole out of the cowl, and started fabricating the vent on that side.
Because I had a template already made for the barrel, that part went quickly and I had just enough steel in my sheet to cut both sections of metal out.
When I had the vent built, the flapper in place, and everything lined up, I started welding it into place. I had learned a lot about how to cut and fit the barrel in this one—I was much more precise with the measurement and the hole I cut, so it fit much better, and I didn’t have to count on filling large gaps with wire.
There’s a section tacked in place behind the vent, and that ugly hole in the upper right is sealed up tight.
On Wednesday I got a late start because I hadn’t sealed my gas cylinder tight enough and lost the remainder overnight. Lesson learned. Once I’d gotten a refill I closed up the edges as tightly as possible, ground everything down with a new disc, and cleaned it up for etch primer. I also bent and installed the front of the drip rail that the cowl gets welded to and the fender bolts onto.
The seam sealer I have this time isn’t as good as the gray stuff I had last time; this doesn’t lay down smoothly at all. It looks like I’m trying to apply it with a broom. Anyway, while that was drying I took a wire wheel to the cowl itself and cleaned out both sides.
I cut out the rust in the passenger side hole in the cowl, and with the last small section of 20 ga. sheet metal I had, I made a patch for it.
With some patience and a lot of grinding I fit the patch in place and hammered out the funky spots, as well as sealed up other holes. Thank god I have a bench grinder and Dad’s old vise set up in the garage; I’ve used them extensively for this project.
The edge took some time to work on but with wire and time I rebuilt the lip and shaped it with a flap disc. Then the whole underside got a bath in Rust Converter and then a coat of black primer, except for the edges to be welded. I also wire wheeled the entire edge of the windshield and hit it with etch primer to cure.
Tomorrow I’ll get new metal delivered (it got delayed today) and I can finish the patch on the driver’s side. It’s supposed to rain on and off until Saturday so I’m going to tackle what I can when the weather is good and retreat into the garage to work when the rain starts falling. I’ve got the hood leaning up against the Scout and the cowl in there ready for the final patch.
Major Surgery, Part 2
Here’s the Sunday update. I got a bit of a late start because I had to run out to get supplies, but put about 7 solid hours in. First up was bending the metal to fit and getting things aligned.
When I had it squared up and ready, I looked over the barrel from the old vent and cut the rusty metal off the edges. What remained clearly wasn’t enough to make a template from, so I took measurements from the driver’s side and built a new template. With that cleaned up and bent, I tacked it together and continued shaping it correctly to fit.
When I had it set up correctly, I bent the mount for the vent cable stay and welded a support to that so it wouldn’t move.
Then I spent about an hour tweaking the barrel, test fitting it, tweaking it some more, and finally being satisfied with the way it fit. When I had it the way I liked it, I dialed in the welder and started tacking around the edges. This took time, and I did wind up warping the metal a little bit, but nothing I can’t work around.
When I had that the way I liked it, I started trimming a section of metal for the back wall. I bent several sections of the rear section upwards so that I can use that to help secure the whole structure. Then I hit the bottom of the vent with etching primer and seam sealer, and I’m letting it dry overnight. Tomorrow I’m going to start tacking it into place and getting things ready to install permanently.
Major Surgery, Part 1
I’ve got time this coming week to focus on getting the Red Bus cleaned up and out from under the canopy, so I’m going to take as much advantage of it as I can. The big focus is to get the rusty areas under the cowl cut out and replaced, everything rustproofed, and then to replace the cowl and install the new windshield. I figure I can get the first part knocked out if I’ve got all the tools and time next week, so I’ve been stockpiling supplies. Today was 80˚ and sunny, so I figured I’d get a head start.
I started by pulling the four bolts on the hood hinges off and taking that off completely. Then I took the two fenders off—I’ve had them hung with one loose bolt since the first day I took them off—and put everything behind the truck. I dragged a folding table out and started walking tools out to the truck. When I was ready, I started drilling all of the spot welds at the base of the cowl out with a set of Harbor Freight bits. After about ten minutes I figured out a good method and I made pretty short work of it. After about an hour I had all the welds out around the base, including the sections hidden by the doors. Then it came time for the point of no return: removing the windshield.
This was actually much easier than I thought, and only took one cut around the edge of the rubber gasket for the glass to come loose. What I found after I got the glass out amazed me: the entire perimeter of the windshield frame is clean. And not East-Coast-it’s-covered-in-surface-rust clean, but original red paint clean. All of the Scouts I’ve ever pulled the glass out of (four? five?) have had some kind of rot on one of the edges, including Peer Pressure. This one is mint. And now I’m going to attack it with a spot weld cutter.
That process actually didn’t take long either, and after about three hours’ work, I had the cowl up and out, safely stored on the driveway behind the truck. What I found underneath was both better and worse than I’d hoped for. Both cowl edges are, predictably, pretty crispy. The driver’s side is worse than the passenger’s. At some point someone got in there and stuffed some kind of thick painter’s putty or other heavy gunk behind and around the vent chimneys, which both protected them and collected moisture, further weakening the metal.
I figured I’d start with the bigger hole, knowing I could look at the other side for a guide to follow, so I started doing exploratory surgery on the passenger’s side. After cutting away the area around the vent, I was able to pull that out and clean up the area around it. I had to cut a section of the overlap off and I’ll have to fashion a new drain vent, but I planned on adding a lip on the new metal that will go down over the vertical edge and give me enough material to weld to.
That strange gasket thing in the photo above is the collector for the heating unit, which I’m going to have to disconnect and pull out tomorrow in order to weld directly above it. I’ve been putting that off because it’s messy and I don’t want to completely fuck up the heating ducts under the dash, but I can’t avoid it any more (and it needs to be overhauled anyway).
I started building cardboard templates for the new metal and got the flat section that provides the floor of the vent laid out. Then I drew out and cut the vertical back wall of the cowl that will wrap around to the door.
From here I have to figure out where the round vent itself will go, cut that out of the center, and either build a new round structure out of 20 gauge steel or see if I can cut and weld new metal to the existing metal, which came out mostly in one piece. I’d prefer to not have to rebuild the whole thing on this side, so that’s what I’m hoping for. I might not get that lucky on the other side.
I left off with a metal section cut and ready to be bent. What I have to do tomorrow morning is go out for a 3′ length of angle iron to act as the top of the vice for my metal brake. With that I can start bending this metal to the proper angles and start fitting it into place.
Quick ‘N Easy
I’ve been looking at roof racks for the truck for a long time, looking forward to putting a canoe or other gear up there. I need drip rail mounts for this, and wanted to get something period-correct. I found a brand called Quick ‘n Easy, which used to be inexpensive but are now so retro as to be high-dollar accessories. I set up a watch on eBay sales and while I was in Puerto Rico I got a note that there were six available for a buy-it-now price much lower than usual, with free shipping. So I jumped on that.
They showed up this afternoon, and they look pretty good. Three of them are in perfect working order and three need work—pulling out snapped retaining bolts and cutting through old bolts on the top mounts. But the stickers and plastic are intact which is great; these will make an excellent base for a period roof rack.
For a winter project I’m going to plan out and weld my own metal roof rack for the truck, unless I find a good used aluminum rack somewhere that will fit.