Saturday morning we got an early start on the day. After a walk downtown for some coffee with Jen and Hazel, I stopped back over at Steve’s house to talk with his wife, who walked us back to the carriage house and directed me to a couple boxes of leftover parts from the truck, as well as the original carpet set. We had a lovely time chatting and while I was in the garage I gave her money for a pneumatic sander, needle scaler and metal brake sitting on the floor. She then showed us his old workshop in the basement, which had actually been open during the estate sale, and pleaded with us to take some of the stuff that was left over. I found a nice Craftsman three-drawer toolbox with some tools inside that I also gave her money for.

Back at the house, I continued working on the passenger side brakes. Here the soft line didn’t want to come off the connector inside the frame rail without threatening to bend the hard line, so I left that on and finished up the rest of the drum around it. With that greased up and sealed, I pulled both front fenders off and continued pounding out dents and smoothing things over with Bondo. I’ve resigned myself to the fact that this truck is going to be a 20-footer, but eventually I’ll find better C-series fenders and paint them to match. I also ran the old gas through the tank into a pail and strained the dirt out through a coffee filter. It came out much cleaner than the last time, so I figured I was getting close. Then I pulled the brittle feed hose off the gas tank and plumbed a new line inside the frame rail up to the fuel pump.

On Sunday I took the Scout down to the local Cars & Coffee to meet up with both Bennett and the buyer of my old A/C equipment. He brought his Mustang down, as his Scout is still in the garage. I struck up a conversation with a local Citroen 2CV owner and got the full tour of his car, which is fucking amazing; the buyer of my A/C stuff stopped over and I helped him carry it over to his ride, a bright blue early ’80’s Ford Ranger with a 4-cylinder Perkins diesel. He’s the new owner of a D-series pickup that he’s slowly rebuilding; he’s hoping some IH parts will help. Combined with this and a couple other sales, I’ve got a solid chunk of cash to carry to Nationals for rare parts to pick, which is awesome.

After I got back home, I let the dog out and got to work. One last flush of the gas tank revealed next to no dirt, so I sealed that back up. After running out for supplies and gas, I filled the tank and turned the key to reveal: nothing. No sound from the starter. The solenoid on the firewall clicked, and the trailer brake system is still powered, but there’s something going on with the key again. I pulled the barrel out of the dash and wiggled the connectors to no success; I’m going to have to work backwards from the starter to see if it’s getting power but not working anymore. If that’s the case, I’ve got three more in the garage I can swap in.

So I parked that task and moved on to the fenders and the rear floor. After sanding, priming, and mudding each fender, I let them dry. Then I started removing bolts from the rear floor.

Overall most of them wanted to come out, but there were a handful that wouldn’t budge, so I drilled those out and pried up the sheet of plywood. What I found underneath was pretty incredible: all of the stringers are solid, with only a slight amount of rust on the top edges. There were about a thousand mud dauber nests, which all got scraped out, and then I ran the wire wheel over the top sides of the stringers.

The plan is to leave the floor loose so that I can pull it out and wheel off all the rust on the stringers, frame, and axle, and then paint it all with chassis encapsulator. I can also access the brake lines and electrical runs much easier up until they go under the front seats.

Sunday evening I wrapped up as dusk was really falling; I packed up the tools and organized the garage (having a lot of new shelf space in the absence of large parts sure is nice) and took an Advil with dinner to soothe my aching back. I’m sure not 32 anymore.

Last Sunday afternoon I started flushing dirt and crud out of the gas tank. I had to blow mud dauber nests out of the fuel feed line which sent them backwards into the tank, and I used the remainder of the old shitty gas to start flushing the dirt out. Using some coffee filters, I strained all of the large particulates out and ran about five gallons worth of liquid through, but it’s still coming out dirty. I haven’t seen any paint flakes or rust in this tank at all, which is a minor miracle; I’m going to run the borescope up into the drain hole and take a look around this weekend.

While I was waiting on the gas to slowly strain through the filter I figured I’d get after some of the dents on the passenger side fender, which I’d pulled off to access the tank. I used a regular hammer on the small dents and a rubber mallet to pop out some of the larger deformities, then sanded the bad spots down and skimmed them with some Bondo. It’s got a second coat on now and it’ll take a couple more rounds before I like it, but it’s a lot better than it was. The driver’s side dents are worse, and that’s going to take some more finessing.

I got a package from all the way out in Idaho on Monday: a 16″ 5 on 4.5 steel wheel similar to other three that came with the truck. When I first pulled it out of the box and measured the backspacing, I was crushed because I thought it was a half an inch too deep for the truck, but I re-measured it after dinner and found I’d made a mistake. I wire-wheeled all the rust off the outside and around the mounting surfaces and got it ready for a date with the NTB in town. With the tire mounted and on the truck, there’s only about 1″ of space between the back of the tire and the inside of the wheel well, so I’m clearly going to have to do something about this before any long road trips. The studs aren’t long enough to accept a wheel spacer, so I guess I’ve got to find another 16″ wheel somewhere.

Meanwhile, I continued tinkering with the linkage to the master cylinder and figured out how to get the clutch pedal disconnected; I left the brake pedal hooked up because I saw that the two rods merely plugged into the back of the box like brake cylinders. With a few careful taps of the deadblow hammer the old rusty unit came off, and I pulled all the old fittings and swapped them to the new unit. Wednesday evening I cleaned the rods up with sandpaper, pressed them into the back of the cylinder unit, and spent about an hour upside down with my head on the floor of the cab threading both rods back into place. Both pedals now provide some level of resistance instead of just flopping to the floor; now I’ve got to buy brake lines, a bending and a flare tool to start rebuilding the runs to the wheels.

On Wednesday I got an email from Blackstone about my oil analysis; the basic gist is that it looks OK apart from a slightly elevated lead level, which could indicate bearing wear, but everything else looked pretty good. My old oil showed highly elevated numbers for things like detergents and anti-wear additives; clearly someone used the high-mileage stuff for the last oil change. My notes in color below:

IHPartsAmerica ran a story on their social media about getting loads of new parts in and running a sale, so I inquired about some larger stuff I need for the truck. They might have a Travelall bench seat, some fenders, and a non oil-bath air cleaner in stock; I’m waiting on pricing.

I got a firm bite on the Scout II windshield I posted on Marketplace, and finally organized the sale Thursday. As we were arranging payment and drop off, he asked if I had any Scout II lift gates or hinges. It just so happened I’d dragged a lift gate from the Flintstone Scout home, so I shot some pictures and we settled on a price. It’s not a ton of money because that Scout was crispy and the lift gate was not spared, but I did get a good T-handle off of it. It probably paid for half the parts I pulled that day, which is pretty cool. And dropoff was only a mile from the house, which was that much cooler.

Finally, I ordered a length of galvanized brake line, the fittings, a flange tool, and a cheap bender from Amazon to start fabricating clean lines to the clutch slave and the rear drums. With those installed I can fill the system with clean fluid and bleed everything out, and after that, move her under her own power sometime this summer. I do know I’m going to need to buy a creeper from Hobo Freight, because I have a lot of under-body work ahead of me between the brake, fuel, and electrical runs.

I put a picture up on Instagram of the Traveall T-shirt I designed and printed through a vendor promo a few months ago, and it wound up being pretty popular. Through that post a guy asked about the ’64-’65 grille I originally bought for the truck that I can’t use, and we DM’d back and forth. Turns out he’s got a ’65 and needs a grille; I sold it to him for exactly what I paid, which is pretty awesome! I pulled it down from the garage attic, still in the box it came to me in, and sent it on its way Thursday.

Other than that, I haven’t gotten any bites from my post on the Binder Planet, so I’m going to experiment with Marketplace and see what kind of response I get for items like the Scout II windshield.

I was able to make a Tuesday early-morning run up to the recycling center to dump the first jug of used-to-be gas from the truck, which went smoothly. When I got back I drained the last of the fluid out for a total of about eight gallons, and some small flakes came out with the remainder, which is a pretty good sign—if it turned to soup or filled the pan with oatmeal, I’d be very worried. I’m going to buy some good gas and run it through the tank to see if any more yuck comes out, and if not, I’ll just leave the tank in place. (I really don’t want to have to drop it if at all possible). I do know that the outlet hose is clogged with a wasp nest so I have to pull the wheel off and figure out if I can get around/behind the tank to replace it.

I’ve got the bodywork on the passenger side endcap pretty much complete; I sprayed it with rattle-can IH red for the time being. It’s good enough for government pay, and I’m going to move on to other sections.

Theoretically I should have a wheel showing up to the house momentarily, and when that arrives I can bring it and our flat CR-V wheel to the NTB in town to have new rubber mounted. I’m on the fence as to what color to paint the wheels, but I think I’m leaning towards black. Depending on how good this one looks I might paint it before the tire goes on.

I got a box in the mail on Wednesday with the paint I ordered a month ago, which is good news. Now the big thing will be setting up for and actually shooting the paint. What I’m going to have to do is put up my 20-year-old car tent in the driveway, find a way to block out the sides, and put something down on the ground to avoid painting the driveway. Then the roof needs to be blocksanded, degreased, primed at least once, blocksanded again, and then shot with a coat of IH red. From there I can see how it lays down and if it needs a second coat, as well as whether it matches with the rattle-can red I’ve been using over the bondo patches.

On Thursday evening, after a long day behind the keyboard, I went out to the truck and put my experience chipping rubberized floorcoating out of a schoolbus to work.

While the coating came up, the paper-based adhesive was still stuck to the wood, so I went back to a trick I used to clean the floors up in our kitchen years ago. I have a hand planer I used to remove the tarpaper adhesive under old linoleum. It had tried to eat its own cord at the end of a job a couple of years ago, so I cut and spliced the cord and then put it to work slowly grinding out the paper. It’s still very sticky so it gummed up the unit and required a lot of cleaning, so I only cleared out about half of it before the setting sun made things too dark.

By now you’re wondering why I don’t just cut this wood out of the truck and replace it; at this point I’m considering it strongly. Part of this exercise was to see how difficult it would be to remove the existing wood, which meant I had to expose all the bolts. If I’m doing my math correctly there are about 60 chonky countersunk Phillips-head bolts holding the wood in place. I think I’m going to leave this as is for now until I get the truck mobile, and then I can pull the wood out, spend time scraping and coating the frame from inside—not underneath—and then replace the wood.

On Monday I went out to continue sanding and skimming areas of the truck to get them ready for paint. The passenger side tailcap is coming along well, but will need a lot of attention to be clean enough to go to paint—but I’m enjoying the sculptural aspect of working with filler to get things smooth.

Recapping the starting issue, we’ve replaced almost everything in the ignition system besides the core distributor, but the points I originally bought didn’t have an integrated condenser so we tried to hotwire it on the workday. Testing for spark, we never got anything at the plugs. I replaced the points in the original distributor with a new set with an integrated condenser, and found an early picture I’d taken of the unit as it came to know how to wire things back up (see that black wire in the lower center of the picture above?). After I wired the second new set of points in as per the original and tested my testing light on the Scout, I hooked it up to the Travelall and then I had spark! Unfortunately I couldn’t get her to light off. So I pulled the carburetor off to tear it down and clean it out; I figured the accelerator pump seals were dry and the float was probably stuck.

I also started tracing wires under the dash and pulled the radio plate off to expose everything underneath; while I was there I pulled the old head unit and two dry-rotted speakers they’d bolted under the dash out and threw them in the trash to make more room. The way this dash is designed it could be much simpler to pull wires (or maybe even replace the loom ) than it is in the Scout, but I’m still trying to make a plan for how I’m going to get this thing wired up correctly.

Wednesday evening I was out sanding the truck and a guy on a big Harley parked at the end of the driveway; he’s a fellow car guy and stopped by to check out the truck. This marks the fourth person who has stopped in since I parked the truck in the driveway; clearly people have noticed.

As of Thursday morning the carb was partially disassembled and sort of half-soaking in carb cleaner, but I couldn’t get the float bowl or metering block off the side of the horn. I found a wider container to put the assembly in so that the affected sections were submerged, and was finally able to get all the sections apart on Friday morning. The paper gaskets had glued themselves to the metal so I had to carefully scrape everything apart to get it cleaned up—but the inside of the carb was very clean.

And on Friday I got two boxes of goodies: the new distributor showed up as well as some fuel hose, hose clamps, and a proper oil filter. So if we can’t make the old distributor work, the new one should be ready to pop in (minus a set of male-to-female plug wires).

Farting around with an old Scout II hubcap Friday night, I put it on the odd 15″ rim, where it fit well. Suddenly, a light bulb went off in my head and I realized that a 16″ tire won’t fit on a 15″ rim (duh Bill) so I’d have to source a rim for the fourth tire I just bought. It so happens a guy near here is selling an entire front axle assembly with wheels included, so I messaged him to see if he’d be willing to sell me the wheels (providing they’re the correct size).