Send Cut Sent

I pulled the trigger on a SendCutSend order yesterday, after adjusting the template, cutting it out in full scale on some chipboard, and testing my measurements. For some reason I’d gotten one measurement wrong, and I had to adjust the length of the mounting plate, but after adjusting that the whole thing went together perfectly. I’m having this cut out of 16 gauge steel so it should be plenty strong to hold up to any kind of accidents. It should be here in a couple of weeks, and then I can weld the pieces up.

If I was to order ten of these, I could get the costs way down per piece. If I could get ten people interested in buying them, I could possibly make a little money on the deal. I think the biggest issue would be finding a way to attach the unit without drilling into the seat bar. I’ll have to have a think about that one.

Meanwhile, I’ve been putting a list of projects together for 2025, and it’s almost done. One of the things on the list was pretty easy to check, so I looked it over at lunchtime: My brake pedal doesn’t light the brake lights when it’s pressed. It’s a very simple system. There’s a switch at the end of the master cylinder, and when the pedal pressurizes the cylinder, it closes the switch, activating the brake lights. Pulling the wire connector off the cylinder, I used a wire to jump it and verified the brake lights work. So there’s got to be an issue with the master cylinder itself. If I recall correctly, I swapped the old switch onto the new unit, so it might just be a matter of ordering a new switch unit.

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Introducing Darth Haul

Over dinner the other night, my girls asked me if the red truck had a name yet, which it did not. Historically, our group of local IH guys has an understanding that you don’t get to name your own truck—it’s named by the group. You can veto some of the suggestions to avoid stuff you can’t live with, but usually the names are good and they stick. Thus, Bennett’s ugly brown Scout became Mr. Hanky, Brian’s 4-cyl. white Scout became Slowflake, and my Scout became Peer Pressure. (Thankfully, I avoided a lot of the more obvious names like Barney and People Eater).

The girls started throwing some suggestions around, and Finn came up with one that got better and better as we thought about it: Darth Haul. Jen commented that it would be better if the top was painted black and not white; Finn suggested we should paint stripes on it to match the character—which I quickly vetoed. But the name stuck. I floated it past the boys and they all approved. I had some time to kill while I was rendering some video Tuesday evening and whacked this together:

It was pretty easy to find the base Star Wars font and modify it the way I needed. I tried using the Galactic Empire logo at first, but the scale and size didn’t work with the typeface. Somehow the Rebel Alliance logo (who I identify with anyway) worked better, and I liked flipping it to subvert the idea.

Now, to have some stickers made.

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2024 In Review

In January, I was looking at pictures of pretty new upholstery for the Travelall and making plans to clean up the seatframes for new foam. It’s December and I’ve just now got the seats finished and installed in the truck; in the months between I got a lot of projects done. Here’s a recap:

Early in January I finally got around to making some T-shirt designs for Travelalls and Scouts, set up a Threadless storefront, and did some initial posting on social media. The response was pretty good; I need to make a new push this coming year, as well as update some merchandise.

I got serious about building out a YouTube channel for the red truck, and started posting videos about every two weeks. The channel points back to the Threadless site, and I get a couple of orders a month. Also, I made a dedicated Instagram feed for the red truck.

From January into February, in between cold snaps, I finished sanding and painting the passenger fender I rebuilt the fuel hose port on; that project went much better with the experience I’d gained doing previous bodywork projects. The fender is now hanging in the garage waiting for some other parts to be shot with IH red, and will then get clearcoat.

March was a big month: I took possession of an unwanted, untitled green Travelall in Pennsylvania with a ton of help from Bennett, and we dropped it in the driveway in front of the red truck. This project sort of took over the next two months as I worked to tear it down and part it out before the neighbors complained and had me hauled it hauled away. I had the entire truck stripped down, the parts organized, and the carcass ready for towing by April 30. And I made a crisp $100 on it!

Also in March, I ordered and got a used, tested and labeled wiring harness from the Scout Connection, which wound up being for a later model year. I returned it for a proper 1962-62 harness which was tested and labeled, and later on in the year I pulled the dashboard from the red truck, cleaned it up, and swapped the new harness in place. Putting it back in was easy, as I’d already taken two of them apart, and when I tested it out about 80% of the electrical system came back online.

The firewall got cleaned up and covered in heat matting, an upgrade I found very useful in the Scout, and during that process I finished cleaning up and painting the cowl vents I’d fabricated in 2023. I also pulled the heater box out and disassembled the whole unit. The rear of the box had a fair bit of rust damage, so I welded new sections on to the sides and back, reassembled with new hardware, and got it ready for paint.

August was a big month. First and foremost, Brian and I drove the Scout 1200 miles round trip to Harvester Homecoming at the IH plant in Fort Wayne, Indiana. We had a great time, met a bunch of new people, and were lucky to have good traveling weather, although our first evening at the event ended in a downpour that had us running for the exits. The Scout ran great, but I noticed she was leaking a lot of oil out the underside at speed.

When I was back, I took a week off from work and spent a couple of days prepping the roof for primer and paint. I’d left it sitting since last summer so it needed some attention before fall. I re-worked the sections that needed help, finish sanded the whole thing, and shot it with pro-grade primer from an HVLP gun. When that was cured I sprayed it with two coats of two-stage PPG white, and I think it turned out really good.

I worked on cleaning up each of the doors, installed weatherstripping, welded over the mounting holes from old mirrors, and rebuilt both of the West Coast mirrors I’d bought last year. They got mounted permanently on the truck.

Finding vendors willing to work on old iron is hard. I wanted to use the same guy who installed the passenger side glass to replace the dry, cracked gasket on the driver’s side, so I spent the money on new rubber and his expertise to have it put it in.

In September I had some gray single-stage paint matched from the old door cards and sprayed out four replacements as well as the heater box, then sprayed it all with a matte clear coat. I really like the results. When they were cured, the heater box went back in over the heat matting and was hooked up to the engine.

I donned a Tyvek suit and scraped all of the fiberglass off the roof, treated it with Rust Converter, and installed some lightweight heat/sound matting.

With those things done, and looking at another month of reasonably decent weather, I got a wild hair up my ass and dropped the fuel tank to survey the underside of the floorpan. The fuel tank is in fantastic shape, and got wire-wheeled, cleaned out, and repainted. The passenger floor, which featured the worst rust remaining in the truck, was trimmed away until I found clean metal. I welded a new sheet in place, and cut sections of the lower firewall out until I had good metal there.

I came into possession of a second steering column, this one from a manual steering/column shift truck, and an electrical steering unit from a Nissan Versa. This is the starting point for an electric steering conversion sometime next year.

Before Thanksgiving, I dropped the Scout off at a transmission shop nearby who had been recommended by another truck guy I met at our local Cars & Coffee. She’s been there waiting for a spot in his bay since then. He got her up on the lift two weeks before Christmas and recommended a new seal kit for both the transmission and the transfer case. While he had those two off the truck, he sent me pictures of the flywheel and clutch, and recommended we swap those out while we were at it. As of December 26 he’s got all the parts he needs to finish up the job.

With the weather getting colder, I got materials in the door for the seats and spent a couple of weeks redoing the upholstery on all four sections. This involved tearing down the rear upright from the green truck and using that frame, but all of the other frames I’d prepared worked out perfectly. When that was done, I bolted the lockbox in the back of the truck and installed the seats.

In between all of that, there are a million other smaller projects that got done. The frame under the passenger side was needle-scaled and painted. The adhesive from the old carpeting has all been removed. The door locks up front have been replaced. The front bumper  from the green truck was installed. The license plate light got mounted on the rear door. The outside lights all got dedicated grounds run to the body. I’ve got turn signals and headlights, but the high-beams still don’t work and they cancel out the running lights.

Looking back on it (and looking at it in the driveway) I can see a lot of progress this year. The first year, a lot of the labor was hidden but this year I can see big cosmetic improvements happening. The push for this coming spring will to be getting it on the road. I know the transmission is good, because she’ll move when she’s in gear and I bump the starter; for some reason the clutch pedal isn’t working. More on that later.

Locks and Drinks

I got to work disassembling the crusty barn door handle from the NY Travelall a few weeks ago. The first step was to soak the whole thing in some Evaporust, as the entire thing was seized up completely. After a couple of days I was able to see bare metal again, and with some light tapping I got the retaining ring off the back, revealing a spring-loaded piston (the element that makes contact with the latch mechanism). This needed some soaking as well. When that was ready, it just took a few taps with a hammer to release the collar to free up the rod inside. Next I had to get the lock cylinder out. This took some judicious use of a drill, and once I had destroyed the pins, I was able to back it out and clean everything up.

It turns out that the original cylinders I saved from the red truck will work with this assembly, so I spent some time fitting the lock into the barrel and getting the mechanism to work.

I’m stumped by one very important thing: The lock will stay in the barrel when it’s locked, but when it’s open, the cylinder falls out of the mechanism. This reminds me of my initial attempts to make the new cylinders work in the doors, but there’s no mechanical stop to keep the barrel in the cylinder here.

I pulled the lockset out of the red truck and got things disassembled to the point where the lock cylinder is still in the handle; I’m nervous about drilling it out for some reason. I did bust out my old lock picks to see if I could bump the tumblers, but after about fifteen minutes working on it I was only able to clear a bunch of dirt out of the cylinder. So I’m going to work up my courage and drill it out this weekend to see if I can get the spare lockset to work. Doing some research, I was quoted $90 to rekey the cylinder by a local locksmith, while a second set of new locks keyed to the same number is less than half that, shipped. So there are options; I just need to wait on the next paycheck.

And, speaking of paychecks, I started developing an idea for a cupholder, something the original truck never shipped with. This is a simple piece of metal with two cup cutouts, bent to sit directly in front of the bench. It will mount to the crossbar underneath so it’ll move forwards and backwards as the seat is adjusted. I put together a cardboard template and knocked it together in Illustrator to have the design quoted at Sendcutsend. It’s only about $35 to have it cut and bent, and I can handle the rest of the assembly myself: I’ll weld a thin lip around the bottom edge for extra strength, and a vertical support underneath to keep it from bending. Then it can get a coat of the interior gray and some clearcoat.

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Cold Weather Projects

It’s been hatefully cold this past week, and we’ve had a full pre-Christmas schedule so there hasn’t been much I could do on the trucks. However, I did eyeball the rear valance panel sitting in the rear bed and it sparked an idea. I brought it and the panel from the green truck into the garage, set up the welder, and started pounding the twisted metal back into place. When it was all flat, the holes were smaller and circular, just large enough to be a pain to close up, but too small to find easy plugs to fill.

Cold, cold welding in my janky-ass garage

I used the copper backer and started slowly filling each of the smaller holes, then cut a square hole around the really mangled section in the center. When I had the settings dialed in, I cut square sections out on the sides, and plugs out of the green truck valance to fill things in. Ordinarily I would have just fabricated my own, but these have a compound curve as they push out to the edges that I figured would just be easier to cut out of the spare piece.

After some trimming I got them both tacked in and then spent the next hour jumping back and forth with a couple of welds on each side, then swapping to let things cool while I tacked on the other side. As of Sunday evening the piece is a bit warped in the center and needs some flattening, but the main welds are complete. Tomorrow I’ll get it straightened out, then wire wheel off the surface rust and old paint, and skim it with some filler.

Clutch

I’ve finally got the initial word back on the Scout from the transmission shop. They’ve got her up on the lift and have pulled the transfer case and transmission to reseal everything, and the owner called me with some pictures of the flywheel, which looks terrible.

Those cracks are Not Good

He suggested putting a new clutch in while we’ve got everything apart, which is not cheap but probably worth the time and money now that it’s torn apart. I found a rebuilt kit at IHPA, and they hooked me up with a used flywheel which is going out for resurfacing before they send everything to me.

Given that I’ve gotten 15 years out of a used clutch with no idea of its condition when I bought the truck, I’m not as bitter as I could be; she’s given me great service for years and it’s probably time she got some driveline love. I’ve also had a transmission mount in my parts bin for about four years that I’ve meant to install which is going to the shop with the other parts.

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Be Seated

I want up having a bit more time this weekend than I originally planned to work on the seats in the truck. The first thing to do was to finish up the base of the front seat and get that ready to install. Then I cut material down and fitted it to the seat back from the ’63 frame. Looking it over in detail, I remembered that two of the coils directly behind the driver were missing, probably rusted out. Instead of trying to figure out how to fix that, I decided to tear down the ’67 seat and rebuild that one—a decision made easier knowing that I needed the chipboard IH installed to make sure passengers don’t put their knees through the vinyl.

So, I pulled it out of the truck and tore it down in the driveway. After wire-wheeling the rust on the bottom from a pretty sizable mouse nest, I sprayed it liberally with rust converter and let it dry. Later, in the basement, I used the material I’d pre-cut and started stretching the fabric over the frame. This seat probably took the most effort to actually put together, but after I started in the middle and worked my way out to the edges it came together really well. Then, I carried it back out to the truck and put it in place temporarily to see how things look. I’m really happy with the way the whole thing has turned out.

Suddenly, the interior of the truck looks legit:  The color of the piping matches the gray of the door cards perfectly. The seats are comfortable, and feel strong when I’m sitting in them.

So now I’ve got to do some finish painting and clean up on the seat back, run more hog rings along the bottom of the front seat, base, and paint the frame from the green truck red to match the rest of the truck and I should be able to seal that stuff up.

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Welding and Seating

We were busy with lots of fun Christmas activities this weekend so my opportunities to work on the truck were limited, but I hit a big milestone Sunday evening. First, I’ll mention the delivery of a brand-new welder from Eastwood, which I was finally able to unbox and use on Saturday evening as the sun was setting. With that, I was able to weld the filler hose bracket onto the front firewall, a captive nut on the bottom of the rocker to mount the fuel tank, and a captive nut on the passenger kick panel to mount the fender skirt properly. After that I found that the fuel hose I’d bought from Amazon—after waiting three weeks for Summit to send me a notification that wouldn’t be able to ship one until 12/28—was 1/2″ too big. I have no idea how I messed that up, but the correct size is on the way.

Returning to the bench seats, I’d started the upright to the rear bench last week but stalled at the corners, as they didn’t resemble the one on the spare ’68 bench I have for reference. But when I returned to the seat portion and realized I had to tuck the fabric behind the metal hinge mounts instead of covering them, I understood how to finish both seats off and how the pattern worked. It took some work but I got the upright 98% finished (I think I might have to try to sew one seam up by hand). Then I consulted a reference photo and connected both seats with refurbished bars and mounted the seat in the truck. I really like the way this looks and I’m excited to get the front seat started.

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