Here’s a recap of the trip to Pittsburgh last Sunday, with some short updates on the EFI connections at the end.
Pittsburgh Recap
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Pittsburgh Road Trip
Sunday morning broke cold but sunny, and I hit the road at 7AM with the car already loaded. I had a 3.5 hr. drive out to the other side of Pittsburgh in front of me, but my podcast app was loaded and I was headed away from the sunrise—which was good, because my sunglasses are AWOL. The drive was unremarkable other than beautiful foliage blooming throughout southern Pennsylvania, and I reached Pittsburgh by 11:30 with one stop for expensive gas. The yard was on a hill above the river, and I found two Internationals among many large tractor trailers in a commercial yard. I texted the owner and got to work on the column.
Because the truck was already pretty well picked over I had free access to the stuff I needed: there were only two bolts under the dash to free up the column there, but the three bolts on the steering box were rusted pretty good and the nuts were inaccessible due to a gusset built into the frame. I’d thought ahead and brought my generator, though, and after about 10 minutes with a corded cutoff wheel I trimmed off the bolt heads and pried the box off the frame with a bitch bar. Now, I had to figure out how to get the column out—and I’d forgotten to bring my steering wheel puller. Thankfully, Joey, the guy selling the truck, had one in his shop down the street, and ran me down to pick it up. We paused to look over a beautiful C-series tow truck he’s finishing up, and then he brought me back up to the yard.
I had the wheel off in 5 minutes and then had to puzzle out how to remove the whole unit. The collar in the cab wouldn’t fit through the hole in the firewall (I had this issue with the green truck) nor would the steering box. I did notice the collar moving as I was tugging on it from inside the cab and realized it wasn’t connected to the box anymore—then saw that if I pulled on the steering box from the front, the rod inside slid out of the outer casing and suddenly I was holding those two elements in my hands. The outer tube came out through the cab with a little convincing, and I put the two sections back together on the tailgate of the Honda.
Then I went through the rest of the truck and pulled some other parts off: The windshield wiper motor, the instrument cluster, the radio blockoff plate, and a slightly banged up ’63-’64 headlight trim ring. Inside the cab someone had stacked some extra parts, and I fished out some more good stuff: two uncut metal door cards, a heater motor (the heater in this truck was melted), an ashtray, a marker light assembly, a window crank unit, two sun visors in good shape, and an emergency brake assembly. I did leave a bunch of larger stuff behind—two D-series windshields, a rear pickup window, an instrument cluster in worse shape, and a bunch of other stuff.
After loading up and paying Joey I hit the road at about 4PM and made it home by 8 after stopping for some dinner. The steering column doesn’t look too different from the unit I pulled out of the green truck, save the fact that it’s attached to a power steering box, so I’ll have two basic units to practice on before I do anything with the one in Darth.
Sunday Excursion
I’ve got a line on a manual steering column, which is excellent news, and the price is right. But excellent news is usually accompanied by a catch, and this is no different. The catch here is that the parts truck in question is outside of Pittsburgh, which is about a 4-hour drive away from here. It looks like it’s perfect for my requirements; the truck is in the open, in a clean yard, and the hood is already gone so there’s nothing in the way. I’d be pulling the entire column from the wheel all the way down to the box; I’ll just unbolt the box and maybe cut the pitman arm, or bring a fork and pound out the link. Then it’s just removing 4 bolts under the dashboard, disconnecting some wiring, and out it should come. Easy, right?
As usual though, I’m going to bring the entire recovery kit, and this time I might even bring my generator and a corded cutoff wheel, just in case. It’s going to be a long day and I don’t want to be out there forever.
Making this trip a little sweeter is a pile of leftover parts another semi-local Travelall guy offered me after restomodding his truck. He’s outside of Frederick, which is right on the way, and he has a full set of gauges, seatbelts, and a couple of master cylinders. The seatbelts are an excellent find, as the mounting brackets on some of mine are pretty roached, and the gauges may come in handy, although I’ve got three full sets already. But I can always bring stuff to Nats and sell it.
Halfway There
A new 30amp relay came via Amazon this afternoon, and I did a quick and dirty wiring job to get it connected to constant power, a ground, the ignition circuit, and the carburetor. It wasn’t pretty but the truck turned over, and more importantly, the Sniper unit stayed on. The engine didn’t catch, however, which is getting really fucking frustrating.
So next up, I’m going to pull the mounting plate I used to organize the auxiliary fuse panel, add the second relay alongside the first, and use that as my mounting point. Then I can run clean wiring from there.
Switch
Monday evening, I swapped the best of the two spare lock barrels onto the Travelall to test out the theory that the continuity problem might be an issue with the lock. Comparing the connections on the back, I swapped the wiring as it was on the current assembly and sadly, I got the same result—the Sniper head unit rebooted itself. Upon further investigation, I looked over the diagram from the service manual and identified the main circuits going to each of the poles on the back of the assembly. From what I could tell it was mostly connected right, but my 27 wire (going to the speedometer, and then on to the fuel gauge) wasn’t on the right circuit, I needed to verify that the white wire in the center was the 14 wire (going to the starter), and verify the black wire on the ignition pole was the 12 wire (going to the coil).
Disconnecting the battery and checking things out, I put the 27 wire on the right side and verified the 11 wire was correct. The wire to the starter was not an original IH wire and covered with electrical tape, but I’m guessing it’s the right one in the right place. I ordered a Bosch relay, which should be here tomorrow, and I’ll wire that up to troubleshoot the Sniper this week.
I do have to say, it’s very nice to be able to unlock the door and start the truck with one key.
Later, I pulled three starters from the Heavy Spare Parts Pile to test them out, figuring I might eventually have to swap one of them in for the one on the Travelall. I’ve got a 12 volt bench tester, which makes this kind of thing very easy, so I just lined them up on the bench and connected the positive lead to the main connection and grounded the chassis. With a short length of copper romex I jumped the power to the start terminal on each one, and found that one was completely dead, one didn’t move but made an alarming buzzing noise, and one (that came to me with the solenoid cover off) punched the starter gear forward but didn’t spin the motor. So I’ve got two good cores and a third that might work in a pinch. I forgot to whack on the buzzing unit with a hammer to see if I can wake it up, but that will be a tomorrow test. And as I recall, there might be a fourth still attached to the spare motor in the garage…
Video Update, April 21
Here’s a quick recap of the last week, including some quick footage of a trip to the yard I was at last Thanksgiving.
Archaeological Dig
My sister and I revisited the yard up in New York near her house where I pulled the nose off the green pickup last fall. I’d called ahead to ask the owner if he had a manual steering column for a manual-shift truck, and he said he didn’t, but the yard is too cool not to go back to, and I only saw a third of it the last time I was there, so I made plans to return. We were lucky to get a warm, overcast day amidst a week of snow and rain, so we didn’t have to bundle up completely, but we wore muck boots because we knew it would be wet.
After talking with him a bit at the gate, we grabbed some tools and headed into the yard. This time we were unaccompanied so we could walk at our own pace. As I mentioned the first time I went, he’s got a ton of Studebaker rolling stock back there—Commanders and Hawks and Champions and Larks and even a square-light Avanti—but he’s probably got the largest collection of Studebaker trucks on the east coast.
We walked to the outside edges of his collection this time, taking advantage of the fact that nothing had started growing. The amount and selection of vehicles back there is pretty amazing. He’s got prewar Packards next to 60’s sedans, a couple of toothy porthole Buicks, hulking Hudsons… the list goes on.
I did find the steering column I wanted in an otherwise untouched ’62 pickup that was missing its floorboards and asked him about it, but he said he wanted to keep the truck whole. I also looked at the pickup I’d done surgery on last time and considered pulling the tailgate but ultimately passed on it, opting to leave with just the other taillight bucket which was in excellent shape.
I could have spent days in that yard, and I will go back the next time I’m up here. For now, I’ve got about an hour of footage to go through for the next video. Meanwhile, there’s a guy parting out a pickup outside of Pittsburgh with the exact column I need, so I’ve got to organize a trip out that way to pull it depending on his price.
Relay
One of the proposed solutions to my EFI cranking problem is to wire a relay into the ignition system which will provide constant power to the Sniper head unit. Apparently it’s pretty common for old vehicles to have a voltage drop between the Run and Start positions in the switch, which the Sniper unit isn’t designed for. My first course of action will be to swap out the ignition switch with one of the spares and see if that makes any difference. It could be something as simple as a poorly made modern switch, which wouldn’t surprise me.
If I can get one of the two to work reliably, then problem solved. If not, the next step will be to wire in a simple relay to the ignition circuit which will provide constant power to the head unit and keep it live. There are two types I can use: a simple 30 amp on/off type like I’m using for the auxiliary fuse panel. The other is an adjustable design with a potentiometer which allows for the amount of time the circuit holds a charge. I don’t need it to stay on for 30 seconds after the switch is turned off, just enough to keep the head unit working.
Long-Distance Radio
Butch from Alaska wrote in the comments about following the radio project I was working on, and gutted his radio to work with the same Bluetooth receiver I found. He mentioned he had a plain uncut radio faceplate painted black, but was looking for a chrome version for his truck. The one I pulled from the ’67 was chrome with black plastic inlay that came with Custom trim, so we worked out a swap. I got his in the mail last week and tried it out with the ’67 radio—and strangely enough it’s just a little off. The cutout for the central controls is perfect but the stalk widths are just a little off, which is baffling. Didn’t they standardize this kind of stuff back in the ’60’s? I hope he can use the one I sent up last Friday—it may be that he’s got to narrow the stalk openings to work with his unit.
Fuel Injection Update, 4.14
A proper inlet fitting arrived in the mail on Friday and I had to wait until Sunday morning after the rain had passed to do a test fitting on the carburetor. I could only get one in blue, but you’ll never see it under the air cleaner. Thankfully, it cleared the water neck with about a half an inch to spare, so I tightened it down and made a list of preflight checks that had to be done before fired off the engine. First, I replaced the existing positive battery cable with a bigger fatter one. I’ve always wondered if I’m not getting enough cranking amps from the existing cable and decided to improve that situation. This took a little more time than I thought because the starter is in a really lousy position on C series trucks. It’s in between the engine and the frame rail and directly over the front axle so it’s going to be very difficult to swap out if that has to happen.
Then I pulled the plugs and put a borescope down into the cylinders one by one to check for any water in the cylinders. I did this because I drained a bunch of water out of the gas tank and I was afraid I’d pulled a bunch into the engine and possibly done some damage. I found no evidence of water or rust, just dirty piston heads that need to be cleaned up with a long idle and some time on the road.
Next, I had to get a bunch of new gas and get it into the tank, which is harder than it looks because I don’t have an angled funnel. After visits the three different stores I found something that mostly worked and put about 4 gallons of gas in the tank. Interestingly, the first time I turned the key to the accessory position, the fuel gauge worked, but it worked intermittently since then, so I’ll have to figure that out. With that done and the wiring to the Sniper connected, I cleaned out a jug and set it up in the engine bay to catch fuel.
The first test of the system is to boot it up and program it for the type of engine, cam, idle speed, and a couple of other settings. Then you program it, and do a couple of fuel system flushes to run clean gas to the system. After I did this, I connected the fuel lead up to the carburetor, said a prayer, and cranked it over for the first time.
It didn’t immediately catch, and I noticed that the Sniper control unit had rebooted itself; this should remain on constantly. Doing a little Internet digging I learned that other people have had this problem and it’s got to do with a gap in continuity when turning the key. Walking back through the main points of failure, I tested the jumper to switched power on the fuse panel and verified that was OK. The power leads to the harness were connected correctly. That left the ignition barrel.
This ignition barrel is brand new. I bought it the first year I had the truck, and I believe it’s been wired correctly, but clearly I’m going to have to pull it out of the dash and check it over again. I’ve got two spares I can swap in for testing—the original and the one out of the ’67. I’m going to go out and take some detailed pictures of the ’67 barrel and the one in the truck and compare them, along with the diagram I have from the service manual. I’ve been thinking about pulling that one apart and swapping in one of the new ignition cylinders (I don’t have a key for either one) so that could be a cheap way to test the system, with the added benefit of getting the entire truck to work on one key.
Finally, I checked for spark while I was turning the engine over on the #5 cylinder and didn’t see anything on the indicator, so that’s another thing to check.