Parts Department, Bill Speaking
My friend from Michigan stopped by yesterday to pick up parts and talk trucks, and we spent about two hours in the driveway looking things over as he picked my brain. It was real nice meeting him in person, and I answered as many of his questions as I could. He’s working on a ’68 4WD with his kids, and he’s almost got it on the road, which is great news. I was able to send him off with the Travelall tailgate, the Ford bumper I bought before I came into the green truck, a steering wheel, a good grille emblem, and two door handles. I also sent him home with the arctic heater core from the green truck, which I have no use for. He then headed back to Frederick to pick up the white Travelall before heading home.
As for me, I’m happy to make new friends, move parts along to friends who can use them, to have some cash in hand, and especially to get rid of some stuff for room to work.
Weekend Update, 4 May
Saturday morning I had some time to get out to the driveway. The first thing to do was diagnose the wobble on the front wheel, so I jacked it off the ground and spun it. I immediately found the cause of the vibration above 50mph: the new wheel is out of true. There’s a wide variation in both diameter and depth as it spins, which explains the problem. So I swapped that wheel with the one on the back, and we’ll see if that makes any difference. If the back starts wobbling badly, I’ll swap the tire back on to the odd 16″ wheel until I can get a good set of 15″ wheels to replace these.
With the front wheel off, I started working on the tie rods. After cleaning the accumulated grease and dirt off the fittings, I heated and cooled each side until I was able to get it to spin. Counting the threads carefully, I pulled it off and threaded the new one on at exactly the same length. With the driver’s side fastened, I pulled the passenger wheel off and repeated the process. The steering tie rod ends were just as bad, but I couldn’t get both here at the same time, so I did some cross-site parts research and found a left-hand thread Moog unit on the jungle site that could be delivered Sunday.
Then I went out and swapped the Honda out for Peer Pressure at Brian’s place to bring it home. Stopping off at ACE for fresh grade 8 hardware, I installed the female sides of the lap belts on the rear bench in Darth—so now I’ve got one full lap belt back there until I can source another male belt with a quick-release. With that done, I routed and mounted the fourth tiedown on the driver’s side rear, so there’s one on each side to secure any cargo back there.
Meanwhile, I’ve been noticing the cord on the IH fridge has been getting more and more frayed, and some of the original plastic sheathing was ripped about halfway along its length. Fearing a fire hazard, I took a little time last night to splice in a replacement appliance cord with solder and four layers of shrink wrap to keep it as secure as possible.
Sunday I was multi-tasking on house and truck stuff, but the part did arrive, and after some initial confusion about whether or not it was correct, I threaded it on. The rear half of the steering link is an odd size: the rod section is about 8″ long, which I haven’t seen anywhere. I think my solution to this will be to find a replacement sleeve that’s longer to accept a normal off-the-shelf tie rod.
With three of the four tie rods replaced and the wobbly wheel on the back, I took her out for a test drive. Getting her up to speed on 195, I felt the rear wheel doing its dance, but the other three felt good—and most importantly, as I drove over the traffic calming speed bumps on the way to the highway, I felt and heard none of the loose clanking through the steering wheel that was there before the tie rods went in. And the steering is still straight and true, which means I did it right.
Something positive to note: I got her up to 65mph with little difficulty, and I believe, once the wheels are sorted out, she’d do 70 with no problem.
Monday afternoon I’ve got an internet acquaintance stopping by to buy a bunch of parts: the Travelall liftgate, the Ford bumper, some doorhandles, and a badge off one of the ’68 grilles. It’ll be good to clear that stuff out and free up a litle cash for some other stuff. He’s picking up a Travelall from Tyler out in Frederick, and I was hoping to horse trade him for the original jack and windshield washer pump out of that truck; we’ll see if we can swing it.
Wheely Tired of This
I took the truck out on the highway with the intention of driving it to Frederick last weekend, and found that I had an extremely strong vibration coming from the front end over 55mph, which I strongly suspect are the tires. So I turned around and swapped it for the Honda. Doing more research, I’ve come to the unfortunate realization that the 16″ steel wheels I’ve currently got on the truck do not accept anything currently available other than the trailer tires I have currently mounted. These are made with less care than normal tires, and thus aren’t balanced for everyday use. Given that I’m not road-tripping this thing to Illinois and back every day, that’s not a huge deal, but I intend to take it to Ohio in a couple of months and would like to have proper tires mounted. So now I’m on the hunt for a set of 15″ 4.5×5″ steel wheels that will accept original IH dish hubcaps.
In the meantime I’m going to move the rear tires up front and see if that smooths out the ride, which will then tell me which tires are good and which are bad, or if it’s an issue related to the suspension (which I strongly doubt). I also have new right and left tie rod ends sitting on my desk waiting to be installed this weekend, which should help tighten up the steering linkages.
The other job to finish will be installing the female side of the rear seatbelts, which my truck never came with. I’ve seen a couple of different stock installations, one where the mount is on the wheel arch and one where the mount is on the flat step in front of the arch.
I think, having crawled under this truck a million times, that I’d rather have it on the flat step with a big fat g8 bolt going through the structural part of the truck, and a backing plate underneath.
Oh yeah, and I’ve got to fix the damn fuel gauge.
Ruminating
The weather was kind of garbage this weekend, which put a literal damper on a lot of the things I wanted to accomplish. I was able to install a set of 6,000 lb. cargo hooks in the back of the Travelall to accept a set of seatbelts for the back seat, which I’ve been meaning to do for a while.
These hooks replace the original round IH cups that came with the Green truck (my truck never had these, falling outside the federal seatbelt mandate) which were very deep, and which I couldn’t come up with a method of attaching to anything solid.
The new hooks come with a stout metal plate that bolts underneath, so I don’t think they’re going to go anywhere. Now I have to add the female belts to the wheel wells, which will require a custom fabricated backing plate.
Meanwhile, a nice fellow in Michigan reached out to me several weeks ago after seeing the Travelall liftgate in one of my videos; we traded emails and a couple of calls, and made some plans for him to buy some parts. Then my local Travelall friend Tyler showed me a picture of a truck he picked up locally and asked me if anyone I knew was interested. I passed the word along to Bill, and he sounded very interested. So I wrapped two trips up into one on Sunday: I drove out Tyler’s way to buy a new (used) Mirra desk chair and then stopped at his place to look over the truck. After sharing the video and my opinion, Bill is going to buy it, which is a great deal for both people (and I don’t feel tempted to buy it myself and risk my marriage). My intention was to drive Darth, but after I got her out onto the Beltway and up to 60mph, the front of the truck started vibrating badly. So I think the plan will be to replace the tie rods and then find someone who can do an alignment for me.
I dragged the 800 back out of the garage, put some oil in the cylinders, and tried to fire it off again, but didn’t have any luck. I cleaned all the plugs and verified that I’ve got spark, but the #1 cylinder is still only making 75psi of pressure. I’m going to pull the carb off this week and clean it out, and I’ll give it another try maybe this coming weekend, but I’m beginning to think this truck will be a winter project—and I’m considering swapping it out with the Scout II at Brian’s place. I want to drive Peer Pressure this summer, and I’m still focused on making Darth Haul a runner, so the 800 is a distraction. Plus, nobody knows more about cranky engines that won’t start than my friend Brian, so there’s that added benefit. I’ve just got to get it over there.
Tires and Tasks
Having swapped one of the tires on to the new wheel I bought last week, one of the comments the guy at the tire store made got me thinking. I’d bought a set of 16″ tires for this truck when I first got it, but wasn’t aware they were only rated for trailers, and it was a fight to get them to balance it. I don’t want to be driving this truck on tires that are only meant for occasional use, so I think I’m going to have to buy a new set and have them swapped on. From what I understand, I can put a set of 195/75R16 tires on these wheels with no issues. An inexpensive set of van tires are only ~$400, and I can maybe sell the trailer tires on Marketplace for cheap.
Next up on the list:
- Fix the fuel gauge. It was working a few years ago, and I’d sure like for it to work again.
Fix the exhaust hanger.At some point last week the rubber element in the replacement part I bought snapped, so I’ve got to fabricate a replacement.- Adjust the idle faster, just a touch.
- Clean up the tie rods and measure for new ones. This will be critical for getting the truck ready for long-distance trips, along with researching other suspension repairs—bushings, greaseable fittings, and linkages.
Paint the other wheels.I have to wire-wheel, prep and paint the passenger side wheels.- Replace the steering wheel? I’ve been waiting to do this until after the power steering is done, but the hell with it, maybe I’ll just put the new wheel in to make it look better.
Two things I brought back from Brian’s are a whole stack of aluminum—two C-channels and a bunch of flat bar—which will eventually be formed into a proper roof rack. There was also a 4×4 sheet of 16 ga. steel, which will be formed into the patch for the driver’s floor. Those two projects may wind up being cold-weather pursuits; we’ll see how the summer shakes out.
On the 800, I’ve only got one major task in mind: I’m going to drag it out of the garage, dribble a little oil down the cylinders to build up compression, and get it running off the boat tank. Then I’m going to let it run for a good long while to see if I can knock the rings loose. I’m also going to dump some Seafoam down the carb and smoke out the neighborhood.
We May Have This Beat
I think I’ve got the brake situation on Darth Haul pretty much licked—but it’s going to take a little more adjustment before I’m happy. When I last wrote about this, I was waiting on a master cylinder from Rock Auto. I wound up installing that, and as I took the 2-year-old unit off the firewall, I found that the pushrod for the clutch fell inside the firewall, while the pushrod for the brakes stuck out into the engine bay by an inch or so. This pointed at the cylinder being pressurized as I hit the brakes, but not able to release all of the pressure when the pedal was let back out, thus building up over time as I drove and braked.
So I unscrewed the adjustable pushrod and lopped about 1″ of length off of it, and put it back in the truck. I found that I’d taken off way too much and that I wasn’t getting any brakes at all. So I measured the threaded side of the pushrod, then bought a couple of 7/16 bolts with 20 pitch thread and used an angle grinder to fabricate a new pushrod.
After spinning a jam nut down on the threads, I put it back in the truck and gave it a test, but found I wasn’t getting enough brake, and needed more length. So I fabricated a third pushrod and installed that one, and this time I got some stop in the pedal. It still needs some fine tuning—I’ve got to stand on the brakes to stop quickly—but after a 15-mile drive the wheels were cool to the touch and the truck wasn’t struggling against itself.
Now I’ve got to do some tightening up on the front suspension. The tie rods and bushings are all toast, so I have to order new hardware for all of that, as well as pick up a working grease gun (both of the units I have here, circa the repo agency from 1988, seem to be broken) to lube all the important bits.
Brendan left me a couple of goodies up at Dan’s place a few weekends ago, so I made the most of the trip by hauling a load of broken concrete from our backyard up to the landfill on that side of town in the Scout. His place is right around the corner, so I quietly backed into the side field so as not to disturb his family. Brendan dropped a proper 16″ IH wheel in the driver’s seat of the blue 80 for the Travelall and told me to just take the rollbar out of that truck. I was able to get one of two bolts out with a wrench but had to resort to a portable cutoff wheel to get the other out. With that, the bar was free, and I hauled both parts back to Peer Pressure to head home.
The wheel is exactly what I needed. I’ve got three originals on the truck but the fourth is one I got from a guy on Marketplace, and while it fits the truck, the mounting boss is a different size than the others so I can’t mount a hubcap on it. I wire-wheeled the whole thing, sprayed the outside white, and mounted it on the truck.
With the hubcap on it really brings out the white in the top and makes the truck look sharp. I liked it so much I used the playing card trick to spray the rear wheel white as well. Something else to look into are different tires; the ones on the truck are technically for a trailer, and I’d like to have the right kind of rubber on the truck. It’s an odd size so it’s going to take some searching to find the right thing.
While I was at the Hobo Freight I picked up a bottle of cutting compound and a couple of orbital pads, and gave it a try on some of the red paint with the worst oxidization. It took some experimentation and practice, but after a little while I had the original paint as shiny as it’s going to get, punctuated with areas of rattle-can IH Implement red covering repairs I’ve made. I did the entire passenger rear quarter up to the point where my sheet-metal repair starts (and the spray paint is fading) and both doors, and it looks worlds better. It’s not going to save the peeling clear coat but it’s better than it was.
Video Update, Apr 17
I posted this one yesterday, and it catches up on the last 2+ weeks of work on all three trucks.
High-Tech
I had some time after work the other day and did a little vibe-coding with Codex to build a simple front-end search interface for the spreadsheet I use to keep track of my parts inventory. Over time I’ve amassed a pretty large collection of spares, from specialty bolts and nuts to large sheet metal parts. A couple of weeks ago I used some 2×3″ wood to build a rack system for my black parts bins, and with that I was able to make more space in the garage as well as make access easier (having them stacked on each other was exhausting). Knowing what is in which bin is good, but having to hump my laptop out there was a drag, and searching a Google Sheet via a phone sucks.
Codex quickly built a search query for me with PHP, and over time we streamlined the interface to return the bin and location information. But that was only half the problem; I need to be able to note when I’ve pulled something out of a bin, and also when I’ve added something to a bin. This required Codex stepping me through the process of hooking up an API to talk with my script and doing a little more work on the interface to clean things up.
I’m very happy with the results, and I think this will go a long way to organizing my stuff better. I used it last night to catalog a couple of parts Brian sent me home with from Slowflake: a proportioning valve, a gas tank valve switch, and a brake master cylinder.
800 Update
I got my oil report on the 800 back from Blackstone Labs and the news is…not good. All of the ferrous metal percentages are WAY higher than they should be. As the report says, the oil shows a ton of wear in important surfaces like the pistons, cylinders, and bearings. I can’t say I’m that surprised; the anecdotal stories I’ve heard about Dan are that he tended to buy toys, use them hard, and do minimal maintenance. And I have no idea what life this truck had before it made its way East from California.
Looking at the left column and comparing it to the one on the far right, the important metals are at an average of 300 times more than they should be. Ouch!
On the positive side, I got a new coil the other day and dropped that in, but was still not getting any spark to the distributor. The trigger wire connecting the two was frayed at the exit point from the distributor, so I pulled out my wiring kit and made a new one, which finally yielded spark to the plugs. But the engine still isn’t catching. I’ve got spark, gas, and air; the only thing I can figure is that she’s not making compression. A test of the cylinders showed that #1 is still down at 50psi while the other three are at ~100. So the plan for the weekend is to pull it out of the garage with Peer Pressure, squirt a little oil in the cylinders to bring up the compression, and see if I can get her running. Then I’m going to let her idle for a while to try to free up the rings.
When I was out at Brian’s last weekend working on Slowflake (more info on that to come), we stopped at a local scrapyard near his house. They’ve got a ton of stuff there, including an area full of older vehicles, and in that fleet I spied an old CJ-5 with a pair of low-back bucket seats. I asked the front desk what they’d charge for those, and when I got a nice low number, we returned with some tools and pulled them out. They’ve been sitting out in the open for years so the vinyl is brittle but still holding together, but with some basic repairs they should be good for the time being—and much easier to get into and out of than the plastic buckets. I’d already pulled the passenger side seat out to hand off to Brian, and it only took a half an hour to pull the driver’s side out, remove the rusted Jeep tracks, and mount the seat to the Scout base. I’ll have to fabricate a base for the passenger side, as that one had been removed long ago, but that’ll be a fun metal-bending project for the future.
I also spent a grand total of $15 on two tubes of Tank-Weld and over four leak tests, sealed up the driver’s side gas tank. It looks like it lost a fight with a gallon of Play-Doh, but it holds liquid and it’s $250 cheaper than a new tank, and that is the guiding principle of this truck. I will, however, have to shell out ~$70 for a new rubber filler hose; for now the boat tank will do nicely.
Finally, I talked with Brendan, who bought the rest of the trucks up at Dan’s place, and he’s going to give me the rollbar from the blue Scout. He’s resigned himself to the fact that he’s not going to do much with the truck (it’s actually in worse shape than this Scout) so he’s cool with letting that part go. So I’m going to drive out there and cut that out of the truck, as well as pick up a spare 16″ wheel for the Travelall.