While any major projects have slowed to a crawl, I’ve quietly been putting miles on the Travelall over the last couple of weeks. I’ve had her out for a couple of trips over 20 miles each, and she’s come through with flying colors. Last weekend I ran a bunch of errands with her and the only issues I found were the ongoing balance issues with the tires, and the engine sometimes dieseling on shutdown.

The second problem is due to a couple of issues, I suspect: I do have to retard the timing just a hair, but the main cause is due to the choke cable binding somewhere so that after the engine is started and I push it back in to open the choke, it’s not opening all the way—and the mechanism keeps the idle higher than normal. So she’s running a little hotter than she should, even though the temp needle stays pegged to the cooler side.

On the semi-positive side, I had a credit on the books with IHPA for my clutch core so I used that to get a set of window channels and felts for the rear doors on the truck. When I bought the fronts I wasn’t aware that the rears aren’t usually sold separately, so they had to do some wrangling. The company that makes the fronts doesn’t like to split the kits up so they went with their second supplier, who shipped them directly to me. After I looked the kit over, I was not as impressed with the fit and finish of the first kit: the channels aren’t backed with metal, nor do they have the clips IH used to mount the top section; the felts are thicker than OEM, come without the mounting clips installed, and are pre-drilled in the wrong locations.

I pulled the driver’s rear door apart, took the original metal channels out, and test-fit the new ones. They are flexible, so they don’t cradle the window firmly in the middle of the track, and they’re about 1/8″ too wide to fit in the original metal channels. The felts are mounted differently on the rear doors than the fronts; here they clip into the chrome trim ring on the outside and a black trim ring on the inside—which requires removal of both. The black ring is easy to take off but the chrome ring requires delicate surgery to pull off without bending. And because the chrome ring is on the outside, that’s the most important side to install.

With plastic trim tools I was able to gently pull the lower chrome section off the truck, and after drilling holes in the right locations, I fed the clips through and fastened them with a pair of needle-nose pliers. Re-assembling the door, I found that with both felts installed, the window was unable to rise past them; they’re too thick. I left the felt attached to the black trim ring and pulled another ring off one of my spare doors to swap onto the truck. With just the outer felt installed, the window went up and down—but the metal clips were scraping along the window as it went up and down. And the window was not moving smoothly after I put the door card back on.

I then broke down the passenger rear window on the Travelall and installed the channels and felt on that side, being sure to add a liberal coat of white lithium grease to the scissor and all of the door mechanisms. On this side, I put the felt on the outside chrome channel and then added two strips of rubber to the back of the inside black channel to keep the window from rattling—and that seems to do the trick. The window is quieter now, which is great, but I’m not impressed with this kit at all.

Last Saturday, I drove the Scout out to the store to pick up some oven cleaner, and sprayed a generous amount of that over the power steering pump, the steering box, and everything under and around it covered in oil and grease. She’s been leaking for some time now, and the reservoir was empty before I left the house, so this has been on my mind for a while. Steering boxes are very hard to find these days, and replacements are expensive, so I was nervous thinking about how much effort and money it would take to replace.

With the engine hot, the gunk broke up quickly, and I cleared it off with the pressure washer. With that done, I was able to see the frame on that side clearly for the first time, and noted that one of the previous owners had done some decent welding on the frame, bump stop and shock mounts. I sprayed the bare frame with rust-stop, then covered  that with chassis black, then ran the truck up for a little bit, parked it, and waited.

Last Sunday afternoon I did a careful inspection of the steering box, and I don’t see any leaks, nor do I see anyplace it could be leaking from. I noticed liquid dripping from above it, on what I think is the front of the pump, near the pulley. It’s hard to get my big fat head down in there to look closely. New pumps are about $150, so I’ll pick up a new one and swap it on.