Trying to sort out the death wobble on the Travelall is beginning to drive me nuts. Two weekends ago I swapped the front and rear wheels on the driver’s side, and on Sunday I swapped the wheels on the passenger side. Before I did this, I put cameras in each wheel well and ran the truck up to 65mph. At speeds between 50-60 the wobble appeared, but above and below that, it was fine.

Thinking maybe I hadn’t tightened the wheel bearings enough the last time I pulled them, I tightened the castle nuts one notch and locked everything back down. A third test drive found that there wasn’t any change. At this point, I’ve got two directions to follow.

1. More research. One thing I noticed in the footage was that the tires were more offcenter than the wheels. I’m going to put cameras aimed at the edges of all the wheels next to see how stable they all are, and that will tell me a lot about what the best next step will be.
2. Suspension. The long tie rod on the driver’s side is still original to the truck, and is the only one I haven’t replaced yet. The bushings on the sway bars are all original as well, and need to be swapped out. This could be a simple fix, but I’m not sure it’s the culprit. These parts will run about $200.
3. Wheels/tires. I’ve been focusing on the wheels this entire time, figuring that a balance would smooth things out—but these are trailer tires, which really aren’t meant for passenger vehicles (I know, I know, shut up). Actual LT215/85R16 vehicle tires will fit on these wheels, and I can find them for as low as $145/ea.

I did have a bit of success with another long-standing project: I drilled and wired a door switch into the driver’s side A-pillar and successfully connected it to a new LED dome light, which gives me a blinding amount of visibility after dark. This took a couple of attempts, where I was connecting the hot power lead to the switch like a dumbass, and after thinking about it overnight, I realized I was wiring it backwards. I tested it first and then spent an hour fishing a ground wire through the A-pillar up to the roof, successfully hiding it from view. Now I’ve got to wire the passenger side door to the same circuit, and add another LED light to the rear cargo area. I also need to test the headlight switch to see if the rheostat works correctly and triggers the light or not.

Another small cosmetic thing was to use a wire wheel to clean the four aluminum sill covers from the green truck, which were pretty gross, before installing the one on the driver’s sill with the remainder of my stainless screws. I’m going to put the other three in as soon as I’ve got the hardware.

A separate unrelated search brought me to the Grote website, who were the OEM manufacturers for all of IH’s turn signal buckets and lenses back in the day. Curious, I looked at taillights and found that they offer a 4″ round LED taillight that looks remarkably similar to the lights on Darth and the 800. If these are the same size, I think I could simply pull the taillights out of Darth and swap these in without needing to add a resistor or any other electrical trickery to get them to work.

I also found a different vendor who sells headliner fabric for  $17/yd, but it’s not the pegboard-style stuff that came in the truck. I still haven’t been able to find a flexible but stiff-enough board to use to replace the original perforated chipboard. There is perforated fabric I can spray mount over hard backer board, but it’s 3X the price. What I may have to do is beg or borrow something that will emit steam so that I can heat and bend 1/8″ chipboard into the shapes that I need.