Friends – Page 2

Harvester Homecoming 2024

Thursday morning I got up early, put the dog out, and got a quick shower. Brian was due to arrive at 7:30 so I made coffee and threw my gear in the truck. After swapping his truck for mine in the driveway I kissed the girls and we hit the road by 8:30.

The drive out was uneventful. Brian and I swapped out turns behind the wheel every 100 miles or so, whenever we were stopping for gas. It added time to the trip but it was also key to staying loose after being in the truck for so long. I still can’t get over 15 or so gallons in the tank without it backing up and overflowing (I filled it up two days before we left and it stank of gas the entire time it sat in the driveway), and haven’t been able to fix that issue, so we just put 10 gallons in every 100 indicated miles—which is actually 113 due to the speedo not being calibrated. Siri directed us north to Pittsburgh and then over to Cleveland, and from there we curved down into Indiana and then to Fort Wayne.

The total trip was probably about 9 hours in total including stops. Aside from the road noise, the Scout is a very comfortable long-distance traveler, all things considered. With modern seats and power steering she’ll do 70mph all day, and the seating position is upright enough that you don’t feel like you want to fall asleep after an hour’s drive.

We got in around 6PM and after checking in the hotel, we found a brewpub nearby for some dinner, then stopped at a DIY carwash to scrub dirt off the truck—the first time I’ve ever washed it before a show—and picked up some beer and supplies for the weekend.

The show details weren’t explained very clearly on the website, so we had to ask some other IH folks at the hotel what time to arrive. On Friday morning we got a free lobby breakfast and made it to the grounds at about 9:30, and by then a lot of vehicles had already arrived. We were put at the end of a mixed line of trucks facing a wall of IH road tractors from the ’80’s and settled in to our camp. The nice gentleman who parked us told us we weren’t supposed to put up a tent but we waited until he was gone and did it anyway; the sky was dark and cloudy and the forecast showed a lot of rain for later in the day.

This show has a different vibe from Nationals. The volunteers were out in force and were very helpful; many of them were retired IH workers who were happy to see all the trucks. There was no real organization for vehicles so we were next to a couple of Scouts, a big A-series pickup, and backed up against a D-series pickup. Across from us sat a Scout 800 and a tractor. The variety made for an interesting walk around the show; there was something new on every row. A giant tractor, then a Scout, then a fire truck, then a couple more Scouts, then set of Cub Cadets on the back of a flatbed. We got out and walked the side we were on, then did a loop around the back to see the vendor booths.

There weren’t as many used parts vendors as Nats. Coonrod’s had a big trailer full of goodies, and there was another guy with a Scout, a C-series pickup, and a trailer full of parts for sale. Most of the Light Line vendors were there, but some of them had clearly scaled back their displays. In all, it felt smaller than Nats.

I was hoping we’d be able to drive through the Engineering Center like they did for the first couple of Homecoming events, but it turns out the building has just been sold and will likely be torn down for something else. The museum where they were displaying the older trucks had to be moved from that building to storage, their fate unknown.

In the afternoon it started to sprinkle, so we re-adjusted our tent and moved it over the truck. Soon, it was raining more heavily, and we realized we were stuck in the middle of a circling derecho directly over Fort Wayne. We held the sides of the tent down while the wind gusted and it downpoured, waiting for a lull, and when that came we quickly broke the awning down, shoved it in the truck, and hightailed out of the show. Luckily the wipers were functional, and the Rain-X on the windshield did its work, so we were able to make it to the hotel drenched, but with no problems. After a soak in the pool we got showered and waited for the rain to taper off so we could get some dinner. We found a nice brewpub down the street and settled in for a beer and some pizza. On the way back it started raining again after some shakes at the local ZESTOS! and didn’t let up until 9PM that evening.

Saturday morning we got up and out the door earlier, aiming to get a better spot in the rows. We stopped off at a little bakery we’d spied for coffee and donuts, avoiding the hotel lobby food, and drove the long way around the factory to the main entrance where the International tower stands for a photo opp.

It’s looking run-down and sad over there. It would have been amazing to see the place in the ’60’s when it was going full-steam and was being cared for. We shot a bunch of photos and I set up the tripod for some timer shots. That was worth the time and effort.

Then we drove in the back way to the show and got a great spot next to our new friends from Pittsburgh. This time nobody warned us against the awning, so we set up camp and made ourselves comfortable. The second day was much busier than the first, because more people could show up on Saturday—so we were pleased we’d gotten there when we did.

I made a beeline over to the used parts guy to haggle for two things I’d seen on Friday: the first was a C-series instrument panel with later-style indicator lights on the outside. My panel is OK but I really like having indicators I can actually see; the early-style panels had a very small horizontal slit through which the lights are barely visible during the day. As a bonus, the gauges are all matching with black faces. As I mentioned in a video last month, the ones I’ve got in the Red Bus are three different colors: silver, black, and gold, having been swapped out at different times. So wiring this one up and making things match will be an improvement.

The second thing I found were a set of C-series reverse lights: glass lenses with heavy chrome bezels. I don’t have reverse lights on the red bus—it came with a giant spotlight on the roof which may have been a reverse light, but I tore that off with all of the other junk lights up there, so this sets up a future upgrade after I get her on the road.

Phil Coonrod had a set of pretty black Scout II door cards at his booth—patterned vinyl stretched over masonite board—that I considered briefly, but wisely decided I didn’t need. There was another used parts vendor on the backside who had a bunch of C-series metal laid out on the grass; one thing that was very tempting was a complete front cowl in better shape than the two I’ve got for $200, which was a screaming good deal. I hemmed and hawed over it for a while but noticed the shape of the grille opening is a later style; mine is concave on the sides to fit my grille while this one was straight. My cowl needs serious help, and this would have been an easy swap, but I’d like to keep the truck as close to a ’63 as I can. So I passed on that too. In hindsight I could have kept it and resold it later, but decided against dragging more parts home.

The sun was much stronger on Saturday so we spent a lot of time under the awning in the shade. That being said, we also spent a lot of time walking through the rows and checking out the trucks. Being further west geographically, there were more trucks we hadn’t seen Nats or other shows, which was refreshing. We met a bunch of new people, including the couple from Pittsburgh who were showing a freshly restored Scout II in a mint green color. He was already talking about his second truck and eyeing the lift on Peer Pressure.

At 4PM we’d had enough of the heat and broke down the awning; by that time several of the long-distance vendors had already left and the rows were thinning. We headed back to the hotel to load in the gear, take a shower, and find another place to eat. This time we found a brewpub closer in to the center of Fort Wayne and had sandwiches and cold beer in the air-conditioning. While we ate, we talked over plans for engineering and producing a DIY electric steering kit for the Scout 80/800, which several people at the show had expressed an interest in. I’m also interested in doing this for C-series trucks, with mine as the prototype.

Sunday morning we checked out early, topped off the fluids in the truck, grabbed a McDonald’s breakfast, and hit the road. The first couple of hours through Indiana and all of Ohio were temperate, even comfortable in the sunlight. Pennsylvania up through the hills was cool and dry. But as we descended towards the Maryland state line it got hot and sticky, and then we hit the only traffic on the whole trip on Rt. 70. Thankfully these slowdowns were only for ten minutes at a time, so we avoided sitting still. And I’m happy to report that as hot as the engine got, the needle on the gauge never climbed above its normal spot on the left side. I did smell oil on heavy acceleration, so I’m going to have to track down where that leak might be coming from—my guess is the valve covers are weeping somewhere.

We finally rolled into Catonsville at about 6:30 and I sent Brian on his way home with a couple of cold seltzers; his fancy Ford has A/C so I’m sure he cooled off quickly. I dragged my basic gear inside and left the rest of it in the back of the truck to worry about later.

The final mileage tally was 1041 indicated on the gauge, which works out to 1182 miles true, which checks out (Siri pegged the trip from home to the hotel at 548 miles one-way).

We had a great time, mostly because Brian and I got to hang out together for the whole weekend; but it’s a different vibe than Nats. I think the big thing missing from this show is the feeling of community; every year in Ohio there’s a huge party in the parking lot at the hotel each night, and on Saturday there’s a barbecue and food and an auction with all kinds of things donated to raise money for charity. It goes from 6PM until whenever and it’s a really warm, cooperative experience. In some ways it’s better than the show; last year Brian and I stood out late with a group of people, including the owners of three of the better-known Scout shops in the country, just shooting the shit over beers and laughing. That’s really hard to replicate. This is a good show but it’s over at 4PM every day and it felt like everyone just went their separate ways. So we’re both thinking we’ll go back to Nats next year and maybe Harvesters in the Holler if we can work out the timing; the former is in June and the latter in September—but right around Finn’s birthday. We’ll see how it shakes out next year.

Posted on August 6, 2024 | by bill | 1 Comment | Posted in Friends, Trip Logs

Indiana or Bust

I’ll write more about the trip later, but our journey to Indiana went off without a hitch.

Posted on August 5, 2024 | by bill | Leave a Comment | Posted in Friends, Trip Logs

June Update Video

Here’s the update from the last two weeks. We’re gearing up for vacation so work is probably going to slow down a bit.

Posted on June 12, 2024 | by bill | Leave a Comment | Posted in Friends, Travelall, Video

Advanced Surgery

As of Friday night, the passenger side quarter panel is off the truck. I’m still trying to sort out how I might get the axle out from under the truck and still have someone haul it away, but it’s not looking promising. In the worst case I’d either have to forego keeping the axle or pull it and beg Bennett to help me haul it back up on his trailer and off to a scrapyard.

In the meantime, I’m eyeing the inside wheel well covers, wondering if I could drill out the welds and pull those in one piece…

In other, better news, I shot Jeff an email on Friday after I realized I have a perfectly good front and rear 1967 bench seat just waiting for new upholstery, and asked him if that made any difference in fitment. He called me back on Friday night, somewhat relieved, because his patterns are for 1968 benches and he feels better about shipping the covers to me as is. So when he’s got time he’ll finish up the covers and send them down, and if UPS can avoid losing them, I can buy the foam and get started building the seats.

It doesn’t sound like Bennett is going to be able to make it to Nats with us this year, but I think Brian is on board for a ride-along with me. He’s not interested in taking Slowflake so I offered shotgun in the Scout. I’ve got to start organizing parts for sale to see if I can make some money bringing them to Ohio; I figure the tailgate might bring some money if priced properly, and I wonder if anyone would be interested in the heating unit in its current shape. There’s more in the pile but I’ve got to go through it all to see.

Posted on April 27, 2024 | by bill | Leave a Comment | Posted in Friends, Seats, Travelall

Recovery Mission

Last week, while considering the two trucks I’d learned about in New York, I got a text from Bennett:

The owner is a friend’s family and they wanted it gone before it collected more tickets from the local constabulary; I told Bennett I wanted it and asked for his help in going to get it. He got in touch with his brother for the towing rig and a plan was hatched.

Sunday morning I met Bennett over at his storage yard so that we could pull the Hudson off the trailer, park it, and use that for hauling. Before we could leave, we had to replace the hot lead to his trailer winch, which took some surgery and delicate tinkering. Moving the Hudson was pretty easy (we’re used to this procedure by now) so we were on the road north by 9:30.

The truck was at the bottom of a tricky driveway at the end of a fast curve, so I stood outside and stopped traffic while Bennett expertly backed the trailer up the hill (digging the bottom lip all the way up) on his first try. He backed it down the lane to stop at the rear bumper of the Travelall.

She looked worse in person than in the photos (big surprise!) Like she’d been at sea for years and had been beached in a storm. The owners of the house came outside and watched as we busied ourselves setting up the ramps and unloading tools.

The first issue was that it was on four flat tires: two of which were questionable and two of which looked like a dinosaur had been snacking on them. I put my compressor on the “good” ones and got the passenger’s front to fill and hold, while the driver’s side rear would fill and empty at almost the same rate. So: it was up to the winch. We aligned the ramps and yanked the truck backwards up to their edges, and realized the trailer hitch would never clear the deck of the trailer. But we’re pros at this: we stacked up some scrap wood and propped them with 2×4’s to lengthen the ramps and make the angle work better. I put a long board between the hitch and the trailer, levered it over the edge, and we were quickly up on the deck. Turned out the one good tire was bolted to a drum which had frozen, so it was effectively useless.

We pulled it back as far as possible but knew having the engine over the rear axles was dangerous, so we made a plan to flip it around as soon as we found a good-sized parking lot. After strapping it down tightly, we said our thank-yous and I went back out to the street to cover traffic. Bennett got up a head of steam and came down out of the driveway at an angle to avoid getting high-centered, and we were soon on our way.

Down the road we found an empty restaurant parking lot with a couple of steel posts that would be perfect for our next trick: pulling the truck off the trailer, then loading it on facing front. He backed it up to a post which we fastened a strap around, and he gently pulled forward to pull the trailer out from underneath the truck. The front tire—the one with air—still wouldn’t budge. We used the strap to pull the truck backwards to clear the post, and Bennett turned the trailer around to meet the front of the truck.

When we’d gotten the Travelall about 1/2 of the way up the trailer he remarked that he was impressed with how well the battery was holding up on the winch; fifteen seconds later the winch began to sputter as the power dimmed. We dicked around with ratchet straps and a come-along that was definitely not strong enough, and finally unhitched the Ford, pulled it up to the front of the trailer, and used jumper cables to juice the battery enough to get the truck winched all the way forward.

From there it was easy to strap the truck down and get on the road. After a quick lunch at the diner up the street, we drove back to Maryland through howling wind and snow showers to my house, where I’d moved the red Travelall backwards to make room.

Here we used a similar method to get the truck off the trailer: we hooked my tow strap to the telephone pole and the tow hitch on the truck and Bennett simply pulled the Ford forward. We quickly threw a tarp over the carcass to hide its beauty from my neighbor, who is coincidentally trying to sell his house—sorry!—and packed things up. Then we drove back to his storage lot to help get the Hudson back up on the trailer. We got everything covered and strapped down, and took off for home.

I haven’t had a ton of time to look the truck over, but here’s what I see so far:

The outside sheet metal is all Pennsylvania-good. Meaning it has rust in many of the same places the red truck does: in the front fenders at the bottom and over the eyebrows, in the front grille below the marker lights, behind the rear wheels at the bottom of the arches, and in the bottom corners under the taillights (mine is solid here). There’s good chrome trim around the outside which looks like it might all be intact. There’s one good chrome rocker trim on the passenger side—the driver’s side was ripped off at some point. Both bumpers are in excellent shape, and the rear bumper has a set of inset reverse lights. There’s a beautiful roof rack and luggage rail setup on the roof. It’s a single-tailgate model but we can’t figure out how to open it—there’s no handle anywhere, and this truck came without a key. The drip rail is in excellent shape given how long this truck had been sitting. There’s a lovely patina of the original IH green, buffed down to red primer, splashed with yellow lichen across the whole truck.

Inside, it’s a 4-speed stick, and the furnishings are all Custom—it says this on the dashboard. Fabric door cards, fancy steering wheel, padded dashboard, and deluxe headliner. The front bench is shot, and the rear bench had been folded forward, so I can’t see what shape that’s in. Water has gotten into the truck from the driver’s door seal so the front floors and seat are wet. In the far back, there’s what looks like a heat or A/C unit sunk into the wheelwell on the passenger side, and a square toolbox on the driver’s side. The chrome trim for the headliner inside is all intact, and there are two visible dome lights.

A quick look under the hood revealed a V8 with power steering, and a large brake booster, as well as a mount for an A/C compressor. It’s IFS up front, which means there’s no leaf springs for me to grab, but I can definitely pull the rears to have them re-arched.

So, the next steps are to do an inventory of what’s good and what’s not, and start pulling parts off the truck. I have no title and no bill of sale, although the owner said he’d look for the former. Our cursory inspection showed a lot of rust and I’m sure it’s deeper than it looks, so stripping this truck down to the shell won’t bother me too much. Jen doesn’t want it lingering in the driveway, and neither do I, so I think I’ll sell some Scout parts to make room for Travelall parts. I’ve already dug two spare fenders out of storage, and I can sell one set of spare doors to free up a lot more space—Bennett said he might be interested in them, in which case they are his for the asking.

Posted on March 11, 2024 | by bill | Leave a Comment | Posted in Friends, Travelall, Trip Logs

Crunch

I had a little time on Saturday to try and get together with Bennett between advent activities, so I threw some tools in the Scout and headed over to his storage lot. His plan was to get the Hudson running smoothly enough to swap it out for his other vehicle and drive it back to his house, which is only about 2 miles away. The last time he’d run the car he had some issues with the carb, so we got to work testing it to see what the issue was. We narrowed the culprit down to the accelerator pump and commenced to pulling the top half of it off; it’s an Edelbrock copy of an AFB carb so a lot of it was familiar to me from working on the FiL’s Chrysler unit. We spent a good bit of time trying to get the check ball out of the accelerator circuit with some duct tape and a dental pick. When we’d gotten those out he blew the lines out with carb cleaner and we reassembled the whole thing. Working with the idle linkage we got the engine to run a little better, but it was still very rough compared to how it ran in the summertime. He felt good enough about it to make the journey home, so we strategized our strategy and set to work.

I backed up to his trailer and pulled it out so that he could drive the Hudson off and swap it with his Scout. The Hudson was bucking and fighting him so he had to tinker with the idle circuit a couple of times, but it still wanted to jerk into gear or lock the brakes on him almost immediately. I walked back to his truck to put his glasses on his toolbox, and as I turned around I was horrified to see him rolling away on the ground from the Hudson as it took off backwards in a lazy circle on its own, the driver’s door open. I could only watch as it glanced off the tow hitch of one camper and then the door collected the next one in line, pinning the car in place as it bent the door backwards on its hinges. Bennett couldn’t get into the driver’s side so I threw open the passenger’s side door and killed the engine with the key.

After making sure he was OK (I thought for sure he’d been partially run over, but he’d just slipped on wet leaves as he was running to jump inside) we assessed the damage. The door is pretty well fucked; the tongue of the trailer was driven directly into the window crank and pushed the whole thing forward and down. We tried to take it off at the hinges, but the 70 year old Phillips-head bolts didn’t budge, even with my impact driver. So he pushed it forward a bit and I put my Hi-Lift jack underneath to try and lift it back to where it would line up with the opening. We got it closer to being closed but it’s basically trashed.

Reassessing our options, we set about reversing what we’d just done and pulled the Scout back off the trailer to make way for the wayward Hudson. With the idle being so sketchy and the brakes locking at every touch, I suggested we use the winch to get it all the way up, and Bennett agreed. With that complete he backed the trailer into the spot with the practiced ease of a man who’s dragged old cars out of fields for 30+ years. We secured the car with tarps and a cover, made sure everything was chocked down good, and headed for home.

By this point it was fully dark—the solstice was yesterday—so I was a little alarmed to see him slow down right after leaving the lot, get out, and start futzing with the lights on his truck. It turned out his headlights had cut out and he had two miles of very dark roads to navigate. After messing with the fuse block and main light switch to no effect, we decided he would follow me back to his house and we’d hope the cops weren’t paying attention.

Luckily they weren’t, and he made it back home without a present from Johnny Law. I aimed Peer Pressure for our house and was lucky to avoid major holiday traffic. I’m noticing, however, the telltale signs of what I think are another exhaust leak. It’s been getting louder and louder the last couple of weeks; I’m going to have to hunt down which side it’s on and see what’s happening over the break.

Posted on December 23, 2023 | by bill | Leave a Comment | Posted in Friends

Weekly Roundup, 11.6

I had to run out on errands Sunday morning, and the weather was in the upper 60’s, so I grabbed Finn and we rolled out in the Scout for a fall adventure. Our first stop was down in Pasadena at the Eastwood store, where I needed to pick up some chassis black and a tube of seam sealer. As we wandered the store, my old friend Steven G. walked in, as he was shopping for supplies for his Scout. We caught up for a bit, and talked about getting a fall meetup together, and then I exited the store in a hurry before I was tempted to buy anything else. We stopped at the Home Depot for some other supplies and a precut 2×4′ sheet of plywood and headed home.

In the driveway, I pulled the original bumper off the mounts and hung it in place to see exactly how well it’ll fit. I think it needs a little more standoff than the original had, but with another 2″ or so it will work perfectly. I think I can make the original mounts work for the short term, and when I can get my hands on some larger longer box steel I’ll fabricate a permanent mount.

I opened up the rear doors and started brushing on the chassis black over encapsulator, and got a good portion of it done before the sun went down. The chassis paint is a lot thinner than the encapsulator, and tends to make more of a mess. While I was out there, Brian T. stopped by on his way back over the bridge, and we caught up for the first time in a couple of months.

After closing up the truck and garage, I brought the sheet of plywood in to the basement, turned on the football game, and set it up as a mounting rack for my spare wiring loom. The goal here is to rebuild the wiring loom so that I can pull the old one out and replace it with this. I’d originally contacted Super Scouts to price out a brand new loom, but after several weeks of waiting I was told their wiring specialist is two months behind. So I’ll take advantage of the inside time and learn how to disassemble, test, and rebuild the one I’ve got. One thing I am going to reach out to them about are some replacements for the bulkhead connectors I’ve got, to see if I can get any with intact mounting tabs.

Posted on November 6, 2023 | by bill | Leave a Comment | Posted in Friends, Purchasing, Travelall, Video

Weekly Roundup, 10.29

On Thursday afternoon I got a long narrow package delivered by UPS, which contained a set of headliner bows from my friend Ray up in Massachusetts. He sent a pair of square-end bows like the three I’ve already got in the truck, which were made to work with an aluminum channel around the perimeter of the roof that would hold a headliner in place. My truck didn’t come with a headliner or the channel, just three rusty bows (out of five) and the fiberglas insulation glued to the ceiling.

Below that are five point-end bows which went on earlier model Travelalls without the aluminum channel; from what Ray tells me the headliner tucked in under the sheet metal lip around the edge and these bows held it into place. Because these bows are in much better shape than the square-ends I’ve got, I’m going to clean them up and use them when I build and install a headliner.

Meanwhile, I got another big box in the mail via UPS, in which was packed a primer black ’57 Ford F-150 bumper. I brought it out to the truck and laid it on top of the C-series bumper, and apart from the fact that it’s a little narrower, I think this thing will work very well.

I’ve got to figure out how to build a set of sturdy standoffs from the frame horns on the front of the truck—the current standoffs are 4″ deep sections of box channel steel held in place with some long rusty bolts and a wheelbarrow full of washers. I’ll probably do something similar but gusset the boxes for strength.

Saturday morning I went to Bennett’s to help him swap out the rear brake line on his Speedster replica; he’d taken it to a car show earlier in the year and blown the line on the way home. It turns out the manufacturer ran the brake line inside the cabin along the transmission tunnel, ending in a fitting directly behind the driver’s seat. After some careful application of heat and penetrant we got the fitting off the distro block behind the front suspension and cut a new line with some extra length to spare. Bennett then showed me how to make a bubble flange on a brake line, which I’d never seen before, and we installed the new line and bled the brakes.

With that success, we took a test drive to Ellicott City for some barbecue and brought it home to eat in the warm sunshine.

A couple of weeks ago I saw an ad pop up on Marketplace where a guy had a storeroom full of old IHC R-series parts he was selling, and I alerted Bennett. He’d driven up there a couple of weeks ago and picked through the stuff, coming home with a box full of NOS parts for Phantom, his ’53 R-110 pickup. Before I left, we looked through the box of stuff he brought home, and he handed me an NOS doorhandle and window crank for a C-series pickup in perfect shape. I’ve got to figure out what they’re worth and give him some cash the next time I see him. He also had a trio of black NOS armrests in original IH packaging—the foam on the backside was bright yellow like the day they were made—and sent me home with one to see if it fit Peer Pressure. I already have a black set on the truck, but maybe I’ll buy two of these to put in the spares box along with the used ones that look like they were fished out of a river.

Addendum: I forgot to mention that I ran the engine up for about ten minutes on Saturday when the girls were out of the house (the exhaust is super rich and tends to flood the house, so I wait until they’re away) and got it up to temperature. It only took two pumps of the throttle to get her fired up, which was encouraging. Looking at various points of the engine with a laser thermometer, the manifold junction on the driver’s side got to about 450˚, while the passenger side got to 520˚. I then remembered that the coolant was low so I waited until the water neck hit about 160˚ and decided to shut it down, so I don’t know if the thermostat is working yet or not. I added about 3/4 of a gallon of coolant and let it cool down before putting the cover back on. It’s sounding a little clattery but the idle smoothed out after awhile; I think the rings need to come loose and seat properly after sitting for so long, and I need to have a professional tune the carb properly to get her running right.

Posted on October 29, 2023 | by bill | Leave a Comment | Posted in Friends, Repairs, Travelall

Weekly Roundup, 10.8

The beginning of the week was quiet, but I put almost two full days in over the weekend.

With the glass and other stuff out of the back of the Travelall, it’s much easier to start some of the preventative maintenance I’ve wanted to do to the rear frame and crossmembers. Saturday afternoon I lifted the rear bench seat out and pulled up the plywood floor. Then I put on some ear protection, fired up the compressor and the needle scaler, and got to work. Starting from the back I took as much scale off the unpainted metal as I could find, making my way to an area over the rear axle. Then I brushed on Rust Converter to everything I’d cleared and let it sit. I started around 4 and finished when the sun was setting, so there’s still a lot more to do—and I haven’t even touched the underside yet—but it’s already looking much better under there.

Reorganizing the garage a bit, I stumbled across an extra box of weatherstripping and realized it was doing me no good here. So I put it up on Marketplace and got a pretty immediate response from a guy in Washington, who was also interested in my old brake booster until I did the research and learned it would be something like $80 to ship it out to him in Washington. So the windshield gasket is on its way to him, and the brake booster remains in the Heavy Metal corner of the garage next to the old starters, spare Dana 20, and other stuff.

A brake has been instrumental to the plans I drew up for the doors on the seat base, because I wanted to bend a quarter-inch of metal along the edges on the three sides to add structural stability and make it look better. My Harbor Freight brake is woefully unprepared to bend 18 ga. metal at the measurement I need. On Sunday I met up with Bennett over at our friend Brian’s shop to get a couple of projects done. Bennett was there to clean up the carburetor on his Hudson project as well as tinker with Heavy D, which has been sitting there for several months waiting for a windshield replacement. I was there to use the heavy-duty finger brake Brian inherited with the pole barn shop on his property.

I started messing with the brake and putting a couple of scrap pieces through it to learn how it worked and where the sweet spot was. There was only one finger clamp on it, so the first long section of metal I bent didn’t stay still and bent unevenly. I took a break, had a donut, and Bennett suggested looking around the shop for the other fingers. I found them along the back wall and installed three of the fattest I could find, then put another long test sheet through. When those results looked much better, I marked out some new metal and started bending. We had to do some creative adjustment to the brake, because the bending plate was so close to the lever plate it wouldn’t release the metal when I’d bent the second side. This involved unscrewing the plate from the bottom to release my metal, but it worked. After I got two doors bent and test-fitted, I helped Bennett mess around with Heavy D, got it started for the first time in forever, and installed a choke cable before we both headed for home.

Back at the house, I investigated how I could bend the short edge with the tools on hand. I’ve got a cheap wide vise I bought from Harbor Freight back in the day, and after some testing I realized I could bend the width I needed with that and a pair of vise-grips blocked into place, keeping the entire width of the metal on basically the same plane. After making the initial bend, I had to hammer the center sections flatter with a combination of deadblow hammer, wood blocks, and metal scraps. When I had it flat and straight, I welded the corners up, cleaned them up with the flap disc, and trimmed the length of each to allow for the width of the hinge knuckles.

When those were in place, I tacked the hinges in place and test fit the doors; all my cuts looked good. So I flipped the hinges, cut some tack holes in the doors, and welded those into place. If I had to do it over again, I’d have put the weld on the underside, but I think it looks pretty good either way.

So the doors are in place, and next I need to cut and install a pair of stops opposite the hinge side for the doors to sit on. I’m going to wait until the locks come in next week so that I can design around those. I was originally going to cap off that gap in the middle, but now I’m considering adding a plate underneath to make it a shallow tool well to utilize some dead space.

The other thing I spent a bunch of time looking for last week was a hinge of the proper size for mounting the seat to the box. The hinges on the seat base are beefy; the pin is 3/8″ in diameter and the knuckles are thick. I found a lot of hinges with the right pin size but nothing with a leaf the proper length—the interlocking sections of the hinge I’ve got are 1.5″ wide, and most industrial hinges I’ve found with that pin size are only 1″. While I was at Brian’s, I was looking at his scrap pile and found a beefy hinge with a 3/8″ pin and a 2″x2″ leaf—exactly what I had been looking for. I texted Brian about it and he told me to take it with me.

Monday I had off for Columbus Day, so I got back outside and kept rolling. First I cut two hinges down to the right size, trimmed the knuckle widths, and test fit them on the box. When I liked what I saw, I tacked them in and fit them to the seat. With that confirmation I burned them both into place and cleaned up the welds. The plates will get two bolts through the square tube for extra structural support, but I like where things are sitting (literally) now.

Then I got out the needle scaler and wire wheel and continued working on the chassis while I had the rear floor out. Before finishing up for the day, I brushed on some Rust Encapsulator. I’ll finish coat it with chassis black when it’s all ready, but there’s a lot more to go.

Meanwhile, I’ve tried removing old upholstery adhesive on the vertical surfaces with every chemical I can think of and a rubber eraser wheel with no success. Frustrated, I tried a small patch with the wire wheel and found that with a very light touch I could get most of the old crust off without going through the paint to metal—there are a few places where the paint is very light—but it mostly came off with little damage. I was always going to respray the inside anyway, so I’m not worried about patchy areas. It’s nice to have that stuff cleaned up, for sure. I’m going to see if Hobo Freight sells a plastic bristle wheel for an angle grinder and see if that’s more gentle on the paint.

Posted on October 9, 2023 | by bill | Leave a Comment | Posted in Friends, Seats, Travelall, Welding

Road Trip Parts Haul

When I first posted on the Binder Planet about the red bus, I got a lot of good feedback and an offer from a nice man up in Massachussetts to come get a Traveall rear bench seat that was taking up space in his barn. Filing that away in the back of my head, I kept an eye out for seating that was closer to home, but it’s rare on the ground pretty much anywhere east of the Mississippi and north of Georgia. When I got back from Nats I reached back out to him, and a plan was hatched. He followed up with more pictures of stuff he’d dug out of his barn, including a front bench and a bunch of smaller parts. We settled on a date and a price, and I made plans to swing up there for a pickup.

I rented a 7-passenger SUV figuring I wouldn’t know how big all this stuff was, and I’d never fit it in the CR-V—plus, I wanted modern amenities and CarPlay to get me through New York City. This was probably the best decision I made on the whole trip. Hertz gave me a shiny silver Ford Explorer with three rows of seats, and it took me a couple panicked minutes before I figured out how to fold everything flat. Once we got it back to the house, I threw some tools, tarps and bags in the back and Finn and I hit the road. We were smart enough to get up and past New York City by 1PM, which put us in a strange dead area of Conneticut north of Stamford trying to find something to eat. We found a Chipolte and powered up, then got back on the road eastward.

I-95 through Conneticut is a disaster. It’s two lanes with a very picturesque view of the Sound to the south, but everyone is driving at 15 miles an hour for no visible reason for pretty much the length of the state. Once we’d gotten past New Haven it opened up a bit, but that was pretty frustrating. I’d found a cheap-ass motel in Stonington, CT over the border from Rhode Island, but when I was looking I didn’t realize its proximity to Mystic, which we had to drive through to get to our destination. We checked in to the room to find it about one step above an hourly hot-sheet truck stop, grimly left our stuff on the desk inside the door, and went back into Mystic to walk around the town.

Mystic is beautiful and quaint and filled with touristy shops selling either expensive local jewelry, expensive preppy boating clothes, expensive beachwear, or expensive gift items. Peppering the storefronts there were very busy bars and restaurants, and the streets were filled with people. We parked a few blocks off main street and walked our way back in, looking through all the stores that caught Finn’s eye. On our way back outside we heard the bell for the drawbridge ring so we walked up and watched them raise it with huge concrete counterweights to let river traffic pass. It was a beautiful place to walk off some of the road. Finn was tired at that point so we jumped back in the car and headed back to the hotel room to hang out before going to sleep. You can tell you’re in a quality establishment when the A/C is running at 65˚ but the room is still damp and smells like mildew.

Saturday morning we drove back into Mystic to get a bite of breakfast and hit the road for Rhode Island. Ray, the seller, was meeting us at a shopping center and we pulled in right behind him. We shook hands hello and loaded up the Explorer with all of the parts (surprisingly, it all fit neatly inside) and then shot the breeze for about 45 minutes. Ray is super cool and we traded IH stories for a while, then said our goodbyes so I could hit the road.

Here’s the back of the Explorer stuffed with rusty parts.

On the way back West I swung up into Mahopac and we stopped to get some lunch with my High School friend Jeff at a cafe in town. It was great to see him and catch up; that alone would have made the trip worthwhile. By 3PM the cafe was closing and I knew we had to hit the road, so we said goodbye and pointed the Ford south. With one stop in Delaware and a half an hour of heavy rain in New Jersey we made it back to the house by 8PM with a little over 900 miles added to the odometer.

I stashed it all in the garage after we got home and vacuumed out the back of the Explorer to avoid any cleaning fees. Overall the Ford was a perfect road trip vehicle; we got 29.5 MPG the whole way, and I never once had a problem with the technology or the car itself. (Five stars! Would recommend).

This is the contents of a box of parts, spread out. From top left: Two panels for the doors that go behind the main door cards. The blue rails go on the seat bases—these are the seat tracks. The two rusty gear/spring assemblies are extra hood hinges. The black geared arm at the bottom is a window scissor mechanism.

From the other box of spares, starting in the upper left: a spare rearview mirror, two short and one long door mechanisms. In the center are the ashtray for the back of the bench seat, two door lock assemblies, and the smaller red piece is a door catch. The two red L-shaped pieces bottom left are lower hinges for the barn doors, and two door lock assemblies.

This is an extra set of door cards for front and rear Travelall doors. The fronts are drilled for a set of armrests, something my truck doesn’t have. At this point I’ve now got three fronts and two rears. One full set will get bead blasted and painted the correct IH interior color.

This odd item is the platform the rear seat sits on and hinges forward from. It’s in rough shape, so I may not be able to use it. You can see how the piping is bent on the ends—I may not be able to pull that back out. That black rubberized coating is giving me PTSD flashbacks.

This is the worst part. What I’ll probably do is take measurements from this and build a newer, stronger box from square tubing, then enclose that with a hinged lid for tool storage, using this video as my inspiration.

Ray zip-tied the two seat catches to the base here—these bolt on to the wheel wells and hold the rear setback in place. I don’t have these and my truck was never drilled for them.

These are two spare rear barn door windows with used gasketry. I’m sure I could have new ones cut, but it’s great to have originals on hand instead. (The line on the left side is a reflection of our telephone wire).

Here’s where it gets interesting. These are two front bench seatbacks. The top one is complete with vinyl upholstery, but it’s disintegrating. The bottom is just the frame and springs, all in one piece. The square in the center is the mount for an ashtray, accessible to the passengers in the back seat. They’re both rusty but complete, and all the hardware is present.

This is the front bench seat bottom. Clearly the driver’s side has seen some wear. It’s torn and the foam is both swollen and disintegrating. I’ll have to replace all of that, which isn’t a huge deal.

Here’s the front and the back seat bases. Both of them are bent (Ray was apologetic) but I can use the back one for a template and I think I can straighten out the front. Again, I don’t have any of this stuff, so I’m just happy for the spares.

Here’s the rear seat, with a closeup of the material color. When I talk with Jeff J. about replacement material, I’ll have to see if he can match this pattern, because I kind of dig it. This bench is all in one piece, although it’s pretty worn; once I understand how to rebuild the front seat I’ll move on to this one. For now, I could install this in the truck as-is and it would probably work fine. The hinges and pins are present and the scissor works just fine.

While I was in Mystic I got a call from Jim at Super Scouts, who told me a bench seat he’d heard of and gone to recover was actually that of a D series; I thanked him for the info and told him about the brake distribution block. I’m still searching for a replacement, and the guys at IHPA are supposed to get back to me sometime this week. With that, I’m stalled on the mechanical stuff, so I’ll probably reorganize the garage to fit these bench seats and start cleaning up the skeleton frame for paint.

Posted on July 16, 2023 | by bill | Leave a Comment | Posted in Friends, Purchasing, Seats, Travelall, Trip Logs