Category: Progress

Welding and Steering

On Saturday I got back out to the truck in the afternoon following a yard sale and continued metalwork on the truck. I had to finish welding in the floor plate first, which felt like it took more time than last Sunday, then grind down the welds on top and underneath. I was happy to see I had good weld penetration when I was down under the truck, though it makes for tired arms when you’re grinding upside-down for a half an hour.

Then I started cutting smaller sections out of the toeboard that had rusted through, including a triangle-shaped area on the A-pillar. I cut a section of new metal, got that welded in to the toeboard area, and ground it smooth, finishing up as it was getting dark.

Sunday morning I got up, walked the dog, and drove up to Frederick to pick up a steering column from another Travelall, sold by a guy I’d met last year. He’s grafted a Crown Victoria front suspension and Ranger rear on to his ’68, lowering the whole thing onto airbags and tubbing out the rear tires. It’s really cool, even if it isn’t my cup of tea. His work is really nice (he’s a bodyman), and it’s going to be a sweet truck when he’s done.

The column he sold me is a column-shift unit, which may work for what I need and may not. I think I can cobble together one good column out of the two and probably sell the steering wheel at Nats to make some money back. The plan is to get an electric steering unit from a Toyota Corolla and splice it into the column.

I had errands to run after lunch, so by the time I got back outside it was 3PM and I didn’t want to drag all of the welding gear out for just one hour. So I filled the compressor tank, busted out the needle scaler, and cleaned off the frame and undercarriage all the way up to the front axle. By 5PM I had the frame coated with Encapsulator as well as most of the underside of the body shell. That was extremely satisfying. Next it’ll all get a coat of chassis black and then the body will get a coat of undercoating.

Posted on   |   by bill   |   Leave a Comment on Welding and Steering  |  Posted in Repairs, Travelall, Welding

Welding Projects

The worst rust on this truck, besides the stuff I cleaned up on the roof, was in the passenger footwell. As a result of the same leaks that doomed the cowl and heater box, water got in and sat on the metal under the passenger’s floormat, collecting mainly at the diagonal seam from the tunnel. At some point the PO had fixed the same issue on the driver’s side by hacking a hole out of the floor and welding a crude patch over top, then covering it with some kind of bizarre rubberized material.

Knowing my gas tank was mostly empty, and because it’s only hooked up to the gas feed, I figured this was the best time to attack the rust. I jacked up the passenger side of the truck at three points on the frame and secured it with jackstands. The tank is held in place by a pair of clever straps that secure to two captive bolts on the underside of the body, and one came free easily, while the other captive bolt broke off from its weld. After I cut that loose and disconnected the hoses up front, the tank dropped out easily. I was surprised to find an access hole directly above the sender unit, which should be very helpful down the road. I was shocked to find I’d dropped the tank in under an hour.

I pulled the tank aside and looked over the floor situation. Starting with the area at the front, I cut out the rust that looked the worst, making a rough rectangle with a triangle-shaped section following the seam at the upper left. The body mount and frame mount underneath both looked like they were in great shape, and the metal underneath everything was in factory-fresh condition. I hated to cut a lot of it out, but I wanted to get as much good stuff in there as possible.

When I’d squared off and cleaned up the edges, I cut some cardboard out and carefully made a template to work from. This took some time, because the open area was deceivingly complex in shape.

When I had that sorted, I pulled a sheet of 18 ga. metal from my stash and cut the pattern out. With a bunch of trimming and fitting, I had it ready to go in by about 4PM. Being careful to take my time, I tacked the edges in slowly using butt welds. The section along the rocker got welded from the underside where the good metal was; I didn’t want to cut the raised section out because I can’t replicate that, so I’m taking a chance and keeping it. All of this is going to be treated as heavily as possible with rust encapsulator/undercoating, so I’m hoping I can halt any new rust from forming in the future.

By 5PM it was getting dark so I shut things down after a preliminary sweep with the flap disc. I’m kind of shocked at how much I was able to get done in one day’s time; the process went really smoothly and I’m a lot more confident in my basic fabrication skills, as well as welding.

The other quick thing I tackled was to weld a second set of tabs in on the seat lockbox so that I can drill holes and mount that in permanently. I’m going to clean up the chipped rattle-can paint and hit it with the clear coat just to protect it a little better, but I’d like to finish that up in preparation for the seats later this winter.

One thing I need to upgrade is my safety glass situation. Running the cutting wheel early in the day with my safety glasses on, I got a couple small pieces of debris in my right eye for the second week in a row. After fishing that stuff out I found a pair of old goggles and wore those for the rest of the day, but there’s got to be a better solution. If I’m going to be grinding this much I need a full-coverage set of prescription goggles.

The other thing that was nice was that my $1 yard sale iPod Nano has a built-in radio receiver, which meant I was able to listen to the Ravens game wearing goggles, ear protection, a dust mask, and my glasses on.

Posted on   |   by bill   |   9 Comments on Welding Projects  |  Posted in Welding

Heater Box

Yesterday I got a late start on the red bus after I had a little trouble with the Scout. I’d driven her to get a haircut and pick up some new bolts for the heater box, and she started immediately in the driveway. When I came back out after the trim, she wouldn’t start. I was a little nervous because Jen was already on the road to Southern Maryland and I was on my own. First I checked for gas, and sure enough I was getting plenty of that in the carburetor. The air filter was clean so I knew that wasn’t the problem. My next thought was that maybe the coil had died so I pulled the spare out of my recovery box and swapped it in quickly. I still wasn’t getting the motor to catch so I did what I should’ve done first and pull the cap and rotor off to check the points. Sure enough, there was corrosion around all of the contacts on the inside of the cap, so I cleaned those off with sandpaper and the top of the rotor.

Replacing everything, I squirted a little fluid in the carb, crossed my fingers and tried starting it. At first she didn’t want to catch, but after about five seconds, she slowly caught and began running. I let her idle for a couple of minutes and then turned her off and started her again to test it out. Thankfully she started right back up. So I continued running errands for the rest of the morning and came home. I have no idea why she would have run so well in the morning but not after she’d warmed up and dried out.

Saturday’s goal was to get the heater box installed in the red bus. After some finagling with the box itself, I connected the cable from the dashboard to the passenger vent, which took a little bit of time because I couldn’t find the retainer clip that went on the chimney. I went through three of my bins before I found a tall plastic container marked “Random Travelall Bolts”. I spread those out on the table and found the clip I was looking for. With that installed, I put the box in place and used three new bolts to mount it to the firewall firmly. Then I made a mess on the driveway hooking the coolant hoses back up. I hooked up the leads to the heater box and tested those out to the switch on the dash; it turns out that switch system is keyed to the ignition, so with the ignition off, it doesn’t work. But the blower motor does fire up, so that’s another electrical question solved.

Next, I took the heater plenum, mounted that back up to the box and attached the defrost cable to the dash control. All of the cables are pretty crusty so it took some WD-40 and some effort to get those to work a little better. Both of the heater hoses are 60 years old and pretty dry rotted so I’m going to have to buy some new hose to hook up to the defrost vents.

Because I don’t want to pay $50 for two small door clips I went to the garage and pulled OEM clips out of my second set of Scout doors. While I had the passenger door free I pulled the wing window assembly out, which is in almost perfect working condition, and swapped it for the less-than-perfect replacement in Peer Pressure. It took all of about 1/2 hour and went extremely smoothly. I dunked the clips in Evaporust overnight and sprayed them with Rust-Stop.

Then I worked on the driver’s side door lock to try to figure out why it didn’t unlatch from the inside, and why the lock cylinder still fell out of the lock. The passenger side worked as it should—I could lock and unlock the door and the cylinder stayed in the lock on that side, but crucially, the inside and outside doorhandles worked the way they were supposed to on that door. There was something wrong with the driver side door mechanism that I wasn’t able to figure out.

So I pulled the spare green driver’s door out of the garage, laid it on the table, and continued disassembling it. I started this process back in March, but the weather got warm pretty fast and I put it aside for outside work. Continuing where I left off, in about an hour, I was able to get the entire door stripped down. I put the door latch mechanism back in to test out how the key worked with the rest of the system; it’s a lot more complicated than the one on the Scout and I couldn’t figure out how the key mechanism interacted with the door latch to stop the door latch from working.

Sunday morning I walked the dog and took care of some small errands before getting back outside; it was another beautiful day so it felt great to spend it outside. The first thing I worked on was the driver’s door; I realized pretty quickly that the rod on the back of the lock never made it into the mechanism and thus was spinning freely. D’oh! Once I set it in place, the lock worked exactly as designed, and I felt a lot better. I swapped the refurbished clip in on the passenger side and verified that both doors lock and unlock from each side.

Then I padded the top of the truck and pulled the canopy down carefully. I was hesitant to do this, but I’m going to need as much light as I can get under there, and I can’t have the canopy up forever. The top of the truck really looks good in the sunlight; it’s great to see my work clearly for the first time.

(the water hadn’t dried completely in the photo above)

I put some gas in the carb and fired the engine up for as long as that lasted; she turned over immediately. I really can’t wait to get the fuel system buttoned up for good, but I think I’m going to drop the tank this winter and weld some new metal in on the passenger floor while it’s empty.

I spent the rest of the day farting around with some small stuff; now that the canopy is down I have to finish up the weatherstripping. So I pulled the old rubber off the driver’s door and ran a nylon brush around the perimeter to clean off all the old adhesive, then hit it with some red Rust-Stop. When that’s cured for 24 hours I’ll put new rubber around the perimeter of the door to seal things up.

The biggest win was finding out why the turn signals stopped working: I pulled the instrument panel and found that one of the leads to the temp gauge had come off when I was messing with the bulkhead connectors. Hooking that back up, I got signals back, and I felt immensely better about that situation. So: progress on a couple of fronts that I’m feeling really good about.

Posted on   |   by bill   |   Leave a Comment on Heater Box  |  Posted in Electrical, Progress, Travelall

Matte

Sunday morning I got out on the truck and got to work on some outstanding projects. The first was to finish mounting the mirror brackets with some rubber under the flat sections that touch the doors. When that was sorted out on both sides, I got the door panels prepped and ready for clearcoat. I had done some research and moved from the brand I was recommended at the Sherwin-Williams store, which only came in satin, to Duplicolor, which would provide the dull finish the original parts came with—and was considerably less expensive, especially when shipped through Amazon.

The clearcoat went on very easily and flashed quickly; when it was dry to the touch it looked exactly like I wanted it to: there’s barely any shine to the matte finish, which is exactly how the original panels looked. The heater box also looks great, and I’ll give it a couple of days to cure solid before I start reassembly.

I took some time to pull the locks in both doors and clean up the openings for a spray of rattle-can red. I have two new lock tumblers on order which should slot right into these barrels, and that way I can lock both doors from the outside.

Then I went to the barn doors to try and diagnose why the passenger side door won’t close properly. After some investigation I noticed that the bottom hinge was swinging inwards toward the door and preventing it from closing completely. I took some time to loosen the bolts on the hinges and eventually pulled both hinges outwards as far as they would go before tightening everything back up. Then I ground the corner of the hinge that was making contact with the door and tested things out: it closed up much easier than it had before.

With that done, did some more investigating under the dashboard to test out the existing wiper motor on the truck at this point I was pretty tired and wasn’t thinking as clearly as I could have been so I don’t think I was testing it properly. Realizing I had met my limitations for the day, I cleaned things up and made it inside by 5:30.

Posted on   |   by bill   |   Leave a Comment on Matte  |  Posted in Paint

New Gray

It was a pretty quiet weekend here, but I’m still trying to get warm-weather things done before the cold weather hits. I did some work on the door cards I got up in Massachussetts to get them ready for paint. They were covered in about three inches of grease and dirt, so I played a hunch and used Easy-Off oven cleaner to clean them off. When I had all the crud removed I could see where the rust lived. Originally I was going to sandblast them but I figured that would take forever, so I just used the wire wheel to remove all of the bad stuff. Meanwhile I covered the back sides with Rust Converter to keep them clean.

Friday afternoon I went to the local Sherwin Williams Automotive and had them match and mix a quart of base color from the beat-up original door panel on the truck. I had them match from the area behind the door escutcheon, which hadn’t been dulled by UV rays over 60 years. After some back and forth I used some of their paint matching chips to get as close as possible in the sunlight out in front of the store. The best price I could get was on a quart of base coat in satin, which is going to need a final clearcoat at some point in the future. But the difference being roughly $200, I was happy to go with the more inexpensive option.

On Sunday morning, I cleaned everything off with acetone and got my table ready to shoot everything. All four panels needed two light coats for good coverage—the base was a lot thinner than the other paint I’ve been shooting.

Then I shot the heater box and heater cover. Everything flashed very quickly and within two hours was more than dry to the touch.

I hung all four-door cards on the truck to keep them out of the way and make sure they didn’t get scratched up in the garage.

Meanwhile, I was working on new mounts for the west coast mirrors. What I decided was to mount these using existing holes in the doors. There were, over time, about four different mirror installations on the truck, one of them being perfect for the mirrors I have. I bought four regular steel bolts and pushed them through the back sides of the doors to weld in place. Then I ground the backsides down as much as possible to give clearance for the weatherstripping and doors.

The passenger side still needed to be worked on: all the old holes had to be ground out and welded over like I did on the driver’s side. Then I cleaned those up, feathered some filler over them, and sanded it smooth. As of Sunday evening, both mirrors are hung on each door with a quick coat of basic rattle can red over everything.

The Sherwin Williams guy told me about some inexpensive clear coat I could get on Amazon much cheaper than in his store, so I’ve got that in my cart for next weekend. It’s a satin finish so it won’t be as dull as the original cards, but if it protects everything I’m not going to complain. And when the heater box is finished, I can reinstall that and get more of the stuff under the dash completed, which is one of the fall projects on my list.

Posted on   |   by bill   |   Leave a Comment on New Gray  |  Posted in Paint, Travelall

Painting and Maintenance

I think the roof project on the Travelall is done. I scuffed and wet-sanded the first coat of paint on Sunday with 1500 grit paper, which basically knocked the shine down. From there I hit it with a tack cloth and prepped the tent for shooting paint. Because I was so wiped out from a trip to my FiL’s place on Saturday I didn’t really have the energy to do much more—I did re-splice the second wire off the large bulkhead connector to restore my marker lights but not the flashers, and I spent some time sanding and fixing the shitty peeling clearcoat and scratches on the drivers rear quarter panel. Those got a coat of rattle can international red which should keep them covered and protected for the time being.

Monday morning I put the tarps up around the ghetto tent, taped and papered off the entire truck, and got everything ready to shoot the second coat of white paint. I used more of it on the first coat that I had for the second, so I had to be careful in my application. I was able to cover the entire roof starting from the middle section out and I think I got good coverage. I probably could have dialed the gun in a little bit better – if I had a little more paint, I would have dialed it thicker. I think the air/paint mixture was a little too dry, and so it went on with a little more texture than it should have. But the whole thing is covered and I’m happy to have that part of the project behind me. I’m going to see how it weathers over the winter, and if it’s really sloppy and looks bad, I’ll wet sand the whole thing again, buy another can of the paint, and spray a solid second coat over it.

While that was drying, I turned my attention to the Scout. I drove it out of the garage over a tarp and pulled the fill plug out of the transmission. Nothing came out, so I drained the entire case. Then I dug out my fill pump and my last two cans of 50W racing oil. After pumping both of those into the case, it’s pretty clear there wasn’t 3 1/2 quarts still in it—I’m actually quite certain of that. Nobody had 50 weight racing oil around here locally so I ordered some from Amazon, which should be here on Wednesday. The next thing I’ve gotta find is a new PCV valve to replace the one on the truck. If that’s clogged, the pressure inside the crankcase was too high, and it may have blown the seal out of the back end of the transmission. But, I’m going to fill the case and drive it a bit to see if it’s still leaking very badly.

Posted on   |   by bill   |   Leave a Comment on Painting and Maintenance  |  Posted in Paint, Travelall

Regasketed

On Wednesday I had the guy who installed the new (used) passenger side glass come back out to replace the gasket on the driver’s side rear glass. I didn’t have him do it last year because I didn’t have a replacement for the glass, but now that I’ve got spares for each side it was definitely time to get this done. He remembered everything except for the fact that it gets roped in from the inside, but even so the job went quickly and we had it installed in under an hour.

What also helped was the fact that the metal edge was in almost perfect shape all the way around the truck—with the exception of one dime-sized spot of surface rust the entire thing was clean metal. Just to be careful I washed it all down and sprayed the bottom edge with IH red Rust Stop and let it cure overnight.

Posted on   |   by bill   |   Leave a Comment on Regasketed  |  Posted in Progress, Travelall

Shiny White

What you’re seeing there is a coat of Bright White 2-stage auto enamel on the roof of the Travelall about an hour after shooting it last night. Overall it went on very smoothly—I dialed in the gun pretty quickly and had it laying down a clean pattern, but I didn’t use the drywall stilts to move around. They proved to be cheap junk, so they are going back for a refund. I think the paint went on pretty evenly but most likely I’m going to wet-sand the whole thing and shoot the second half of the can on the center section just to be as thorough as possible.

Today (Wednesday) I have the guy from the glass installer coming back to re-install the driver’s side window with a new gasket, so after I’d shot the roof I had Jen help me take out the glass, which went quickly now that we’ve done it four times. The steel around the window edge is in absolutely fantastic shape—I only had to sand rust out of two dime-sized spots. Seriously, it looks like it just rolled out of the factory. I used a nylon sander to remove all the adhesive on the inside edges, washed all of the dirt off the outside edge, and sprayed a coat of IH rattle-can red around the bottom lip. Keep your fingers crossed for a successful installation today. It’s supposed to be 95˚ so hopefully the heat will be on our side.

Posted on   |   by bill   |   Leave a Comment on Shiny White  |  Posted in Paint, Travelall