Category: Progress

Butterflies

One of the long-standing tasks on my priority list has been to pull out and replace the wing windows on the Travelall. The windows I inherited were both delaminated and cloudy around the edges, which was looking pretty trashy as I cleaned up the rest of the truck. Over the course of the last couple years I sourced several sets of replacements, but the big issue was breaking down each door to swap them in. This last week I decided I was going to tackle the job.

I started with the passenger side, pulling the knobs, door cards and hardware off, then disconnecting the scissor mechanism from the window and pulling that out. As I got to this point I was cursing myself for not having done this when I was installing the new felts. The process goes something like this:

  • Pull the knobs and door cards off.
  • Detach the window from the scissors, and roll the scissors up.
  • Unscrew one screw from the top of the rear rail (directly below the window frame).
  • Detach the rear rail from the bottom of the door, and pull it down and out of the door.
  • Move the felt backwards out of the way.
  • Push the window down and out of the way.
  • Carefully pry the window rubber out of the channel at the top and bottom rear of the window, and along the A pillar about 2″ from the top and bottom, until you can see the four screws holding it into the door frame.
  • Unscrew those bolts.
  • You should now be able to pull the wing window frame backwards until it clears the top channel, at which time you can pull it out of the door.

The passenger side went in with little difficulty, and I realized I didn’t need to pull the main window out to complete the process. When that was done, I used some glass cleaner to ease the rubber back into the channel, and the new window looked a million times better.

Friday afternoon I tackled the driver’s side, and understanding exactly what needed to be done, the job was shorter. Both sides look fantastic now, and the wing window on the driver’s side will stay open in the breeze (it was very loose before and no amount of adjustment would fix this).

Saturday I crawled under the truck and did two quick jobs: I installed heat matting on the underside of the floor around the muffler, which was making the rear floor exceptionally hot. I didn’t have to do much prep—the undercoating was about as clean as it could possibly be, and after scraping some grease left over from the U-joint and wiping it with brake cleaner, I covered the floorpan from front to back.

The other thing I did while I was down there was to tighten the emergency brake cable, which was loose but functional; now it’s tighter and has less give. All of these things make me feel much better.

 

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

Workday

I organized a workday with my local truck buds while Jen was down at her Dad’s house on Saturday, and I think we did really well with the projects we wanted to tackle. Because of scheduling and timing, I offered up my driveway for the event, which meant we broke the local record for number of Internationals in one place at one time. Bennett pulled up in Heavy D with a plan to drop the driver’s side gas tank, which has been peeing Peer-Pressure style for the last couple of months. David drove his ’68 pickup over—the longest he’s driven it on the road so far—with a loose plan to tackle a couple of different projects. My intention was to swap a new power steering pump into Peer Pressure to try to fix a constant leak.

After our customary shoot-the-breeze over donuts, we all got to work. Bennett got me started on the pump and then moved to Heavy D, while David started cutting metal to fabricate a set of tank straps. I was able to get the pump out pretty easily (save one mount, which uses a bushing to surround the bolt) and used a $20 Amazon tool to get the pulley off the old pump and press it on to the new one. With that done, it was simple to re-install, fill the reservoir, prime, and do a test run. There were no leaks, and I called it good.

Meanwhile, Bennett had to pull his driver-side fender off to get to a couple of the bolts to his tank, but once that was done, dropping it went quickly—so fast that I didn’t get the chance to help him out. He and I then hooked up my timing tools to David’s pickup and using his ears, the RPM meter, and a vacuum gauge, he was able to smooth out the idle and make the engine run much better.

We had a little less luck on Darth Haul; without a timing light (I have purchased two from H-F and they have both died quickly) it’s hard to get the idle correct, but we used the same combination of vacuum and RPM to try to smooth out and lower the idle speed. I’m getting a lot of dieseling at shutdown, and I suspect that maybe the plugs are too hot, which will be the next thing I check.

Bennett had to take off at that point, so David and I ran to get a slice of pizza, and then I got him set up with my MIG welder to assemble his tank straps. I gave him the basic instructions and put the first one together, then handed him the welder. He was really psyched to get some practice after I had the settings dialed in, and when he finished, we ground the welds down to make the metal as smooth as possible.

By that point it was a little before 5PM, so I loaded some tools into Darth and followed him back to his house, just to make sure he got there OK. I also got some half-decent footage of two red Internationals on the road together, which was pretty cool.

Posted on   |   by bill   |   Leave a Comment on Workday  |  Posted in Friends, Travelall, Welding

Still Wheely Unbalanced

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. Update: My taillights are 6″ wide, so my dreams of a sealed LED have been dashed for now.

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.

Posted on   |   by bill   |   Leave a Comment on Still Wheely Unbalanced  |  Posted in Electrical, To-Do List, Travelall

Re-Ignition

Good news: the Travelall is running again. I did a quick inventory to see how many ignition switches I’ve got, and it turned out I have five. One from the original truck, one from the replacement harness, one from the green truck, one from the Scout 800, and one NIB unit. The switch I was using was the one from the replacement harness, which had worked fine up until this problem. When I pulled it out the other day, the lock barrel was spinning freely inside the switch, which meant that nothing was making a connection inside the switch to send signals to the truck. Last weekend I went over to the 800 in storage, pulled the NIB lock barrel I’d put in that, and brought it back to the bench to swap in the lock barrel I have a key for. Putting it in the truck, it started, but something inside was sticking, keeping the starter grinding, and pulling the key back killed the engine.

Locksets

So I went through the other switches. I cleaned rust off the connection blades off the Scout 800 switch, scrubbed it with electrical degreaser, and shot it full of WD-40.  The barrel went in perfectly, and the truck fired up and ran without a hitch. This switch is probably the original USA-made unit from 1967, was sitting out in a field for 15+ years, and worked flawlessly. The new unit I bought seems to be faulty, which tracks with a lot of comments I’ve been hearing about the quality of new parts lately.

Out on the road, the truck ran fine—she was upset because she hadn’t been run up in two weeks, so I had to warm her up—but once we were moving she was fine. I’m still getting a ferocious wobble at about 55mph, which I haven’t tracked down yet. I put a camera on the passenger rear tire, which looked pretty steady; I’m going to put cameras on the other three tires this weekend to see if I can pin down the source.

Scout II Fuel line diag ram

This weekend I’m going to pull the rear wheel off the Scout and see if I can sort out the evap/emissions gear in the rear passenger fender; I’d pulled it all out when we swapped the poly tank in 15 years ago like a dummy, but looking it over on the bench and comparing to the service manual, it’s clear some yee-haw got in there and butchered the original connections. I bought some new fittings and fuel hose from ACE last weekend, and I’m going to attempt to re-install the system the way the manual specifies. I’m actually considering dropping the tank completely to re-install the sender gasket; we’ll see how ambitious I feel tomorrow.

I’m also going to shoot the entire steering box/pump with oven cleaner to degrease the entire unit so that I can figure out where it’s leaking from—and pin down my next steps for that issue. New boxes are $600 before shipping, so if it’s something simpler than that, I’d be very happy. But I doubt it. Thankfully I’ve got a spare in the garage for the core charge.

Posted on   |   by bill   |   Leave a Comment on Re-Ignition  |  Posted in Electrical, Future Plans

12 Volts

The fuel gauge on the Scout has been annoying me since I bought the truck seventeen years ago.  I took some time last weekend to jump the connection from the sender directly to the gauge, bypassing the voltage regulator, and found that the gauge does work correctly—which means the issue is behind the dashboard somewhere. Next, I tested the voltage regulators on all of my spare oil/temp gauges, and as far as I can tell they’re working correctly. Tracing the wire from the gauge back to its next stop at the harness, I pulled the bulkhead connector off the firewall and found that it was full of garbage—tar and rust, which had made its way inside from the ‘sealing’ job the previous owner did at some point. So I cleaned all the contacts. With a new fuel/amp gauge installed (this one with bright orange needles and UNLEADED FUEL ONLY added under the other text) I turned the key and got….nothing.

So I figure there’s a break in the wire somewhere between the sender and the gauge, or a bad connection in the bulkhead connector. My next move will be to test continuity between the endpoints and see where the break is, then try to fix that issue.

While I had the dash broken down, I cleaned all the contact areas on the circuit boards I could reach, and replaced the bluish LED bulbs I originally installed with newer, whiter bulbs. After buttoning the dash back up I was rewarded with a fully lighted set of gauges—before this I only had two bulbs working on the speedo cluster, and a left turn signal indicator. Now I’ve got everything back, which is a relief—including my right turn signal indicator! (now I just have to break the wheel down and fix the canceling cam).

And while I was messing around under the dash, I spied pigtails coming out of the courtesy light harnesses and decided to test one with the existing door light switch on the passenger side. I put a test wire on it and when that actually worked, I decided to fix both sides. Someone had swapped in light harnesses with pole-style connectors, so I snipped those off and added blades to fit the ends of the main wiring harness. The driver’s door switch had been mangled long ago so I drilled and tapped a new hole for a used switch from the green truck and wired it in. And as mentioned earlier, I assembled a dome light for the rollbar from a new LED light, a length of wire, and a special automotive pigtail sourced at Nats. Feeding the wire down the rollbar, through the speaker hole, over the wheel well and into the rear taillight housing, I connected it to the factory dome light lead. Now, opening either door turns on the two under-dash courtesy lights and the dome light, which makes getting in and out of the truck in the dark much easier.

I swapped the second of the two LED dome lights I bought in at the back of the Travelall, and that brightened the area up by a factor of five. I’ve got some switches coming to replace the ancient ones that came in the truck, and I’m going to design some new 3D-printed housings for each light to clean things up.

Posted on   |   by bill   |   Leave a Comment on 12 Volts  |  Posted in Electrical

Re-Organization

Memorial Weekend was damp and rainy, so I wasn’t able to do much outside, but I did take advantage of the time to re-re-re-organize in the garage. After erecting a set of racks for my Home Depot totes and immediately filling them all a few months ago, I quickly realized I needed another stack. So I cobbled together the rest of my spare lumber and put a second stack together, which required moving a bunch of other crap out of the way. By the end of Saturday I’d built and filled the new stack, raised the old kitchen cabinets on the back wall higher, moved the fridge underneath that, moved the second pair of spare Scout doors out under the back porch, and shifted a bunch of other stuff around to make more room. Then I consolidated some of the parts in the tubs and updated my parts spreadsheet so more common items are together. There’s still a long way to go, but I can get to it all much easier.

On the trucks, I did dumb puttery stuff like install the V7 cupholder (verdict: perfect!), swap the refinished passenger fender onto the truck to church it up for Nats, and tightened both fenders down securely. I pulled a bunch of parts down out of the attic to see if there’s any interest in Ohio—this is stuff they’re not currently reproducing—and stuffed them into a bin for the trip. And the floor is bolted down with more hardware.

I’ve been chasing the issue with the fuel gauge for a couple of weeks now. I tested the sender and found that it was sending, as well as the gauge behind the dashboard. Doing some more digging, I realized there’s another thing I hadn’t considered: I most likely fried the voltage regulator when I was welding on the truck in the fall of 2024—the same thing that fried the condenser on the distributor. I pulled the original off the truck and swapped in a used spare from the green truck, but that did nothing. The Jungle site overnighted me a new one, and after swapping it and the original blackface gauge back in, I was rewarded with a working unit again! Now I just have to drive it around for awhile with a jerry can in the back until I understand what it considers empty and full.

Friday evening I got a message on the Binder Planet from a guy in South Carolina who read the site here and was wondering if I still had any spare Kayline hardware in my collection. After trading some messages and an email, I sent him pictures of what I had and we struck up a deal. He’s one of the rare examples of someone who has an intact canvas top but only some of the mounting gear—I’ve come across piles of hardware made obsolete because the canvas was shredded. Along the way I’ve rescued a number of these spares, and I was happy to pass them along to him. I made a sturdy box out of some spare cardboard and shipped it off to him Tuesday afternoon.

Posted on   |   by bill   |   Leave a Comment on Re-Organization  |  Posted in Electrical, Future Plans, Travelall

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.

Posted on   |   by bill   |   Leave a Comment on Ruminating  |  Posted in Friends, Seat Belts, Travelall

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.

Posted on   |   by bill   |   Leave a Comment on We May Have This Beat  |  Posted in Brakes, Purchasing, Travelall

Quick Update

Lots to write about, but not much time this morning:

  1. The Travelall brakes are still broke. I believe it’s the master cylinder at this point, so I’ve ordered a new one from Rock Auto, which should be here Wednesday. I replaced the entire hardline setup last week as well as the softline on the passenger side (which I’d overlooked two years ago).
  2. The 800 is not starting. I tested it from the key forward, and the coil is getting power but is hot to the touch, which tells me it’s toast. So I’ve got a new coil coming this week as well.
  3. Peer Pressure, as usual, is running like a top. There’s a whine from the power steering pump, which is leaking slowly, and the exhaust on the passenger side needs to be tightened again, but she made it over and back from Chestertown with zero issues. She is my rock.
  4. Project Slowflake is making progress! I spent two days with Brian mounting the power unit to the transmission (the custom aluminum adapter plates are SEXXXXXXY), welding supports up to the front battery tray, and re-configuring the PMU location for the thirteenth time—but we got it sorted. Stay tuned for updates there as well.

This video is two weeks behind, but should begin to catch up on the progress:

Posted on   |   by bill   |   2 Comments on Quick Update  |  Posted in Brakes, EV Swap, Friends, Scout 800, Travelall