For years I’ve joked that my truck is blurple—more blue than purple, but definitely not just blue. I suppose it could have been even more, uh, dynamic than it is.
Category: Progress
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Quick Update
Lots to write about, but not much time this morning:
- 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).
- 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.
- 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.
- 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:
Broken Brakes
Sometimes you have a workday where everything seems to fall in place and work correctly, and sometimes you finish the day where it feels like nothing was accomplished. This weekend was mostly the latter. I spent just about the entire weekend on the brake situation in the Travelall, and as of right now I still don’t have anything to show for it.
I started by doing a short test run to get the truck warm, and then brought it back to the driveway to check the drums. The driver’s front was the hottest, so I put the entire truck up on stands and pulled all four wheels. Each drum was warm to the touch and didn’t spin freely, which told me they weren’t releasing properly. So I bled them starting at the far corner with my daughter’s help, put the wheels back on, dropped it onto the ground, and did another test run.
After the second run the drums were still hot, which pointed to a possible problem with the master cylinder. When I originally replaced it, I bled it on the truck instead of the bench (rookie mistake), so I figured maybe there was air still trapped in the cylinder. I rigged up a bleed tube, disconnected the brake system, and bled it out again. I did get some air out of it before it went clear, so I figured maybe I was home free. After dropping it back on the ground, I bled it at the wheels again and prepped it for a test run.
Sunday morning I took it back out for a drive, and back in the driveway I found that the driver’s front drum was still hot to the touch. This was frustrating, but I kept my cool. I figured I would replace the only two elements that still exist from the original brake system: a long hardline going from the prop valve to the rear axle and another going across the front of the frame to the passenger front wheel. As I’ve bled the system the fluid has been coming out dirty, so there’s a good chance there’s some crud in those lines that isn’t letting the pressure release.
I tackled the long line first, and was lucky to have just enough left to reach— it’s 9 feet in total—so I ordered another length of 1/4″ line from Prime and got to work heating and cooling and heating and cooling the fittings. The rear fitting came out relatively easily but it took an hour of patiently working on the front fitting before I felt brave enough to put a wrench on it. While that was happening I pulled the old line off and used the needle-scaler to remove surface rust on the inside of the frame rail behind the mounting points, and hit it with Rust Encapsulator. Then I put the new line in place, double-flaring the ends, and tidied up the wiring on that side.
Up at the prop valve, I decided to split the line and slide a box-head wrench up to the nut so that I was getting all the contact area possible, and then with one mighty heave, it came loose. After that it was relatively easy to double-flare the other end and tighten it on the valve.
By this time it was getting dark, but I worked until about 8PM heating and loosening the nut on the other side of the valve and pulling all of the retaining clips off of the frame. While I was under the truck I tidied up the wiring on the passenger side and found that when I’d re-connected the gas tank sender wire I never covered it with anything (there was an unused section of heat shrink tube on the wire, so I had all the best intentions) so I cleaned those connections for testing later.
The front line is going to take hours, I suspect. It’s in a difficult location to get to. The end of the line is mounted up on the frame behind the tire, right next to the starter, so there’s little room to move. I suspect I’ll have to remove the starter and spend a lot of time heating and juicing that line as well.
If this isn’t the issue, the way I see it there are only two things left that could be the problem: the short soft line going from the master cylinder to the prop valve, or the master cylinder itself. I’m thinking I’m going to order the soft line just to rule it out (it’s pretty cheap in any case) before spending $80 on another master cylinder, just to make sure I’m not firing the parts cannon prematurely.
Lit, Part One
I snuck out to the garage after doing the dishes last night and messed around with some of the electrics, inspired by the fact that the license plate light actually worked. Within about a half an hour, I pulled both of the taillight buckets, swapped them out for some better examples in my spares, cleaned the wiring contacts, and got them both working. The front running lights are in worse shape. I had to pull the front bumper off to access them, and found that it weighs a metric ton. It’s made out of 1/2″ thick C-channel and I would hate to be the car on the other side of it in an accident. One of the buckets came out easily but the other is held in with a rusted screw which needs to be extracted.
Finally, now that I can open the driver’s door all the way, I hit all of the retaining screws with penetrant, pulled them out, propped the door up, and screwed it in tight. It now closes almost cleanly, but the door striker needs to be taken apart and lubricated.
All Spark, No Joy
I put in another day of work on the Scout 800 to try and breathe life into the engine over the weekend (and before the snow fell), and I was met with failure at almost everything I tried.
When I left off last week, I was looking at an engine that would crank, a distributor sending spark to the plugs, and a carburetor backfiring when I sprayed it with ether, which told me the timing was way off. So I started the new day by cranking the motor over until I felt air coming out of the #1 cylinder, which indicated the compression stroke. I pulled the distributor back out, lined it up properly (rotor pointing at cylinder #1) and re-stabbed it, then verified I was getting spark at the plugs. I also pulled the coil out of the Travelall and dropped that in, figuring that maybe the used coils I had weren’t providing enough power. But no amount of cranking, fiddling with the wiring, adding the battery from the Scout, or fooling with the carb got the engine to catch.
At this point, I think it’s one of a couple of things:
- It’s not getting enough power. The engine turns over VERY slowly. I replaced the positive battery cable with a new one and cleaned up the negative cable connection on the block, so I don’t think it’s a delivery issue. But my jumper cables didn’t seem to be transporting any power anywhere, which was frustrating. (I have one heavy-duty set that’s probably 40 years old from the repo lot and a cheap set from HD that I got to help jumpstart a van in a Wegman’s parking lot a few years ago.)
- The starter is either bad or not getting enough juice. I have four spares and for love or money could not get any of them to respond, but now that I think about it, I wasn’t jumping them the right way. Luckily, this should be easily remedied this evening.
- I’m not getting any compression in the cylinders. I have no doubt that the rings are pretty frozen after 10 years of sitting, but if I was feeling strong wind from cylinder 1 when spinning the crank by hand, I have to imagine there’s some compression. David dropped my compression tester off this weekend, so that’ll be the first thing I check out before pulling the starter.
During the day, I took a bunch of breaks to think over next steps. This keeps me out of trouble and away from going off half-cocked and getting myself in trouble. One of the things I did was to pull the old bias-ply spare off the tailgate, jack the truck up, and put it on to see how it looked. I actually dig it a lot! The original wheels are skinny—16×6″, which is perfect for a set of military-style pizza cutters which would look period-correct on this truck. I’m pretty sure I saw the other two up at Dan’s place behind the garage, in which case I’ll grab those next time we’re up there. In the meantime, the white wagon wheel spare I got with Peer Pressure turns out to be the exact same size and backspacing as the wagon wheels already on this truck, so I’ve got five of those now.
I also found a couple of 5/16″ bolts and used those to fasten the rear of the cab top to the truck. There are only two at each corner right now, but it’s got five mounting points across the bulkhead, so I’ll add more later on. I can’t figure out, however, how the front of the top is supposed to attach to the windshield. I assume there are holes that go down into the windshield frame, but the top hangs out over the front of the windshield frame far enough that I don’t think it fits right. More investigation is warranted here.
Here’s the running total on this truck so far:
| Item | Cost |
|---|---|
| 1966 Scout 800 | $500 |
| Lunch for the recovery crew | $85.00 |
| Curved points | $7.00 |
| Battery cable | $33.37 |
| Carb Rebuild kit, fuel pump | $46.30 |
| Total | $671.67 |
Meanwhile, I ran the Travelall up with the intention of taking it for a test spin after torquing the U-bolts down tight. But I had the same problem that popped up last week: the engine bogged down and died on acceleration every time I got on the gas. I limped it across the street and then right back into the driveway, and looked things over: the clear fuel filter right after the pressure regulator was filled with crud. So I replaced that and parked the truck, then pulled the carb off to hose it out with brake cleaner. I have no idea where I’d be getting crud in the fuel from, but it’s pretty obvious I’m going to have to empty the tank and check it for dirt again.
I did take a little time to install one of the new cupholders on the bench seat, and I’m really happy with the way they turned out. I think this looks fantastic. The only thing I want to add now is a hole in the center of the drink crossbar to add a small rubber bumper of some kind to dampen vibration between it and the trans tunnel cover.