Category: Progress

Saturday started out rainy so I was inside painting until after noon, and then the clouds parted and the sun came out. Jen had told me it was freakishly warm outside so I figured I would make the most of it and work on the truck.

A lot of what I did was exploratory. I’m still sorting out what’s what on this rig, so I’m spending a lot of time cleaning and disassembling. I did bolt something back up to start, though: both inner fender skirts have cured for two weeks and were ready to put back on the passenger side, so they went in with rust-free bolts shot with Rust Stop. I peeled the tarp back from the hood and got it ready for a bath: I had a can of Engine Brite ready to go and sprayed the whole block down to let it do its work, then dragged the pressure washer out for a rinse.

It’s a damn sight better than it was. The intake manifold cleaned up really well, the valve covers are now missing 80% of their paint, the hoses are all clean, and the rest of the bay is, at least, not covered in mud dauber nests and leaves.

While that was drying I started the long process of pulling the driver’s fender off, which took longer than it needed to but was still mercifully easy due to the bolts all being in good shape. The IH engineers over-fastened the area around the headlights: If I’m counting correctly, there are 20 bolts that hold the fender on, six of those are around the headlight area, two of which are in a place only midgets or Plastic Man can comfortably reach. I shudder to think how hard it would be to unfreeze (or attempt to cut) bolts in areas this small. As it was the top bolt holding the fender to the firewall was stuck, and I had to make a short breaker bar out of one half of my bottle jack handle to torque it off.

This fender is crispier than the passenger side and has taken several shots at the crease, which means it’ll be a challenge to straighten. I’m going to keep my eye out for clean fenders at Nats to save some time.

From there I moved to the front of the fascia and pulled both of the turn signal buckets out, which illuminated another weak spot in the C-series design: the buckets share a channel with the grille where leaves and dirt get kicked up into a valley between two sections of metal, and water and gravity wash it downwards behind the light buckets where it has nowhere else to go.

I scooped, vacuumed, and then powerwashed about a cup of solid dirt from behind each bucket. The left side is much worse than the right. I let them both dry and then hit everything with more Rust Stop to give myself some more time to source a new fascia section.

Digging through the garage I went to the Big Iron section and found something I only half-rememberd I had: a spare Saginaw steering box sitting next to a crate full of spare starters and a Dana 20 transfer case. Steering boxes are apparently getting harder and harder to find, according our friend Lee in Delaware; I got this from the Flintstone Scout two years ago. This is excellent news, as I can send this one out for a rebuild without taking the truck off the road for weeks or months while it’s gone.

By about 5:30 the rainclouds were rolling back in so I set the fender back on the truck and put a screw in to hold it in place, and re-fastened the tarp over the front cowl. The bolts from the fender are sitting in a phosphoric acid bath on the workbench, and the front section of the inner fender skirt is waiting for a date with the sandblaster.

I spent all day Sunday working on work stuff so I could swap for Monday to take advantage of 70˚ weather and attack the roof of the bus—with an eye toward grinding out the rust, feathering the edges with a light coat of Bondo, and sanding it down to a smooth finish.

Between house stuff, two work meetings, and getting things assembled I didn’t get outside until about 1PM, but from then until 6:30 I took a flap wheel to every crater on the roof of the truck as well as the entire length of the drip rail (and a good portion of the area directly underneath, hit it all with Rust Encapsulator, and began covering the pockmarked metal with a thin coat of Bondo. It took a lot longer to do the roof than I’d figured on—every time I thought I was done I saw another bad spot—but with the exception of two small areas everything is ground and prepped. I also ground rust out of  the driver’s rear door and skimmed it for sanding.

Sunday broke sunny and warm, and after some quick work in the house and a walk with Jen and the dog, I hit the garage for a full day. The first thing I did was start sanding the edges of the drip rails down, and I found that no matter how careful I’d been with the bondo applicator there were a ton of high edges to deal with. I got the random orbital sander out and used that to knock the high points down, then went to a Harbor Freight sanding block with 220 grit paper to smooth things out. There are a bunch of areas inside the drip rail that need to be hit again, but between that and the sanding block I got the entire perimeter of the drip rail sanded and covered in high-build primer. It took a lot of work.

I’m trying to go as light as I can everywhere possible. I had to open the driver’s door to roll the windows up and the edge of the fender, which is only held in with two bolts, caught on the door. It wound up prying off this giant chunk of painted Bondo; this is Not How To Repair Bodywork.

My old friend Erick stopped by at 2:30 to look over the engine, and between the two of us we isolated the distributor as the likely culprit for a non-running truck; there was spark all the way up to those wires but nothing at the plugs. We hung out and shot the breeze for a while and he took off; he’ll be back later to help me install the new distributor when I get it in hand.

After he left I kept sanding and priming and then mixed a bunch more bondo to keep filling the divots in the roof. By 6:30 I was pretty beat and I had 3/4 of the roof skimmed, so I packed up the gear and called it a day. My back is sore, my legs are tired, and I feel exhausted but it was a great day of progress.

This article popped up in my feed and I thought it was very interesting: a laser-based fuel sender that does away with mechanical linkages and resistance-based wiring. It uses LIDAR to measure how much fuel is left in the tank and requires an electronic gauge on the dash to work properly. I don’t know how this might work in the Scout—the tank is angled on both sides, and the low point of the tank isn’t centered under the gauge—but it would definitely work on the Travelall, where the tank is flat. Interestingly, the gauge in the Travelall actually works, and currently reads half a tank.

I was considering taking the Scout on a jaunt down to my father-in-law’s house this past Sunday to continue working on his bathroom, but a nagging feeling stopped me. The steering pump started making some noise last weekend when I had her out on errands, and I kept an eye on things after I parked her. Looking over the pump it’s clear there’s a slow leak happening somewhere. The leaf spring and steering linkage below the pump are damp with fluid; there wasn’t much missing in the reservoir but I topped it off just in case. I’m going to do the 5/50 mile method around here for a little while and keep an eye on things, but I sense a replacement on the horizon. I contacted Redhead Steering Gears to get a quote on a new pump, and it came back at about $475. I don’t remember if I’ve got a spare in the garage, but that’s a job I’m going to consider before making the trip to Nats.

I got a large flat package in the mail Monday, which contained two new front door cards and a second fuse block, all in excellent condition. These cards are a different color and texture than the originals, but the original driver’s card was bent and cut for a speaker, so it was pretty much useless. These both look really good, even though the passenger side has one dent in it. I couldn’t help myself this afternoon so I went out and replaced it. SO MUCH BETTER.

The other thing I did was to order a new windshield from IHPA through their system. I talked with a super awesome rep on the phone who found me glass up in Pennsylvania and arranged to have it driven down to Elkridge free of charge for me to pick up. Figuring I’d give the Scout a trial 15-mile run, I folded the rear seat down and drive down to pick it up. There was no noise from the pump and she didn’t leak anything visible in the parking lot or on the driveway, so I’m cautiously optimistic. The glass warehouse was in a nondescript warehouse park, and when I walked into the loading bay I was greeted with an ENORMOUS internal space holding thousands of glass pieces of all sizes and shapes, on racks 5-6 levels high all the way up to the ceiling. All of them were modern and tinted, with that peculiar black dotted pattern around the edges, and I followed the foreman back through the racks until we happened upon the only clear, unlined, and dramatically curved piece of glass in the whole shop. He actually said, “Wow, I haven’t seen glass like this before.”

I backed the Scout up to the loading bay, next to white vans specially outfitted with racks to hold scores of glass, and McGuyvered a solution up with a large box, lots of soft tarps, and some bungee cords. We made it home slowly and safely, and I tucked it carefully into the back of the Travelall until the rubber gets here.

Having reviewed several videos and the Service Manual directions, I’m nervous about installing it myself but definitely looking forward to having some non-leaky glass on the truck.

Another quick thing I did was pull the spark plugs I’d hastily installed the morning of our workday and replace them with a shiny set of new Autolite 85’s. I still don’t know what the story is with our spark but I’m positive it won’t be with the cables or the plugs. I talked with my friend Erick and we’ve got a tentative plan to have him come up and look at the truck to help me get it running; he’s a bit hard to pin down but I’m hoping we can link up and make some progress.

On Marketplace this week a listing popped up for a complete set of glass for a round-body Travelall—doors, wing windows, windshield, rear corners, and tailgate—for the eye-watering price of $3000 up in New Jersey. I asked if he would be interested in just selling the rear corners but he declined; they’re more valuable as a complete set. So I’ll have to keep looking, and hope that I can find someone with a set for a reasonable price or someone starts producing them again.

Today was about 10˚ colder than yesterday so a lot of the stuff I did was in the garage, out of the wind. Mostly what I focused on was dialing in the sandblasting cabinet, after using it to clean off three sections of the passenger side wheel surround.

What I wound up doing was going to the hardware store and finding a thread-to-barb PVC junction with a big enough lip that I could drill a hole in the center of the cabinet, drop it down and through, and let gravity and the lip hold it in place. I cut the thread off so it’s as low to the bottom as possible and connected a hose to the bottom, then drilled another hole to the front of the cabinet to let the hose back in to connect with the gun. There’s a little hesitation as it flows but the effect is much better; I don’t have to continually stop to move the inlet hose around. I got a bunch of stuff cleaned off and ready for paint, but Eastwood is out of Rust Encapsulator until April. All of this stuff will get a coat of that, two coats of flat black, and one shot of undercoating before it goes back in place.

While I was working in the truck, I pulled the crumbling cardboard glovebox out and took a look behind it at the cowl. That side is much worse than I first thought it was. It’s going to need some serious love at some point—probably pulling the whole dash out and welding in some new metal. For now, I’ll try to patch the cowl from the inside until that day comes.

But in much better news, I realized the fuseblock I bought a week ago is actually correct for this truck—I didn’t understand how it mounted until I really looked at it. Which means I can bench test the whole assembly, clean the contacts up, and use it as a guide (and maybe a wholesale replacement). That’s excellent news; I was really thinking I’d wasted a bunch of money there.

My 9-5 job has ramped up in difficulty and responsibilty over the last couple of months. I’m holding down two jobs while we wait for a new director to be found, and it’s been messing with my sleep and my mental health. I spend most of my days on calls or writing emails to keep things moving from here to there, which is good for the organization but hard on my batteries. So the Travelall has been kind of a lifeline for me this year, even though it’s stranded in the driveway.

Saturday morning I got bundled up in cold-weather gear, gassed up the Scout and drove out to the Howard County Fairgrounds to check out a tool auction, which was both larger and colder than I thought it would be. There was a lot of amazing stuff there, from tables covered in tools to used farm equipment to saplings to lawnmowers. I met my friend Brian H. there and we walked the rows to see if anything caught our eye. This original KC Highliter light bar was tempting—it’s period correct for the Scout—but the rest of the lot didn’t interest me.

Auctions like this are tricky because you can’t just buy one thing—if you want a circular saw you have to also buy the rest of the stuff in the lot: five toolboxes, a space heater, three welding helmets, a gas stove, a box of Christmas decorations, and a bag of mismatched PVC pipe fittings. It’s not worth it unless you’ve got a place to store things or a lot of spare time. So we looked and left.

Back at home, I got to work on the Travelall, first pulling what was left of the old battery tray out and installing the refurbished one I bought from Marketplace. It went in with almost no problems—again, I can’t get over how easy some of these bolts have been to remove. When that was done I stripped the remainder of the window tinting off the windows and cleaned them up with Goof-Off. Vacuuming the inside of the rear doors I put the card back on the driver’s side and pulled the black window trim from each rear door out for an inside evening project.

Moving back to the engine I dumped some gas down the carb and fired it off again, messing with the plugs and the wires. Still no go. But I did notice the gas and amp gauges both working, which means not everything behind the dash is dead. Moving to the passenger fender, I chiseled the locking gas cap off and loosened the bottom of the inlet hose to disconnect it from the gas tank.

The worst bolt on the truck has been the hood support pin on that side, which didn’t want to budge. When I finally pried that off I was able to pull the whole fender off the truck and get a look underneath. Again, everything under there is so clean.

I test-fit the blue fender to see how it looked, knowing that using it as a replacement is pretty much off the table without the fuel inlet mount. If I get really clever I can have sendcutsend cut me two new pieces and weld them together with a rectangular strip to make my own flange, but that would come much later, when I’ve got some welding practice under my belt.

Once I’d test-fit the fender, I put the red one back on and fastened it with about half of the bolts. It’s going to come off a couple more times so that I can properly clean out the inner fenders, redo the shocks, scrape and paint the frame, and rebuild the lighting. On tomorrow’s to-do list is to wire wheel all of the inner fender skirts I removed to gain access to the engine, continue chasing the spark issue down, see if I can sort out more of the under-dash wiring, and maybe look into draining the fuel tank without spilling rancid gas all over the driveway. The gauge reads half-full, which means there would be 9+ gallons in there; I’ll have to see where I can dispose of it.

I got a nice little package in the mail this afternoon:

So part 1 of the title quest is complete; now I have to trade the Vermont registration for a Maryland title, and be issued new Maryland plates. But not just any Maryland plates. I’m going to do the same thing I did with the Scout: buy a set of 1964 plates on eBay and have the title point to those.