In January, I was looking at pictures of pretty new upholstery for the Travelall and making plans to clean up the seatframes for new foam. It’s December and I’ve just now got the seats finished and installed in the truck; in the months between I got a lot of projects done. Here’s a recap:
Early in January I finally got around to making some T-shirt designs for Travelalls and Scouts, set up a Threadless storefront, and did some initial posting on social media. The response was pretty good; I need to make a new push this coming year, as well as update some merchandise.
I got serious about building out a YouTube channel for the red truck, and started posting videos about every two weeks. The channel points back to the Threadless site, and I get a couple of orders a month. Also, I made a dedicated Instagram feed for the red truck.
From January into February, in between cold snaps, I finished sanding and painting the passenger fender I rebuilt the fuel hose port on; that project went much better with the experience I’d gained doing previous bodywork projects. The fender is now hanging in the garage waiting for some other parts to be shot with IH red, and will then get clearcoat.
March was a big month: I took possession of an unwanted, untitled green Travelall in Pennsylvania with a ton of help from Bennett, and we dropped it in the driveway in front of the red truck. This project sort of took over the next two months as I worked to tear it down and part it out before the neighbors complained and had me hauled it hauled away. I had the entire truck stripped down, the parts organized, and the carcass ready for towing by April 30. And I made a crisp $100 on it!
Also in March, I ordered and got a used, tested and labeled wiring harness from the Scout Connection, which wound up being for a later model year. I returned it for a proper 1962-62 harness which was tested and labeled, and later on in the year I pulled the dashboard from the red truck, cleaned it up, and swapped the new harness in place. Putting it back in was easy, as I’d already taken two of them apart, and when I tested it out about 80% of the electrical system came back online.
The firewall got cleaned up and covered in heat matting, an upgrade I found very useful in the Scout, and during that process I finished cleaning up and painting the cowl vents I’d fabricated in 2023. I also pulled the heater box out and disassembled the whole unit. The rear of the box had a fair bit of rust damage, so I welded new sections on to the sides and back, reassembled with new hardware, and got it ready for paint.
August was a big month. First and foremost, Brian and I drove the Scout 1200 miles round trip to Harvester Homecoming at the IH plant in Fort Wayne, Indiana. We had a great time, met a bunch of new people, and were lucky to have good traveling weather, although our first evening at the event ended in a downpour that had us running for the exits. The Scout ran great, but I noticed she was leaking a lot of oil out the underside at speed.
When I was back, I took a week off from work and spent a couple of days prepping the roof for primer and paint. I’d left it sitting since last summer so it needed some attention before fall. I re-worked the sections that needed help, finish sanded the whole thing, and shot it with pro-grade primer from an HVLP gun. When that was cured I sprayed it with two coats of two-stage PPG white, and I think it turned out really good.
I worked on cleaning up each of the doors, installed weatherstripping, welded over the mounting holes from old mirrors, and rebuilt both of the West Coast mirrors I’d bought last year. They got mounted permanently on the truck.
Finding vendors willing to work on old iron is hard. I wanted to use the same guy who installed the passenger side glass to replace the dry, cracked gasket on the driver’s side, so I spent the money on new rubber and his expertise to have it put it in.
In September I had some gray single-stage paint matched from the old door cards and sprayed out four replacements as well as the heater box, then sprayed it all with a matte clear coat. I really like the results. When they were cured, the heater box went back in over the heat matting and was hooked up to the engine.
I donned a Tyvek suit and scraped all of the fiberglass off the roof, treated it with Rust Converter, and installed some lightweight heat/sound matting.
With those things done, and looking at another month of reasonably decent weather, I got a wild hair up my ass and dropped the fuel tank to survey the underside of the floorpan. The fuel tank is in fantastic shape, and got wire-wheeled, cleaned out, and repainted. The passenger floor, which featured the worst rust remaining in the truck, was trimmed away until I found clean metal. I welded a new sheet in place, and cut sections of the lower firewall out until I had good metal there.
I came into possession of a second steering column, this one from a manual steering/column shift truck, and an electrical steering unit from a Nissan Versa. This is the starting point for an electric steering conversion sometime next year.
Before Thanksgiving, I dropped the Scout off at a transmission shop nearby who had been recommended by another truck guy I met at our local Cars & Coffee. She’s been there waiting for a spot in his bay since then. He got her up on the lift two weeks before Christmas and recommended a new seal kit for both the transmission and the transfer case. While he had those two off the truck, he sent me pictures of the flywheel and clutch, and recommended we swap those out while we were at it. As of December 26 he’s got all the parts he needs to finish up the job.
With the weather getting colder, I got materials in the door for the seats and spent a couple of weeks redoing the upholstery on all four sections. This involved tearing down the rear upright from the green truck and using that frame, but all of the other frames I’d prepared worked out perfectly. When that was done, I bolted the lockbox in the back of the truck and installed the seats.
In between all of that, there are a million other smaller projects that got done. The frame under the passenger side was needle-scaled and painted. The adhesive from the old carpeting has all been removed. The door locks up front have been replaced. The front bumper from the green truck was installed. The license plate light got mounted on the rear door. The outside lights all got dedicated grounds run to the body. I’ve got turn signals and headlights, but the high-beams still don’t work and they cancel out the running lights.
Looking back on it (and looking at it in the driveway) I can see a lot of progress this year. The first year, a lot of the labor was hidden but this year I can see big cosmetic improvements happening. The push for this coming spring will to be getting it on the road. I know the transmission is good, because she’ll move when she’s in gear and I bump the starter; for some reason the clutch pedal isn’t working. More on that later.
