Here’s a real nice video from Eastwood going over the basics of how to paint your beater in the driveway without blowing it apart into one million pieces. There’s a lot of good information in there—some extra steps on body filler and sanding that I -ahem- have skipped over, etc. As I look toward the spring and painting the roof of the Travelall, this will come in real handy.
Category: Progress
Weekly Roundup, 10.8
The beginning of the week was quiet, but I put almost two full days in over the weekend.
With the glass and other stuff out of the back of the Travelall, it’s much easier to start some of the preventative maintenance I’ve wanted to do to the rear frame and crossmembers. Saturday afternoon I lifted the rear bench seat out and pulled up the plywood floor. Then I put on some ear protection, fired up the compressor and the needle scaler, and got to work. Starting from the back I took as much scale off the unpainted metal as I could find, making my way to an area over the rear axle. Then I brushed on Rust Converter to everything I’d cleared and let it sit. I started around 4 and finished when the sun was setting, so there’s still a lot more to do—and I haven’t even touched the underside yet—but it’s already looking much better under there.
Reorganizing the garage a bit, I stumbled across an extra box of weatherstripping and realized it was doing me no good here. So I put it up on Marketplace and got a pretty immediate response from a guy in Washington, who was also interested in my old brake booster until I did the research and learned it would be something like $80 to ship it out to him in Washington. So the windshield gasket is on its way to him, and the brake booster remains in the Heavy Metal corner of the garage next to the old starters, spare Dana 20, and other stuff.
A brake has been instrumental to the plans I drew up for the doors on the seat base, because I wanted to bend a quarter-inch of metal along the edges on the three sides to add structural stability and make it look better. My Harbor Freight brake is woefully unprepared to bend 18 ga. metal at the measurement I need. On Sunday I met up with Bennett over at our friend Brian’s shop to get a couple of projects done. Bennett was there to clean up the carburetor on his Hudson project as well as tinker with Heavy D, which has been sitting there for several months waiting for a windshield replacement. I was there to use the heavy-duty finger brake Brian inherited with the pole barn shop on his property.
I started messing with the brake and putting a couple of scrap pieces through it to learn how it worked and where the sweet spot was. There was only one finger clamp on it, so the first long section of metal I bent didn’t stay still and bent unevenly. I took a break, had a donut, and Bennett suggested looking around the shop for the other fingers. I found them along the back wall and installed three of the fattest I could find, then put another long test sheet through. When those results looked much better, I marked out some new metal and started bending. We had to do some creative adjustment to the brake, because the bending plate was so close to the lever plate it wouldn’t release the metal when I’d bent the second side. This involved unscrewing the plate from the bottom to release my metal, but it worked. After I got two doors bent and test-fitted, I helped Bennett mess around with Heavy D, got it started for the first time in forever, and installed a choke cable before we both headed for home.
Back at the house, I investigated how I could bend the short edge with the tools on hand. I’ve got a cheap wide vise I bought from Harbor Freight back in the day, and after some testing I realized I could bend the width I needed with that and a pair of vise-grips blocked into place, keeping the entire width of the metal on basically the same plane. After making the initial bend, I had to hammer the center sections flatter with a combination of deadblow hammer, wood blocks, and metal scraps. When I had it flat and straight, I welded the corners up, cleaned them up with the flap disc, and trimmed the length of each to allow for the width of the hinge knuckles.
When those were in place, I tacked the hinges in place and test fit the doors; all my cuts looked good. So I flipped the hinges, cut some tack holes in the doors, and welded those into place. If I had to do it over again, I’d have put the weld on the underside, but I think it looks pretty good either way.
So the doors are in place, and next I need to cut and install a pair of stops opposite the hinge side for the doors to sit on. I’m going to wait until the locks come in next week so that I can design around those. I was originally going to cap off that gap in the middle, but now I’m considering adding a plate underneath to make it a shallow tool well to utilize some dead space.
The other thing I spent a bunch of time looking for last week was a hinge of the proper size for mounting the seat to the box. The hinges on the seat base are beefy; the pin is 3/8″ in diameter and the knuckles are thick. I found a lot of hinges with the right pin size but nothing with a leaf the proper length—the interlocking sections of the hinge I’ve got are 1.5″ wide, and most industrial hinges I’ve found with that pin size are only 1″. While I was at Brian’s, I was looking at his scrap pile and found a beefy hinge with a 3/8″ pin and a 2″x2″ leaf—exactly what I had been looking for. I texted Brian about it and he told me to take it with me.
Monday I had off for Columbus Day, so I got back outside and kept rolling. First I cut two hinges down to the right size, trimmed the knuckle widths, and test fit them on the box. When I liked what I saw, I tacked them in and fit them to the seat. With that confirmation I burned them both into place and cleaned up the welds. The plates will get two bolts through the square tube for extra structural support, but I like where things are sitting (literally) now.
Then I got out the needle scaler and wire wheel and continued working on the chassis while I had the rear floor out. Before finishing up for the day, I brushed on some Rust Encapsulator. I’ll finish coat it with chassis black when it’s all ready, but there’s a lot more to go.
Meanwhile, I’ve tried removing old upholstery adhesive on the vertical surfaces with every chemical I can think of and a rubber eraser wheel with no success. Frustrated, I tried a small patch with the wire wheel and found that with a very light touch I could get most of the old crust off without going through the paint to metal—there are a few places where the paint is very light—but it mostly came off with little damage. I was always going to respray the inside anyway, so I’m not worried about patchy areas. It’s nice to have that stuff cleaned up, for sure. I’m going to see if Hobo Freight sells a plastic bristle wheel for an angle grinder and see if that’s more gentle on the paint.
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Boxed, Part 3
This weekly update is regrettably several days past my usual Friday schedule, but given the amount of stuff I’ve been posting this year, I figure that’s OK.
With winter fast approaching and a week and a half worth of wet weather behind us, I knew I was going to have to do something about dry storage for the Travelall. Erecting a new garage is out of the question, and putting the awning up isn’t going to fly, so I went with the cheapest option: an inexpensive Suburban-sized car cover from Amazon. At first I was afraid it wasn’t going to be big enough to cover my truck’s ample backside, but once I adjusted the front, the rear fit snugly over the taillights with little to spare. It’s tight enough that I don’t even think I’d need to tie it down, although having two built-in straps is a nice feature.
On Sunday I had the afternoon to keep working on the seat cage, so I finished cleaning up the joins and smoothing everything out. Then I put it in the truck, taped a rectangle of cardboard to the top, and scribed out the trans tunnel. With some adjustments and a second template, I laid it on some 18 ga. steel and cut out the front section. After I trimmed it to where I liked things, I tacked it in place and did one last check before tacking the perimeter in place every inch.
When I’d ground down the welds, I cut out two rectangles for the ends and tacked those in. I did another test fit, ground some things down, and tacked each side into place.
Then I adjusted the welder settings, sealed up the top and sides, and ground everything down to smooth with the flap disc. At this point I’m trying to figure out how I’m going to arrange the two doors; currently I like the idea of countersinking them inside the cages that they’re flush with the top. I’ve got a hinge here from Grainger ready to go, but the locksets they sent me are way too small (curse you, Internet!). So I’ll spend some more time considering that solution.
The other thing that came in the mail were two 3D printed plastic visor clips, something the truck didn’t come with and that I haven’t seen anywhere else. I took a chance based on a comment from the Round-Body Travelalls group on Facebook, and I was not disappointed when they showed up. With two stainless screws from my bench stock, the clip went right into the existing holes on the driver’s side and the visor snapped into place. They need to be sanded and cleaned up, but I’m happy.
Boxed, Part 2
Here’s where the box stands as of last night. I put weight on the cage to set it in place, then tacked some scrap metal to the open end of each bottom bar. With both bars at the proper angle, I measured and cut two legs to meet up with the ends and tacked them to the top bar. After checking that fit, I brought the whole assembly inside and welded it all up, as well as added two sections along the bottom side of the short edge. I closed up the holes on the bottom ends and smoothed the welds out on all of the outer edges with a flap disc.
Boxed
After Day 2 of Hurricane Ophelia or whatever they’re now calling this blustery rainstorm that was supposed to have leveled the East Coast, I have a report on the repairs to the Travelall. In short, everything I did to the cowl looks pretty good. I saw one drop of water from the driver’s side vent opening that I haven’t been able to figure out yet, but the rest of the seams all look like they held well. Both of the floors are damp but I suspect that’s due to leaky door seals more than water coming through the cowl. There’s water along the sills in back as well which bears this theory out a little more. Along with the weatherstripping, Today I ordered a car cover so she can overwinter without getting wet, as well as postpone a hasty respray of the roof until the weather warms up and allows paint to dry and cure properly.
Sunday afternoon it was too rainy to be working outside but too warm to not be working. So I jumped the gun on my seat locker project and got started. In the garage, I tuned the radio to the Ravens game, then cut metal down and assembled the top of the cage first, knowing that the curves on the bottom would be difficult to assemble without it.
The rectangle went together smoothly, and I used the tailgate of the Scout as a level worktable to get everything squared up. I measured the height of the step again, cut four legs and tacked them into place. I’m not getting fancy with 45˚ butt-joint welds here because everything will get covered in sheet metal when this is complete.
Then I put spacers under the legs and looked at how the bottom of the cage would come together. The floor slopes down gently from the center, and the transmission tunnel sits in the center of that area. It’s a lot shorter than I envisioned, so my original design is being modified as I go. I don’t actually have enough vertical height for a length of tube spanning the front floor, so I have to cut legs that will tie into the upper bar.
I cut two short lengths of tube for the front side of the cage and tacked them into place just short of where the tunnel starts. With those in place I can gauge the angles I’ll need to cut the legs up to the top tube. I’m going to leave the bottom of the cage off in back, and weld in some tabs that can mount directly to the step wall.
By 7PM I was losing light, and couldn’t work in the truck anymore, so I cut two short lengths and tacked them in across the top of the cage where they’ll be the supports for a set of piano hinges.
The next step will be dragging the welding gear out to the driveway, putting weight on the cage, and tacking scrap metal to the open end of each bottom bar. From there I can get a proper idea of the angle for the legs, cut them down, and weld them in. Then two tubes go at the bottom of the thin sides to complete the boxes. I’ll cap off the open ends of the tubes and grind everything down smooth, and then start bending sheet metal.
Weekly Roundup, 9.15
After calling around last week and leaving messages at several local glass installers, I finally got two on the phone. The first guy balked when I told him what year the truck was but said they’d be able to handle it if I drove it to their shop. He then quoted me a price of $500 to have someone come out and do it in the driveway. The second shop was much easier to work with, and after I sent a couple of pictures to the office manager, she got back to me and said they’d be able to do both the windshield and the rear quarter glass for less than the first quote. So I made an appointment and ordered some rubber from IHPA. I have a brand new gasket waiting, and I can’t wait for Tuesday.
I cleaned up the truck in preparation for having the glass put in, and looked over the front seat again. For some reason I’ve been thinking the bar frame mounts directly onto the seat bases, completely forgetting there are two track mounts that go between. After slapping myself in the forehead, I fished the set of tracks I bought from Ray out of my parts bin and looked them over, and everything became much clearer. I did some rust repair and cleanup on both, and ground off a bent and warped bolt on the driver’s side track. After sorting out the hardware issue, I welded a new bolt on to the track and cleaned it up. I taped off the tracks and hit them with etch primer before they got two coats of IH red. I’ll let them sit and cure for a couple of days, then install new hardware and a spring on each side. I sprayed the bar frame with semigloss black and let that sit to cure as well. When it’s all ready, I have new hardware and a spring on each side to mount it to the frame, and then I have to source a cable to reach across under the seat to release both of the slide catches.
And on the subject of seat bases, I got a bunch of metal delivered on Thursday for the rear seat locker. I can’t wait to dig into that project.
We went out over lunchtime on Friday to pick up the Scout, and I can’t believe how quiet she is again. The mechanic replaced the valve, manifold and gasket, and now she sounds like I remember. One other thing he fixed was the front wheel bearing. When he put it on the lift he watched the tire droop and investigated; apparently when he pulled it apart the inner bearing was just destroyed. So he replaced the parts and repacked everything and it should be good to go. This is disturbing, as I just had this fixed before I went to Nats two years ago, so clearly the work wasn’t done properly. Lesson learned. In either case, I drove home with a huge smile on my face.
While waiting for the mechanic to call, I scuffed, primed and painted the new battery tray and got it ready for installation. Saturday evening I pulled the remains of the old one off and cleaned up the inner fender as well as I could before brushing on Rust Converter, followed by a coat of black Rust Encapsulator. When that was dry I dropped the tray in place and bolted it down. Now I’ve got to find a 9.5″ threaded rod in the proper width to use for the inside hold down point, and I can cut out and fabricate my own hold down bar to cap it off.
8 Days in August
Here’s a narrated video I put together of the work I did on the truck from the time I pulled the windshield out to Sunday evening. This was fun; I learned some new tricks in Final Cut Pro and practiced camera placement.
Major Surgery, Parts 6-8
Thursday’s progress looked kind of misleading because I was working on lots of fiddly stuff, and I did a terrible job of taking many pictures. I started the day camped out in the garage because of threatening rain clouds, so I started by working on a patch for the cowl itself out of some 20 ga. steel. When I had the pattern the way I liked it, I laid it on top of the cowl and cut around it, then trimmed it with the grinder and cut some notches in the lip.
Carefully bending it at the same curve, I tacked it into place and then used my patience to finish welding it in. While that cooled, I busted out the sanding gear and cleaned up the other sides of the cowl to even things out.
When I had that in place I banged out some of the obvious bends with a hammer and skimmed it with some body filler. As that dried, I flattened the original air baffle from the driver’s side and traced two patterns out on some fresh steel. I bent them both according to the pictures I’d taken on disassembly, prepped the vertical face of the inner cowl, and welded them both into place. Then I put both flappers in and hooked the vent cable back up to the driver’s side—I still have to drop the heating unit out to refurbish that, and there’s no easy way to reconnect the cable up unless it’s out of the way.
There was lots of sanding, priming, sanding, and priming, and I used some ACE Rust-Stop International Implement Red to coat the entire inner section of the cowl.
On Friday I got lots more little fiddly bits done and ready for welding the cowl back in on Sunday. I skimmed some body filler on the welding seams on each side to smooth them out so that when water runs down to the drains it won’t get stuck in the texture from the seam sealer.
The cowl is prepped for welding and will probably need some touch-ups to the body filler after heat warps some of it, but that’s OK. I did a test-fit to ensure it isn’t warped and that the welds still line up.
I also worked on some Scout stuff too; I still have to adjust the timing and do some minor maintenance.
On Sunday I welded the cowl back in place. I test fit and trimmed and test fit and trimmed and then clamped the crap out of it and started tacking it into place slowly.
By about 5PM I had the whole thing in, the welds ground down, and a coat of etch primer on all the bare metal.
The perimeter of the windshield frame has two coats of IH Implement Red in preparation for a clean new gasket and brand new windshield. The bottom of the cowl has some Bondo that I skimmed over the welds, and that will get smoothed out before I paint the rest. Now I just have to screw up my courage up to attempt the window installation.
Major Surgery, Parts 3-5
I’ve been so busy on this project, I’ve made some basic updates to the thread on Binder Planet but I’ve been too tired to add them here, so here’s a dump from the last three days. The weather has been fantastic since Sunday—clear skies and mid 80’s with no humidity to speak of, so it’s been a rare treat to working outside all day. I burned through all of my backed up podcasts by Monday morning, so I switched to an audiobook loaded on my iPad and I’ve been enjoying listening to that while I work.
On Monday, I began the day by cutting out and replacing a section of structural 18 gauge steel on the A pillar after flooding the cavity with rust encapsulator. I used a cheap brush from Harbor Freight to get in there and hit every surface I could touch.
When I had that cleaned up, I put the main vent section in. This part went pretty smoothly; I’d etch primed and seam sealed the underside on Sunday eventing, so I got it where I wanted it and burned it into place. Then I put the section in behind it. Things had shifted somewhat between when I’d cut it and when everything got hot, so it didn’t line up as cleanly as I would have liked. But I can close those small sections up pretty easily. There’s a small section at the far right and a larger one on the far left, and left them for Tuesday morning.
After cleaning up the edges and knocking down the beads, I started working on the lower mounting lip. This took a lot of test fitting and tack welding and banging and cutting, because the cowl mounts to this and then the top corner of the fender bolts to it, and there are a lot of complex curves in the original sheet metal that have to fit just right. I made the decision to go for close enough and figured I can shim things out if I need to. Again, this is my first major sheet metal project, so I’m learning as I go. The wing got welded into place, and I knocked the edge down to a smooth curved corner. This got cleaned up with a flap wheel and skimmed with a light coat of seam sealer so that the water will just drop over the edge. The circle-X is where the drain hole will go.
As of Monday evening I was about 24 hours into it in total, including pulling the cowl and windshield, and my hope was that I could keep the momentum going.
On Tuesday morning I finished off the passenger side, cleaned, it, etch primed it, and smeared everything with a liberal coat of seam sealer.
Then I went over to the driver’s side, cut an even larger hole out of the cowl, and started fabricating the vent on that side.
Because I had a template already made for the barrel, that part went quickly and I had just enough steel in my sheet to cut both sections of metal out.
When I had the vent built, the flapper in place, and everything lined up, I started welding it into place. I had learned a lot about how to cut and fit the barrel in this one—I was much more precise with the measurement and the hole I cut, so it fit much better, and I didn’t have to count on filling large gaps with wire.
There’s a section tacked in place behind the vent, and that ugly hole in the upper right is sealed up tight.
On Wednesday I got a late start because I hadn’t sealed my gas cylinder tight enough and lost the remainder overnight. Lesson learned. Once I’d gotten a refill I closed up the edges as tightly as possible, ground everything down with a new disc, and cleaned it up for etch primer. I also bent and installed the front of the drip rail that the cowl gets welded to and the fender bolts onto.
The seam sealer I have this time isn’t as good as the gray stuff I had last time; this doesn’t lay down smoothly at all. It looks like I’m trying to apply it with a broom. Anyway, while that was drying I took a wire wheel to the cowl itself and cleaned out both sides.
I cut out the rust in the passenger side hole in the cowl, and with the last small section of 20 ga. sheet metal I had, I made a patch for it.
With some patience and a lot of grinding I fit the patch in place and hammered out the funky spots, as well as sealed up other holes. Thank god I have a bench grinder and Dad’s old vise set up in the garage; I’ve used them extensively for this project.
The edge took some time to work on but with wire and time I rebuilt the lip and shaped it with a flap disc. Then the whole underside got a bath in Rust Converter and then a coat of black primer, except for the edges to be welded. I also wire wheeled the entire edge of the windshield and hit it with etch primer to cure.
Tomorrow I’ll get new metal delivered (it got delayed today) and I can finish the patch on the driver’s side. It’s supposed to rain on and off until Saturday so I’m going to tackle what I can when the weather is good and retreat into the garage to work when the rain starts falling. I’ve got the hood leaning up against the Scout and the cowl in there ready for the final patch.
Major Surgery, Part 2
Here’s the Sunday update. I got a bit of a late start because I had to run out to get supplies, but put about 7 solid hours in. First up was bending the metal to fit and getting things aligned.
When I had it squared up and ready, I looked over the barrel from the old vent and cut the rusty metal off the edges. What remained clearly wasn’t enough to make a template from, so I took measurements from the driver’s side and built a new template. With that cleaned up and bent, I tacked it together and continued shaping it correctly to fit.
When I had it set up correctly, I bent the mount for the vent cable stay and welded a support to that so it wouldn’t move.
Then I spent about an hour tweaking the barrel, test fitting it, tweaking it some more, and finally being satisfied with the way it fit. When I had it the way I liked it, I dialed in the welder and started tacking around the edges. This took time, and I did wind up warping the metal a little bit, but nothing I can’t work around.
When I had that the way I liked it, I started trimming a section of metal for the back wall. I bent several sections of the rear section upwards so that I can use that to help secure the whole structure. Then I hit the bottom of the vent with etching primer and seam sealer, and I’m letting it dry overnight. Tomorrow I’m going to start tacking it into place and getting things ready to install permanently.