Category: Welding

Stocking Up

In another example of late-stage capitalism, a huge conglomerate of auto parts manufacturers has been imploding over the last couple of months after the company failed to meet its debt payments—debts racked up by purchasing more companies. This means that known brands like Raybestos, Autolite and Anco are shutting down completely. I use parts from each of these manufacturers on my trucks, so I’m going to spend some money I hadn’t budgeted to stockpile some parts: brake shoes, cylinders, wiper blades, and spark plugs. Brake parts are some of the hardest things to find these days, so I ordered a spare set of Raybestos shoes for the Travelall, a set of Autolite 85 plugs (good for all IH engines) and a set of Anco wiper blades for the Scout II.

Saturday morning broke sunny and warm. The temperatures by 11AM were over 40˚ with a forecast in the mid-50’s, so I made a beeline for the driveway and got to work installing the passenger side spring pack on the Travelall. At first things went very smoothly, and I was thinking I would be able to wrap the project up in a couple of hours, but hubris had gotten the better of me. I had to clean up the threads on both shackle bolts (I’m re-using the originals because they’re nonstandard shoulder bolts pressed into the fang mount and shackle). Once I’d done that I was able to get the rear shackle in place but the front fang took a bunch of time, clamps, and adjustment to wiggle into place so that I could get new bolts secured.

Once that was done I tightened up the U-bolts on each side and started the truck up to get it up to temperature. My intention was to take it for a quick spin around the block, but I found that it was stalling on acceleration. I’m not sure if it’s an issue with the accelerator pump or something else, but it was getting dark and I didn’t want to strand the truck out on the street somewhere, so I pulled it back in the driveway to diagnose later.

On Sunday I had a little time after doing some house projects and set up the MIG welder to assemble three C-series cupholders I got from SendCutSend. These are the Version 3 design, made from 14 ga. steel with wider openings for drinks, a revised curve around the front edge, and a simplified drink stand underneath. I’m pretty happy with these, although I’m going to make one final modification to the drink stand, but these three will go out for powder-coating and then I’ll see if I can market these to the Light Line dealers as premade units.

Posted on   |   by bill   |   Leave a Comment on Stocking Up  |  Posted in Design, Part Numbers, Travelall, Welding

Fuel Injection Update

With the exception of one stupid fitting, the Sniper is installed on the truck, the fuel tank is back in place with a new sending unit and return line, and the hoses are (hopefully) routed in a way that will feed fuel to the engine reliably. This was not without struggle, and required a lot of problem-solving.

First, I was having issues with electrical continuity in the original fuel sender. I could measure resistance at certain points in the swing of the arm but it wasn’t consistent and no amount of adjustment was working reliably. I was afraid the issue might be my $9 Harbor Freight multimeter so I splurged on a fancier $25 model and got the same result. Doing some research, I learned that there are new senders available, but only for the 15 gallon tanks installed on pickups, which are a different size than the 19 gallon tank I have. I did track down a forum post from 2007 which claimed that a sender from a 1957 Thunderbird would fit with minor modifications, and the pictures seemed to show something very similar to what I already had. So I took advantage of a solid return policy and ordered one from AutoZone with free one-day shipping.

On the bench, when I compared it to the original sender, it looked a little different, but putting both of the units on the bench base and comparing the arc of the center arm, and their length showed that they were roughly the same. The new unit has a brass float and tested flawlessly with the multimeter, so I went ahead and put that in the tank. After cleaning the inlets on the tank out, I sealed everything up and got it ready to put back in the truck. This took a bit of maneuvering, but once I had the hoses in place, I jacked it up and got it into position.

At this point, it was clear I would have to modify the tank straps to allow for the extra inch and a half I had to add between the tank and the body of the truck to clear the return inlet. I cut the brackets off with the cut off wheel, and fabricated some new straps out of 16 gauge steel. After welding the brackets onto the strap extensions, I brought them out to the truck and welded the two sections of strap together. When they were cold, I cleaned them up, painted them, and then got them ready to hang the tank.

This had taken a lot more time that I thought it would. I fed the sender wire over the frame rail, hooked it back up to the wiring harness and fed the return line up through the body mount to the engine bay. Working methodically, I reattached all of the hoses to the fill tube, the vent tube and the fuel line itself. I was very careful measuring and cutting the hose that had come with the Sniper kit and it looks like I’ve got just enough to finish the job. The only thing left to solve is finding a 90° fitting for the fuel inlet on the carburetor, which butts up right next to the water neck on the engine. I’d ordered two 90° fittings and had them sent overnight via the jungle site, but the second fitting is just too long to fit in the space available. So I’ve got a call Holley’s tech support line to see if they can suggest a solution.

At this point, everything is complete, minus that fitting. When I’ve got that solved, I can put gas back in the tank, run a bunch of it through the system to flush it, and do all of the preflight checks for the carburetor computer. The other check I wanna do before anything else happens is to pull a couple of the spark plugs and eyeball the cylinders for any sign of water or rust. After draining a bunch of water out of the fuel tank, I’m concerned about it being in the cylinders, and I want to look for any signs of hydrolocking. If there is any water in there, I’ll bump the engine over a bunch of times to clear it out.

In non-engine related news, I did a bunch of work on the rear barn door handle on the bench to fit a door lock correctly in the barrel without having it fall out. What I had to do was take a Dremel and carefully carve a channel out of the back of the lock cylinder to accept a standard lockring. I used the pair of pliers to squeeze it down to be the same diameter as the cylinder, trimmed the outside edges, and then inserted it into the barrel. I was able to get a pair of lockring pliers inside and open it up so that it stayed inside the barrel. I installed it first thing Friday morning and just like that I had a locking rear door for the truck.

I’m sorry, I would have taken pictures but I was hustling pretty much all day Sunday from 10AM to about 7PM to get this done. I was able to get the truck down off the jack stands and under a tarp just as dusk was falling. Monday morning is rainy so I’ll see if I can get back out there on Tuesday to open things back up.

Posted on   |   by bill   |   Leave a Comment on Fuel Injection Update  |  Posted in Fuel Injection, Travelall, Welding

Chasing Daylight

The forecast for this weekend was for warmer weather on Sunday, which was great news. I got a very late start though, because we had a lot of family and house stuff to take care of first, which meant I only had a couple hours of daylight to work outside.

before and after

First, I scraped off the blobs of silicone and welded up the driver’s side of the transmission tunnel. This side had been drilled out in three places, probably for some kind of radio mount and the associated wiring, so it took a little more time because I had to cut out three round plugs to weld in place. I used 16ga scrap steel to match the body shell and quickly had the patches tacked in. With patience I welded them all the way in and ground things smooth. With some rattle-can IH red it’ll look like new. I figure if I’m going to be featuring my fancy cupholder in pictures to try and sell a couple, I’d like for the truck to not look completely like shit. I don’t know why I didn’t do this over the summer when I welded the passenger side up.

The second thing was to sand down a second application of epoxy to the spare steering wheel. This was to smooth out some low spots left after the initial application. The whole thing needs a careful finish sand to get it extra smooth before I shoot it with primer, but I’ve got to replenish my sandpaper supply first.

Finally, on the bench in the basement I’ve got all the parts collected for an auxiliary fuse panel: the fuse box, a relay and pigtail, 25 feet of 8 gauge wire with ring terminals, and an inline fuse block. I soldered a ring terminal to the end of the wire with a propane torch, and today I’ll measure it out to install the inline fuse and the rest of the wire, as well as figure out where the fuse block will live.

Posted on   |   by bill   |   Leave a Comment on Chasing Daylight  |  Posted in Electrical, Welding

Snow and Welding

Here’s a video recap of the last two weeks. It’s been kind of slow because of the weather, but I’ve tried to keep busy with some mostly) indoor projects. I’m very pleased with the cupholder project, and I can’t wait to get back out and finish welding on the valance panel.

Posted on   |   by bill   |   Leave a Comment on Snow and Welding  |  Posted in Travelall, Video, Welding

Welding Practice

Here’s what I got back from SendCutSend last week, in the form of three laser-cut and brake-bent sections of 16 ga. steel:

And here are the pieces assembled and welded:

I had to trim the top section of the parallelogram just a hair to get it to line up with the underside of the main cupholder, but other than that, the whole thing went together as smooth as butter. Welding things up took about an hour after I’d squared it all, and I wire-brushed everything down in preparation for paint. I ran out of time before I could take it outside and test-fit everything, but I’m stoked with the progress so far.

Posted on   |   by bill   |   2 Comments on Welding Practice  |  Posted in Travelall, Welding

Cold Weather Projects

It’s been hatefully cold this past week, and we’ve had a full pre-Christmas schedule so there hasn’t been much I could do on the trucks. However, I did eyeball the rear valance panel sitting in the rear bed and it sparked an idea. I brought it and the panel from the green truck into the garage, set up the welder, and started pounding the twisted metal back into place. When it was all flat, the holes were smaller and circular, just large enough to be a pain to close up, but too small to find easy plugs to fill.

Cold, cold welding in my janky-ass garage

I used the copper backer and started slowly filling each of the smaller holes, then cut a square hole around the really mangled section in the center. When I had the settings dialed in, I cut square sections out on the sides, and plugs out of the green truck valance to fill things in. Ordinarily I would have just fabricated my own, but these have a compound curve as they push out to the edges that I figured would just be easier to cut out of the spare piece.

After some trimming I got them both tacked in and then spent the next hour jumping back and forth with a couple of welds on each side, then swapping to let things cool while I tacked on the other side. As of Sunday evening the piece is a bit warped in the center and needs some flattening, but the main welds are complete. Tomorrow I’ll get it straightened out, then wire wheel off the surface rust and old paint, and skim it with some filler.

Posted on   |   by bill   |   Leave a Comment on Cold Weather Projects  |  Posted in Travelall, Welding

Warranty

As reported earlier my Eastwood welder decided to stop working completely about two weeks ago. I detached and re-attached the hose and gun assembly, thinking maybe some of the wire had bound up inside, but it came out straight and clean. I was at the end of a spool so I put a new one in, and it worked briefly for a few small welds. But the next time I fired it up I got nothing. The unit powered up fine and the fan was blowing but I got nothing out of the gun. I called Eastwood’s tech support and over the course of a week talked to several very nice CSA’s who took notes and assured me they’d get back in touch, but I had to do the legwork. I took the gun apart and tested for continuity at the switch, which checked out fine, and by request I cracked the case to look over the boards inside to see if anything was visually damaged. I didn’t see anything wrong, but yesterday I was finally sent an RMA by email to exchange for a new unit. I was worried about finding a box to pack it in, figuring I’d already recycled the original, but spied it under a bunch of tarps in the garage, holding the pedal assembly and air cleaner from the green ’68 parts truck. It was a bit worse for wear but I taped it up and reinforced the bottom with some 2-ply cardboard, and sent the unit out this morning. In the meantime I’m going to see if I can rent one locally so that I can finish the small welds required to button up the firewall and gas tank, and get the truck off jackstands. 

The Scout is still at the shop; I haven’t heard back from them yet but when I checked in on Monday he said they’d cleaned off the underside, run it up, and put it on the lift to look for leaks. Apparently there are two outlets on the transfer case that are weeping and another leak up front somewhere. So I’m hoping I’ll hear back from them today, and if not I’ll check in tomorrow.

Finally, I reconnected with a guy who had some parts trucks in a yard close to my sister’s place in New York. He still has a C-series Travelall in his field that I’d like to look over, so I’m making a plan to go check it out when we’re up there for Thanksgiving. So I’ve got to put together a recovery kit to bring north with me, including fire and cutting tools. This might be the impetus to buy a cordless angle grinder, actually…

 

Posted on   |   by bill   |   Leave a Comment on Warranty  |  Posted in Welding

Floorpan, Continued

I spent a couple of evenings this past week breaking down the green Travelall doors and collecting all of the parts to see how things look. The passenger door is in worse shape than the driver’s; there’s a fair bit of rust-through under the wing window on the bottom. Both doors are down to the metal, but on each one the lower hinge needs to be drilled out. That may make reusing them both tricky, but I think careful screw removal and re-tapping the hole is possible. Both windows, scissor assemblies, latch mechanisms, and most of the window channels are all in good shape. I’ve also got a second set of pre-’65 door latches for both sides from my friend Don in Ohio, which will come in handy as spares in case I need them.

The other thing Don sent me was a spare set of IH mirror assemblies. One of them is basically just the bracket, but the other held the mirror housing (minus the mirror) which actually worked in my favor, because I can see how the interior parts are assembled. Essentially there’s a long rod that goes through the center, threaded at each end, and held in place with two brackets welded to the rod. So even if I wanted to pull the rod out of my good housings I couldn’t.

To recap, the threads on one of my good mirrors was so rusted the bolts snapped off on each side, leaving me with no way to attach it to the bracket. Pretty much the only way I can make my good mirror work is to carefully pull one of the endcaps off, pull the threaded rod out, and replace it with a new one. The rod is pretty simple; it’s 1/4″ and takes a 1/4″ – 28 thread, which is easy to find a die for. It’s getting the cap off that worries me. It’s thin steel over an aluminum housing, so I have to be very careful taking things apart.

Saturday I stopped in at a neighborhood estate sale and picked up $20 worth of brand-name used tools that will come in handy for backups and spares, including four vice-grips and several wrenches.

Sunday I got back out to the truck and continued cutting and welding new metal in to the passenger’s footwell. I wound up taking more metal out, as I was having blow-through issues with bad metal and finding some pinholes as I was cleaning other sections. I think I’ve got all of the bad stuff out, and the stuff that’s still mildly pockmarked just got a thick coat of encapsulator. Underneath I ground out the rest of the welds and got it ready for paint. All of this took the majority of the day, as I was doing a lot of cutting and trimming, which sent me back and forth to the bench grinder.

The paint cured overnight and is now ready for seam sealer, which will be applied liberally around the edges before everything gets primed. On the outside edge of the footwell I ground everything flat and covered it in etch primer; it’s going to get several coats of chassis black and then a layer of undercoating to keep out the water.

Finally, I used some vinegar to flush out the inside of the gas tank and let that sit for a day and a half , shaking it around inside to get the crud out and neutralize any rust. Running a borescope down inside the tank, it looks shockingly clean apart from the remains of mud dauber nests. I flushed it with water and a solution of baking soda, then flushed it again and set it out to dry. The outside was covered with undercoating and some surface rust along the top and sides, so i hit that with a wire wheel and quickly got the whole thing down to bare metal. When the top and sides were clean I covered the trouble spots with Encapsulator and the bare spots with etch primer. I’m back and forth about pulling the fuel sender, but leaning towards leaving it in, as I know that it works and don’t want to mess with that.

So in the next couple of days when the temperature gets above 60˚ I’m going to apply sealer and paint to button up as much as I can.

Posted on   |   by bill   |   Leave a Comment on Floorpan, Continued  |  Posted in Purchasing, Welding

Welding and Steering

On Saturday I got back out to the truck in the afternoon following a yard sale and continued metalwork on the truck. I had to finish welding in the floor plate first, which felt like it took more time than last Sunday, then grind down the welds on top and underneath. I was happy to see I had good weld penetration when I was down under the truck, though it makes for tired arms when you’re grinding upside-down for a half an hour.

Then I started cutting smaller sections out of the toeboard that had rusted through, including a triangle-shaped area on the A-pillar. I cut a section of new metal, got that welded in to the toeboard area, and ground it smooth, finishing up as it was getting dark.

Sunday morning I got up, walked the dog, and drove up to Frederick to pick up a steering column from another Travelall, sold by a guy I’d met last year. He’s grafted a Crown Victoria front suspension and Ranger rear on to his ’68, lowering the whole thing onto airbags and tubbing out the rear tires. It’s really cool, even if it isn’t my cup of tea. His work is really nice (he’s a bodyman), and it’s going to be a sweet truck when he’s done.

The column he sold me is a column-shift unit, which may work for what I need and may not. I think I can cobble together one good column out of the two and probably sell the steering wheel at Nats to make some money back. The plan is to get an electric steering unit from a Toyota Corolla and splice it into the column.

I had errands to run after lunch, so by the time I got back outside it was 3PM and I didn’t want to drag all of the welding gear out for just one hour. So I filled the compressor tank, busted out the needle scaler, and cleaned off the frame and undercarriage all the way up to the front axle. By 5PM I had the frame coated with Encapsulator as well as most of the underside of the body shell. That was extremely satisfying. Next it’ll all get a coat of chassis black and then the body will get a coat of undercoating.

Posted on   |   by bill   |   Leave a Comment on Welding and Steering  |  Posted in Repairs, Travelall, Welding