Here’s a video update from the last week or two with updates on the carb, a trip to Cars & Coffee, a parts run, and prepping plywood for the rear bed floor.
Category: Travelall
Laboring
Labor Day weekend we had absolutely nothing planned, so I took advantage of free time and mild weather to focus on getting Darth Haul running reliably. Saturday morning, after walking the dog and having breakfast with the girls, I went out and set up all of the diagnostic equipment I’ve collected for carbureted engines: a vintage dwell/tach/volt gauge, a vacuum gauge, and a timing light. I hooked the boat tank up to the engine and painted marks on the flywheel and timing marks with a white Sharpie, then ran it up to temperature. Messing around with the distributor, I found that it was happiest running at over 20˚ of advance, which is definitely not the way it should be. Anytime I brought the timing back down to a comfortable 10˚ the engine got choppy and began to die.
I put the light on the Scout just to see where the baseline for a smooth-running engine was, and verified that was at around 8˚, which is what I remembered from the service manual. No amount of distributor adjustment could get it to calm down. Puzzled, I zeroed out the carb and adjusted the mixture screws and the idle to get the engine to slow down, and was happy to find that the stumble at acceleration was gone. At idle I was pulling 20 inches of vacuum pressure. With the engine running better (but not timed correctly), I took it for a spin around the block and was happy to find it didn’t stall out once. I also noticed the speedometer isn’t working.
At around this point my Harbor Freight timing light died, so I had to run out and get a replacement. Strangely, it took a while to get the truck to start when I got back; I’d left it at 10˚ or so, and had to adjust it a bunch before it would catch again. I continued messing with the timing but couldn’t resolve the issue. Stumped, I stepped back and cleaned the truck up as much as possible for Cars & Coffee the next morning: I swapped out the old wood floor in the back for the new one, swept out the dust, and cleaned all the windows.
Sunday morning I made some coffee and ran the truck up in the driveway before taking it for a spin down the road. I pulled in to C&C and parked it next to a sexy Morgan 8, and I was soon joined by Bennett in his Speedster.
The Travelall was an immediate hit with the crowd; I got a lot of questions about what it is and where I got it, as well as whether I’d driven it a long ways with the boat tank. We had a good turnout, and at one point I was parked across from an Acura NSX and a McLaren.
Back at the house I did a bunch of straightening up in the garage, and David stopped by to pick up a bunch of parts I’d sourced for him at Nats and elsewhere. I was able to pass along the passenger fender and 6-cylinder air cleaner from Ohio, as well as a set of metal door cards I got in Pittsburgh, a pair of escutcheons, and the two eyebrow sections I’d cut off the truck in New York. He was super-happy to take delivery, and headed back to his house to get his truck running after a long pause.
One thing he mentioned to me was that he’d talked to a local spring guy about rebuilding his spring packs, and was quoted a reasonable price to do so. I was VERY intrigued to hear about this, as my springs are also as flat as a board. This would be an excellent fall-winter project, as it would require jacking the truck onto stands and pulling the springs off.
Sunday afternoon we ran a bunch of errands but after getting back home I put my spare door on the worktable and started breaking it down to pull the glass out. What I wound up having to do was take the black inner surround out, pop the clips holding the felt out, and prep the top half to be able to slide the rails and window out as a unit. Both of the screws holding the lower ends of the rails were, predictably, rusted solid, so I hit them with PBblaster but resolved to cut them out with a death wheel. The only angle grinder I’ve got that fits inside the door is the cheap pneumatic one I got from Harbor Freight, and here I was stopped dead by a leaking/broken moisture filter on the compressor. After picking up some new fittings I repaired that after dinner, and got things ready to start on Monday morning.
A few weeks ago, Bennett had gotten a call from a guy who had a mixture of old pickup parts and passed along his info to me. There were some pictures of C-series stuff that I was partially interested in, so after walking the dog and doing some chores around the house I drove a half an hour north to meet up with him. In his garage he had boxes of assorted parts, which I picked through carefully. I wound up going light: a reproduction MT-118 parts catalog for A, B and C-series trucks, a pair of beautiful black C-series sun visors, an ashtray in great shape, an NOS accelerator pedal, and one mirror assembly to pass on to Tyler out in Frederick.
Between odd jobs around the house, I fired up the compressor to notch the two screws at the bottom of the green door enough to turn with a screwdriver, then gently pulled the rails out to free up the glass. When that was done, it was easy to get the glass out. It’s in good shape, and after I wire-wheeled the metal bracket at the bottom, I taped it off and sprayed it with Rust-Stop. Getting the broken pane out of Darth is going to be a challenge, but now I know what I’m doing, and barring any major rust issues, it should be relatively straightforward to swap the glass in.
I also couldn’t help myself and swapped the black visors into the truck. They’re just a little bit longer than the gold ones that came out of the green truck, so they don’t fit into the clips next to the rearview easily. But they look great!
Screw It, Let’s Drive
Here’s a video of the first drive around the block in Darth Haul. No bystanders were harmed in the production of this video.
Sunday Drive
I drove the Scout to Easton over the Bay Bridge on Sunday and it ran like a top. It was a perfect day for a drive: Sunny but cool and the traffic was light. I was nervous about tourist traffic coming back in the evening and got on the road early in the afternoon but sailed all the way through Kent Island and over the bridge with no stopping.
When I got home, I had a little time to futz with the Travelall in the driveway before the girls got home and fired it up again. The idle was super rough, so I loosened the distributor and started adjusting the timing. It was at that point I noticed one of the plug wires had come off, which made no sense: I’ve never touched the distributor before then. Hooking that back up immediately cleaned the exhaust up, and the truck idled much smoother. At that point, the girls let me know they were headed back home, so I disconnected everything and buttoned the truck back up. I’m going to have to pull the carburetor off and clean it up. The accelerator pump is not functioning, and I think the jets are probably a little clogged. So I’m gonna pull it tomorrow and start cleaning things out after dinner.
Parts and Waits
No word on the Travelall this week. I was hopeful they might call me sometime Friday to pick it up, but I didn’t hear anything.
Meanwhile, I was out in Frederick shooting video for work, and when I was done with that, I texted my Travelall acquaintance Tyler, who’d told me a while back he had a bunch of parts left over from his project. We were only about five miles away so it was a short drive over to his house. He showed me the updates to his truck, which is now running and driving, and it is beautiful. He put a Crown Vic subframe under the front and a SBC in the engine bay, tubbed the rear wheels, and put the whole thing on bags. He fired it up and it sounds loud and mean. We looked over the other stuff he’s done, including installing an inexpensive headliner kit from Jegs, and traded some information on parts.
His headliner is a five-piece set, which might not work with the bows I’ve got, but I liked the look of it. I also looked carefully at the shoulder belts he put in, with nutserts on the B and C-pillars. I’ve been thinking about how I would add shoulder belts to my truck, and I like the way he put his in. So there’s some inspiration for a winter project there.
When I got back home, I went through the bin and catalogued it. There’s some stuff I was happy to find—things I’ve been looking for, and a couple of things I’d forgotten about:
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- An almost full set of original seatbelts in much better shape than the ones out of both of my trucks. The chrome buckles and metal mounting rings are all in excellent shape, as are the rubber protective covers.
- Two round metal dishes with circles in the center, and threaded O rings. It took me a minute to identify these, but when I did I was thrilled: these are the countersunk rear seatbelt mounting points that are set into the wood floor. One of the seatbelts has a carabiner-style latch which is clearly meant to be removed when the rear seat is folded forward. I’ve been kicking myself for having junked the green truck with these still inside; this is a fantastic stroke of luck.
Also in the bin were
- A late-model coolant overflow setup, which is basically a Scout-style container retrofitted to a metal panel.
- a single rear tailgate pot in good shape
- Four late-model IH hubcaps
- A brake pedal lever assembly
- A dual-chamber brake master cylinder and a clutch master cylinder, which would be an upgrade to my single-pot unit. I’ve got a set from the green truck along with the firewall mounting plate, which will be the firs things I try.
- Two rear seat safety rods and latches; these are the pieces that hold the rear seat in place.
- A rubber body mount that goes between the frame and the front clip, in excellent shape
- Two suspension components from the front steering assembly
- A bag of assorted bolts.
- A full set of gauges in a style I’ve never seen before—I’m pretty positive these are all aftermarket, but they’re pretty cool, and definitely different.
- Another working horn. Out of the four I have, only one works reliably, so I’m hopeful this one is the second of the two tones I need for a proper setup.
I know I can find a good home for a bunch of this stuff; I also sent him photos of my tailgate in the hopes that a guy he knows can use it for another project. So I owe him a trunkful of very good beer, or perhaps some good bourbon if he’s a cocktail sort of guy. We’ll see.
On Hold
Update Monday July 28: the second clutch I ordered is on its way, as per FedEx, and should be here by COB tomorrow evening. The first one is still stuck at the warehouse.
I’m currently waiting on two clutch kits from two different vendors which both happen to be shipping from the same warehouse in Kearny, NJ, where everyone seems to be smoking weed out back.
To recap: the transmission shop called me last Monday while I was in a car driving through Pennsylvania, and I used my phone to jump on RockAuto to find the proper 12″ clutch kit and order it. They promised me I’d have it by that Wednesday, which came and went. The FedEx tracking system said the label had been created but they hadn’t received the package yet—which is how it stands a week later. I got impatient on Saturday and figured I’d nudge the universe by going to a second vendor and ordering the same clutch kit to see who could deliver it first. But the joke was on me: both vendors use the same warehouse (both FedEx tracking updates point to the same location, and when I look at the inventory on RockAuto, it says there’s only one left, down from three last Monday.
It’s been too damn hot to do much of anything outside—we got back on Wednesday and I spent pretty much all weekend hiding out inside, apart from taking the Scout to the local Lowe’s for a sheet of plywood and sanding down a fresh skim of filler on each of the doors to cover the PO’s ham-fisted install of cheap mirrors.
Clutch Update
The transmission shop dropped the clutch this morning and found some very interesting things. At some point in the recent past, a new clutch was put in with new freeze plugs, pilot bearing, and (possibly) a flywheel. But the crank bolts weren’t sealed and apparently backed themselves out, smoking the clutch surface and possibly the flywheel. Jack sent me photos of the inside of the case and all of the parts, and it’s just puzzling. He gave me a disc diameter and a spline count, and I jumped on RockAuto to find the right replacement. Within five minutes I’d ordered it over the phone, to be delivered Wednesday.
I’m so glad I didn’t continue trying to mess with it in the driveway; I never would have sorted this out myself.
Off to the Doctor
I called up a tow company to bring Darth Haul off to my transmission shop this morning. They’ve got an opening and I’ve had enough of this thing sitting in the driveway. Let’s see if they can sort out the drivetrain and get me on the road.
Sunday Evening Update
I was really hoping I would be able to break the clutch free on my own, but it just didn’t happen.
With the new battery in place, the truck fired right up and when it settled in the Sniper brought the idle down to a reasonable rumble. I let it warm up for seventeen minutes and then shut it down. After setting up some cameras I followed the steps for breaking the clutch free: Put it in low gear, step on the brake, and bump the starter. I did this repeatedly with no success.
Then I figured I’d add more torque to the formula, and hooked a tow strap up between the Scout and the Travelall. Putting the Scout in low gear, I gave it about ten good tugs, enough to pull Darth forward about ten feet, but the rear wheels were still locked tight. I really don’t want to break anything, so at this point I accepted the fact that it needs to go to the transmission shop.
So I moved on to some other projects. Breaking out the sanding gear, I smoothed out the skim coat on the rear valance, prepped it, and shot it with IH rattle-can red. It now looks worlds better than it did when I got the truck.
Then I ran out to the Home Depot and pulled the trigger on a sheet of 3/4″ oak plywood for the rear bed. I’ve been looking and considering multiple different types of lumber for the rear floor: marine-grade plywood, pressure-treated plywood, and composite board used in boats. The first is difficult to find in this area; the second tends to warp over time and is hard to paint, and the third is exorbitantly expensive.
So, I figured I’d go with dependable hardwood. With a couple coats of heavy duty primer, and a good thick shot of undercoat, I think it’ll stand up to the elements pretty well. I need to figure out what I’m going to do with the inside bed. There are two options: I could cover it with rubber matting, the way the factory did it in 1963—I have a link to rubber flooring available on Amazon that someone else used in their truck. The trick there would be knowing what to use for adhesive. The second option is to polyurethane the wood, and add strips down to protect it. This option would make it a little more difficult to sleep on the floor, but might be cheaper in the long run. I cut the plywood to fit and laid it into the truck and was very happy with the results. I’ve been staring at that crappy uneven floor for two years now, and it really cleans up the interior of the truck.
I installed the cardboard glove box insert I got at Nationals. This took a lot more effort than I assumed it would: I had to remove the defrost vent and hose and figure out how to insert it through the glove box opening to get it in place. It actually doesn’t fit as well as I was hoping it would, but it’s better than having an empty hole in the dashboard.
Sunday evening I dug four sets of window cranks/handles/escutcheons from the green truck out of my bins and cleaned them all up. A trip to ACE hardware yielded three springs for behind the escutcheons, and I set up three of the four doors with proper handles.
So I’m at sort of a crossroads. It’s probably going to take a while to get the truck into the bay at the transmission shop. In the meantime, I can continue fooling with the Sniper, but I’ve got a lot of research and learning to do before I can make any major improvements there. And, it really helps when you can drive the truck around to help program the computer. There are a bunch of small jobs that can be done, but I can’t dig into anything huge.
Saturday Morning Plans
So remember back in May when I said I thought the alternator was bad? Turns out that was fine, but my battery was sick. I’d swapped out the starter last weekend but found that the battery itself was boiling itself when hooked up to the truck.
I pulled it out and let it cool down overnight. The next evening I got underneath and re-connected the wiring to the starter to make sure it wasn’t shorting out on itself. This made the engine much happier, after I dropped the battery from the Scout in, it fired right up. I connected the old battery to the tender and let that top off while I was doing some other stuff, and when it measured 13V I put it back in to give it a shot. I got one crank out of it and then it died quickly, which told me it was irreparably sick.
Going on a tip from a Youtube channel I follow, I learned that Costco sells Interstate batteries for $100 less than the auto retail stores. I grabbed one Thursday night and dropped it in the truck. It fired right up with no complaint, and after shutting it down, an hour later the battery and its cables were comfortingly cool to the touch.
I don’t know what happened with the previous battery, but the signs were there months ago when I wasn’t getting much of a crank out of it. I guess there was a parasitic drain on it somewhere, and when I put the starter in one of the wires was shorting out, which cooked the battery to the point where it became a boat anchor. I’m going to watch this new one carefully to make sure it doesn’t get sick like the last one did, because batteries are expensive.
In the meantime, I can tackle a couple of things this weekend: first and foremost is attempting to break the transmission free. This is going to involve running the engine up to temperature, which is fine in any case; another good data log will help me get back to the real job of testing and tuning the EFI system. I dove into the training videos the other night, and realized I have a lot to learn to get this thing running optimally.
Then I’m going to sand and paint the valance panel over the barn doors to finish that project up; even in primer it looks so much better than it did all chewed up.