Well, this weekend was a journey. Mostly a good one; a lot of good stuff got accomplished, and I spent a bunch of time with friends, but it wasn’t without its challenges.
We had a workday scheduled at Brian’s place in the country to work on Heavy D, Bennett’s long-sidelined pickup waiting for welding repairs, a windshield install, and re-assembly of the front clip. The last time I was out there I’d bent and formed a complicated section of metal to weld to the front of the firewall but Brian’s commercial welder was too strong to work the sheet metal without blowing through it. We were also going to help Brian move his pickup around and place the bed on the frame to free up space, and see what other stuff we could get up to.
My plan was to drive Darth Haul out there for her first short-distance trip, so I worked on the engine timing and fuel system on Thursday. I was having issues with the fuel pump pulling debris from the saddle tank up into the pickup and clogging it, so I rigged the boat tank up with a length of hose and put it on the passenger floor. After loading up my tools, welder, and welding bin, I hit the road at about 9 and took my time getting out there. Brian’s place is about 20 miles away, and I took back roads to avoid any high-speed sections. The truck did very well! Shifting is smooth, the engine is strong, and the brakes worked well. I noticed a vibration at 40mph and heard some rubbing in back, which foreshadowed later events.
At Brian’s house, I helped he and Bennett to clean out Mr. Hanky, because our friends Chad and Liz were coming down from Pittsburgh to possibly buy it. Bennett has had it up for sale since Nats in order to free up cash and space for a cleaner Scout, and they’ve been in the market for another project for a while. They arrived at 11 and he showed Chad the truck while we caught up with Liz. By 1PM the deal was done, and we helped them load the trucks up with a pile of extra parts. It was bittersweet to see Hanky drive away, but it’s great to see him going to a good home—it reminds me so much of selling Chewbacca to Carolyn to give to Brian—I know they’re going to do a great job reviving him.
After moving Brian’s pickup and freeing up a bunch of floor space, we had pizza delivered for a late lunch and then set to work on Heavy D. The first big task was to re-install the windshield, and luckily the rubber was designed exactly like what I put in Peer Pressure, so I knew how to align it in the channel. Between the four of us and with judicious use of glass cleaner, we got it in place and then used plastic putty spreaders to guide the edges into the channels, then fold the locking flap over.
With that done, I set my welder up and put the patch in place, ground it down, and got it ready for paint while Brian and Bennett started hanging fenders. Within about an hour we had the truck put mostly back together and ready for a test fire. The carb was mad at being ignored for a year, and didn’t want to run properly, so Bennett will have to go back and diagnose that. By 5PM we wound down and set course for home. I took Bennett back to his place, but noticed the truck working harder as we drove. Stopping for gas I found all four wheels hot to the touch, which told us the brakes were dragging. By the time we got to his house the passenger rear was smoking slightly. We pulled the wheels off and cooled them down with a hose, then banged the drums off with a hammer. The pads were all the way extended, which meant that the system wasn’t releasing pressure. It was getting dark, so he gave me the keys to his CR-V and I drove that home after parking Darth in his driveway.
The next morning I got there at 9 with all of my brake tools and fluids, and we started troubleshooting the system. After tearing apart and rebuilding the rear drums three times, we tested the master cylinder upstream and verified it wasn’t the lines above either axle. So we disconnected and bench bled the master until it looked clear, then connected everything back up to test. It looked like the brakes were grabbing and releasing, and a test drive verified this. While under the truck I also noticed a huge dent in the driveshaft, which explains the vibrations above 40MPH.
I packed up my tools, extended my sincere gratitude for Bennett’s knowledge and time, and set course for home. She ran well and didn’t feel like she was struggling the farther we went. The brakes and clutch felt good, and I got her home with no problems. The wheels were hot when I checked them after parking it, but not scalding as they had been before. It may take another bench bleed to really kick the issue, but for now, I’m happy she’s back in the driveway.
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.
Here’s a video update from the past week, with some more detail on the parts haul and a long review of the tan Scout Brian and I are making an offer on.
Without Darth in the driveway, I’ve been tackling some small things on the Scout that have been bugging me. The biggest of these was the exhaust donut leak, which was not remedied a couple of weeks ago. Looking around the interwebs I found a two-piece flange replacement available locally, and set about to installing it. Getting the original flange off was easy enough, but getting the new one on was trickier. Because it’s heavier and thicker, it sits lower on the exhaust pipe and thus requires a longer bolt. And its location next to the frame meant that there was a lot of wiggling and some hammering involved to get it in the right place before I could tighten it up. But after a brief test ride Saturday and a longer 50-mile drive on Sunday, there’s no leak, and I think I can call this fixed.
While I was under the truck I tightened up the emergency brake cable, which has been loose for months, and checked that off the list.
Sunday I met up with Bennett, Brian and a couple of other folks up at Dan’s place to show our friend Brendan the whole stash in the woods; he’d be the guy most interested in clearing a path and hauling out all the trucks. I prepared better this time, bringing a can of 40% DEET, duct-taping my ankles, and generally insuring that the ticks couldn’t get to me.
We started in the garage and looked over all the stuff in there, and then walked back through the field to the trucks in the woods. The underbrush has grown a lot in two months. Brendan looked over things carefully and then we walked back to the garage, discussing what he’d be interested in and what he wasn’t.
While that was happening, I dug out a trio of good hubcaps from the huge stash in the garage and made a good deal on them. Brian made a deal on a rusty Scout 800 tailgate, which he had to go back into the woods for.
While he and Bennett did that, I cleared off one of the better Scout 800s closer to the house, which was covered in vines, and got a better look at it. I’ve been thinking about a test vehicle for Brian’s electrification project, and that truck looks like an excellent candidate. I think I’ve talked him into taking advantage of the sale. If he had the space I’d recommend grabbing it and the blue 80 to be able to account for all of the changes between early and late production models.
Screenshot
Back home in the garage, I was looking a little closer at the gauge set Tyler handed off to me, and rubbed off some of the dirt to reveal the serial numbers. I was surprised to see the initials SW, which almost certainly stands for Stewart Warner, and started looking up the serials. It turns out they are Stewart-Warner, and they look pretty cool. So, I’ll have to consider if I want to swap those in.
Here’s a recap of 2025 IH Nationals. This one took a while to put together, as there was so much footage and I couldn’t do a review of the parts while it was raining.
I’m back at my desk on Monday after a 1000-mile trip out and back to Ohio, with only a minor hiccup the whole way. Overall, it was a great time, and even though the weather was damp and drizzly, the trip was filled with fun and good friends.
On the road
We changed up our strategy a little bit this year and got on the road Wednesday evening right after work in order to make it to an overnight at a cheap hotel near Pittsburgh, about halfway to Ohio. At our first pit stop Bennett found that his lower radiator hose was spitting all over the engine bay, but he produced a spare from all the parts in his cargo area. We went inside and had a good dinner before coming back out when the engine had cooled down, and had it swapped out in about a half an hour.
Setting sun over Western Maryland
Refilling and burping the tank, we got on the road as the sun was setting and continued into Pennsylvania with our lights on. Brian found a hotel that wasn’t booked, and after Siri took us the long way, we parked outside and shut the trucks down. The room and beds were clean enough that we didn’t mind and 80 bucks was exactly the right price.
After a breakfast of powdered eggs and manufactured bacon, we hit the road at about 8AM on Thursday and continued our way into Ohio. The reason for getting out there early was so that we could finally stop in and see the Air Force Museum, which is in Dayton—only about 20 miles from the hotel we were staying at. It’s been there like a big giant bull’s-eye for years, and we just never made the time to check it out.
This plane is one of the reasons I wanted to go to the Museum.
Getting out there, the weather was clear but cool and we had mostly sunny skies for the entire trip. We rolled into the Museum parking lot at about noon and were immediately blown away by the size and scope of everything. They’ve got four huge hangars, starting with the birth of aviation and the Wright brothers, who began their tinkering with airplanes not far from the museum. Each successive hangar moved forward in time, all the way up to modern jets. There was so much to see, we didn’t have enough time to get to the last two hangars apart from a quick speed walk. After the museum closed at five, we loaded back up and headed to our hotel—only 7 miles away—to register and start meeting up with people in the parking lot for some cold beer and conversation.
Friday morning is always the best morning for parts hunting, but we got a bit of a late start. The hotel we stay at is very nice and they provide a better breakfast than most. We made it to the fairgrounds at about 9:30, parked the trucks, got set up, and then hit the stands to see what we could find.
My list for this year was actually very short. I wasn’t looking for any Scout stuff, and I only had a few specialty Travelall items that I wanted to find. The vendor space seemed a little thin compared to two years ago, but a lot of the used parts guys had a wide selection of Scout stuff. There was barely any C-Series truck stuff to look through, which was kind of disappointing. I stopped at the Scout Connection tent and picked up a glove box insert for Darth Haul, which was one of the top things on my list, and scoped out a couple of other items to look at later. I also had a list for a couple of other folks, and found a six-cylinder air cleaner for Pickup David after digging through a huge pile of assorted parts.
This is 501, the first Scout produced by International Harvester. It was restored just a few years ago.
The Friday crowd was a bit smaller than the weekend crowd, which was normal, but we met up with a bunch of old friends and caught up as we walked around. Inside the building, there was an amazing display of beautiful show trucks: 501, the first Scout 80 ever made, lovingly restored by the IH pros for display. Next to that was the last Scout II produced in 1980, a diesel Scout II.
The Scout Motors Traveler. The Last Scout is sitting right behind it.
Scout Motors had both of the new prototypes on display with a big crowd around each one. They are beautiful in person, and we spent a lot of time admiring the design and all of the tiny details they added: things like LED lights under the door handles, a trick charging port door behind the driver’s rear side marker, and cupholders on either side of the frunk. The Scout employees were very nice and answered questions all day, pausing to wipe them down with chamois cloths.
Back at the trucks, we sat under the awning and caught up with some of the folks around us. Bennett had made up signs to offer Hanky for sale at Nats, thinking someone might take him up on a deal and he could come home with a pocket full of cash for a future deal. He had a lot of tire kickers, and his price was very fair for what he was asking, but Hanky is sort of like a threadbare suit on a male model—the components are worth more than the shell of the truck.
One of the tech seminars was very interesting: Levi from Old Iron Offroad was doing an introduction to the Holley Sniper kit. I took copious notes and confirmed a lot of things I was already assuming. I’d already figured I would need to buy a beater PC laptop and learn more about tuning in order to get the most out of the Sniper, and this confirmed it. He also gave us a discount code for an EFI training course, and as a surprise, they did a drawing for the Sniper kit they were demoing—which I didn’t win, sadly.
Sean Barber and his crew did a talk on taking their Scout back to Baja to race in the NORRA 1000; last year they had an accident and the truck rolled down a hill, which was the end of the race (and that truck). They built a new one, keeping some of the same components from the first truck, and won first place in their class. Then they walked us out to the truck and fired up the engine so we could hear a 4-cylinder truck engine roar.
A pretty truck. But I could see straight through a hole in the cowl to the passenger seat.
As usual, I peeped out all of the C-series trucks and Travelalls to see how their trucks look; they were thin on the ground this year, but this teal truck and a white one with barn doors caught my eye.
This Travelall was for sale, without engine—but with the trailer.
And this forlorn D-series Travelall was for sale—with the trailer—and no motor.
Stephen and I checked out this pretty pickup. There were some choices made that were not my style (why is the bumper red?) but it was very nice overall.
Stephen and I walked over to check out this pretty pickup truck, which was similar to the one he used to have.
That Terra on the left is uglier than Peer Pressure.But beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
I’m betting this Terra won for Ugliest Truck, but beauty is in the eye of the beholder, as they say.
This K series pickup made me weak in the knees.
Late in the afternoon. I ran into Brian and Emma who I met years ago at the 2021 Nationals, who had trailered in her Scout from Illinois. We made plans to meet up on Saturday to catch up, and they headed off to their hotel.
The three of us packed up at about five and headed out for some dinner at a pizza joint close to the hotel, dodging rain showers along the way. Then we headed back to the hotel and parked up with the rest of the crowd there, cracking open some beers and tailgating until late in the evening.
Saturday morning, the three of us agreed to get up earlier, and I arranged to pick up Brian and Emma, whose Dodge towing rig had broken down the night before. We loaded them into my Scout and made it to the fairgrounds by a little after 8 o’clock. They moved their Scout next to ours, and we reassembled our canopy, then hit the parts field for a second run. There weren’t many new vendors out there, but we found some more good deals and offered some advice, finding them a set of good door hinges buried in the bins at Coonrods’. I picked up a set of dome-style IH hubcaps for Darth that had been painted red; I’ll see if I can strip them and shine them up. For $30 it was too good to pass up. But other than that, I was very disciplined. I did grab a C-series fender for Pickup David for $40; it’s going to need some work but better than anything else he’d find around here.
Saturday’s forecast was much wetter than Friday’s and we dealt with fleeting rain showers off and on the whole day. Bennett adjusted his signs to sell Mr. Hanky and I put more of my postcards out on my wipers. There were more seminars scheduled, but the one everyone was interested in was an update from the Scout Motors team where they talked about everything they’ve accomplished and what’s coming next.
Late in the afternoon, I queued up to do a photo tour of the plant in my truck and a security guard led us into the facility, where IH made their heavy duty trucks. I was able to park my truck on the production line itself and take a bunch of really cool photos there, which was a highlight.
One of the highlights of the day!
Then we drove back out and parked in our spot. The rain came and went all afternoon, and that seemed to dampen the spirits of some of the people with shiny show trucks, because the field started thinning out at about 3. At this point, I’m not worried about rain while I’m out there so we stuck around until the end. That turned out to be a blessing, because we were part of something very special at the end of the day. As we were pulling out to go to the hotel, our friend Dennis flagged Bennett down and told him that the Scout Motors folks were pulling their trucks out for a photo op. Brian and I parked Peer Pressure and walked back over to watch.
501, the Scout Motors Terra and Traveler.501, the Scout Motors Terra and Peer Pressure!Another shot of the same.That’s the Last Scout, 501 (the First Scout), and the Scout Motors Traveler.
For the photo shoot, they pulled the first scout out of the garage and then the last Scout and flanked the two new Scouts. We watched them align the trucks and take some photos, and it just so happened that Mr. Hanky and Peer Pressure were sitting right behind the new trucks.
Bennett even got involved and wound up steering the First Scout backwards to get it lined up while other people pushed it. Then, the Scout Motors folks asked us to pull our trucks up behind theirs, and we jumped at the chance. Originally, I was in the first row behind their Terra, but it turned out I would have been out of the frame, so they moved me over to the other side in the third row. I wasn’t complaining.
Taken from my monopod. Peer Pressure is over on the left.
They organized all the trucks and we moved them around until they were happy with the placement, and then we stood behind their photographer to watch them do the photo shoot with a drone and a camera. I used my monopod and the timer on my camera to shoot as many pictures of the set up as I could.
While I was shooting, a couple of the Scout motors folks were standing next to us, and I asked one of them if, when they were done, we could shoot a photo with all of the owners in front of their trucks. Her eyes lit up, she said that’s a great idea! and quickly arranged it with her crew. We all ran to our trucks, and they shot a bunch of pictures and video, and then did one with the Scout Motors crew in front of their two new trucks and all of us.
(copyright Scout Motors)Bennett taking the Last Scout for a spin
As we all dispersed, Bennett quietly moseyed over to the garage and disappeared inside for a couple of minutes. He then came out driving the Last Scout, taking it for a spin around the parking lot with a giant grin on his face. It turned out that he had mentioned driving the First Scout to Mike Bolton, who owns the Last Scout. He threw Bennett the keys and told him he’d better take the Last Scout out for a spin so he could say he drove them both. Stuff like that is the reason I love going out there.
At that point, it was 6 o’clock, we were hot and hungry, so we finally left the grounds and hunted down some food at a pub close to the hotel. We then hit the Walmart for some supplies and made our way back to the parking lot, where the auction was just getting started. At this point, I was pretty beat and not feeling as social as I should have been and we only stayed out to talk to folks until about 10 o’clock before heading upstairs.
Sunday morning, we were up and out early. After stopping to take a quick group photo, we made sure everything in the truck was as waterproof as it could be and headed out into the drizzle. I made sure to wash the windshield with ceramic cleaner to wick off the water, but hoped we’d not drive through any major downpours. As it turned out, we did fine even though the clouds were following us eastward. Brian and I switched off driving which made the trip much easier to do in one day.
We stopped off for lunch in a little town in Pennsylvania and happened to find the same family-owned diner Bennett and I ate at two years ago, which was just the right speed.
Both trucks ran flawlessly on the way home, and we pulled into the driveway at about 5:30. Brian got a pitstop, we transferred his gear, and he continued home. I backed a damp Peer Pressure into the garage, got my basic gear out, and let her cool off. I’ll have to address the leaking exhaust when it dries out, but other than that, she was rock-solid the whole way.
We rolled in after a 9-hour drive; I’ll just drop a few photos here right now and preview the recap by saying it was amazing.
Peer Pressure inside the IH Springfield Assembly Plant.On the actual assembly line. PP didn’t actually roll down this line (that was in Fort Wayne), but Darth Haul did.Foreground to background: 501 (the first Scout assembled in 1961), the Scout Motors Terra prototype (due in 2027) and Peer Pressure.
When I bought my first Scout, I was one of the youngest guys at the car meetups. I was 26, gainfully employed, and knew nothing about cars other than what I’d picked up in the repo lot. I knew more about picking locks than I did fixing engines, but I didn’t let that stop me from driving a 20-year-old truck to the Outer Banks from Baltimore with nothing but a screwdriver and some electrical tape. I read as much as I possibly could and picked up bits of information from the old-timers around me. Resources like the Binder Bulletin and the IHC Digest were full of guys who had bought Scouts new off the dealer lots, and they were a wealth of knowledge and information about the little quirks and tricks of ownership.
And as time has moved on, so have a lot of those old-timers. Guys I leaned on in the early years have since passed; interesting characters with names like Doc Stewart and Ol’ Saline have gone to the big garage in the sky, leaving a big empty space where their friendly knowledge once was.
One of Bennett’s friends from his early days collecting trucks passed late last year, leaving behind a huge collection of vehicles at his mother’s house. Finley and I had been up there 15 years ago to help Bennett pull an engine from under a lean-to, and at that point the place had simply been overgrown. Bennett was asked by the family to go up and inventory the stuff left behind, and I volunteered to give him a hand.
After meeting a member of his family and getting our bearings, we checked out a truck in the garage near the house: a Traveler in mostly restored condition, but surrounded by pieces and parts that still needed to be installed. It’s still in great shape, and all of the parts required look to be nearby, but it would require some serious excavation. The garage is stuffed with tools and parts and lawnmowers and other stuff, but it’s still dry and intact, which is good news. We noted what was there and what might be missing, and some wheels started turning in Bennett’s head.
Walking around back, we found another collection of parts that had once been protected by a lean-to and tarps. In this pile were a bunch of doors, hoods, and other sheet metal, as well as a bin full of heavy engine parts. Most of the stuff was open to the elements, so we dug around to try and identify as much as we could, pick it up out of the dirt, and shoot pictures.
Out in the back field, we found that the place was wildly overgrown compared to when we were there earlier: what had been open grassland 25 years ago was now a young forest, and it took us a while to bushwhack our way to the area where he had parked a bunch of cars and trucks: a group of R series Travelalls, R series pickups, a trio of Nash sedans, a couple of Scout IIs, a couple of Scout 800s, and a few more modern cars.
As we expected, some of the trucks were in rougher shape than others. Working carefully, we got into as many of the trucks as we could, shooting video and collecting VIN numbers to trace the titles and ownership. Apparently much of the paperwork is missing, though they were stored in the house at one time.
Several of the pickups and one of the Travelalls are in very good shape and would be restoration candidates for the right person. One of the Scout 800s might make a good restoration candidate, while both Scout IIs are only good for parts. It would be very tempting to offer the family money for one of those pickups.
Then we spent an hour bushwhacking through the forest to try to find a shed that was allegedly full of parts. We walked all the way across the property and all the way back to a creek at the rear boundary without finding anything. Consulting Bing maps, I found an outline of where a shed once stood in Street view and oriented us to where it should be. We discovered it collapsed under a tangle of vines and overgrowth and realized we had walked past it twice without seeing it. Under the broken beams we found another collection of parts: some Scout doors, some R-series doors, assorted sheet metal, as well as a bunch of Scout hubcaps and some other interior parts. In order to do a full survey, someone would have to return with a chainsaw and a bushhog to get in there. We collected the best parts we could reach, carried them back to the main truck collection, and then made our way out of the field before it started to rain. Exhausted after a four hour expedition, we stopped at the local diner and loaded up on breakfast.
Bennett got to thinking about how he might swing a deal for the Traveler, and we threw some ideas back and forth. It’s an extremely worthy candidate for saving, and miles ahead of Hanky’s condition.
On Sunday morning, one of those old hands came through for me again. My Scout has been at the transmission shop waiting on a callback from IH Parts America as to the clutch issue; this being the height of show season and Nats being next week I figure they are pretty busy planning and packing the trucks, so I haven’t heard anything back from them. Beginning to panic, I put a post up on the Binder Planet asking for help diagnosing the issue and within two hours I had an answer: one of the bolts is installed backwards and needs to be flipped around. This will require dropping the transmission again, but if that’s all it’s going to take, I’m glad it’s at a transmission shop. Hopefully they can get me in and out ASAP this week so I can get her prepped for the road.
Finally, a nice fellow from Instagram had reached out asking me for some advice on a C-Series pick up truck he bought locally. After trading some messages back and forth it turned out he was only about 20 minutes from the house, so I offered to stop down on Sunday morning to look over his truck.
The pickup in question was one I’d looked at back in 2022 when I was first searching for a new project vehicle. I met him in his driveway, where he was replacing the Holley 1940 carb on a six-cylinder engine. After meeting his dog and shaking his hand, he explained that the carb that came with the truck was leaky and had a lot of play in the butterfly valves. He’d rebuilt it, but water had gotten into the gas tank and rusted out parts of the carb.
He was looking at using a Chinese-built replacement, but the linkage on that carb was set up for a Ford so there would need to be a lot of re-engineering the throttle linkage to get it to work with his truck. So we futzed with the old carb, trying to find a gasket that would hold the gas in the bowl, but the two that he had didn’t work and it kept dumping gas when he ran the fuel pump. While we worked, I answered questions and passed on advice on what to prioritize and how I’ve done certain things on my truck. He’s facing the same issues I had with my Travelall: the cowl vents are leaking into the cab and need to be cut out and replaced, requiring major sheetmetal surgery. He doesn’t have any experience with bodywork or welding yet, and picked my brain about how to tackle the project. I explained the process I had followed and gave him advice on where to look for parts and how to disassemble certain things. We weren’t able to get the carb to work properly, so I told him I would look out for replacements at Nats.
I realize now that I am the old-timer. The brutal truth is that my peers and I are the graybeards, and we’re slowly passing on and leaving our stuff behind. I’m not a professional, and I still need to learn so much, but it feels good to give back to the community as much as I’ve learned from it, and to be an ambassador for the brand and for the hobby.
Sunday morning broke cold but sunny, and I hit the road at 7AM with the car already loaded. I had a 3.5 hr. drive out to the other side of Pittsburgh in front of me, but my podcast app was loaded and I was headed away from the sunrise—which was good, because my sunglasses are AWOL. The drive was unremarkable other than beautiful foliage blooming throughout southern Pennsylvania, and I reached Pittsburgh by 11:30 with one stop for expensive gas. The yard was on a hill above the river, and I found two Internationals among many large tractor trailers in a commercial yard. I texted the owner and got to work on the column.
Because the truck was already pretty well picked over I had free access to the stuff I needed: there were only two bolts under the dash to free up the column there, but the three bolts on the steering box were rusted pretty good and the nuts were inaccessible due to a gusset built into the frame. I’d thought ahead and brought my generator, though, and after about 10 minutes with a corded cutoff wheel I trimmed off the bolt heads and pried the box off the frame with a bitch bar. Now, I had to figure out how to get the column out—and I’d forgotten to bring my steering wheel puller. Thankfully, Joey, the guy selling the truck, had one in his shop down the street, and ran me down to pick it up. We paused to look over a beautiful C-series tow truck he’s finishing up, and then he brought me back up to the yard.
I had the wheel off in 5 minutes and then had to puzzle out how to remove the whole unit. The collar in the cab wouldn’t fit through the hole in the firewall (I had this issue with the green truck) nor would the steering box. I did notice the collar moving as I was tugging on it from inside the cab and realized it wasn’t connected to the box anymore—then saw that if I pulled on the steering box from the front, the rod inside slid out of the outer casing and suddenly I was holding those two elements in my hands. The outer tube came out through the cab with a little convincing, and I put the two sections back together on the tailgate of the Honda.
Then I went through the rest of the truck and pulled some other parts off: The windshield wiper motor, the instrument cluster, the radio blockoff plate, and a slightly banged up ’63-’64 headlight trim ring. Inside the cab someone had stacked some extra parts, and I fished out some more good stuff: two uncut metal door cards, a heater motor (the heater in this truck was melted), an ashtray, a marker light assembly, a window crank unit, two sun visors in good shape, and an emergency brake assembly. I did leave a bunch of larger stuff behind—two D-series windshields, a rear pickup window, an instrument cluster in worse shape, and a bunch of other stuff.
After loading up and paying Joey I hit the road at about 4PM and made it home by 8 after stopping for some dinner. The steering column doesn’t look too different from the unit I pulled out of the green truck, save the fact that it’s attached to a power steering box, so I’ll have two basic units to practice on before I do anything with the one in Darth.
