Rivets

I was looking for some thing else at my local small town convenience/hardware/plumbing/grocery/gas station store. ( I live in a town of 600 people ). They have about everything for a quick fix. So I look on a dusty old shelf and see some rivets laying there, my curious mind say's "ohhh rivets!" as I am going threw the boxes I find wide faced finder rivets. These are seemingly hard to find. I purchased all they had. They are so close the head size is a little smaller but passable. So fender rivets have been found.

brake shoes

I took my brake shoes to a local company to have them relined. They quoted me a price that matched several other people I have talked to on having them relined. So when they get done pending no other problems I should be able to put the rear and front completely back together.  I have all of the brake springs, pins, and adjusters separated and ready to go back on. I took the front knuckles over to Hoods machine to install the new king pins. I got lucky with Hoods again Dave had the correct reamer for my odd ball king pins. I some how I forgot to take pictures while I took the king pins apart. I didn't think that was a big deal. Well ten minutes into trying to put the king pins in I realized I was missing something. So after another twenty minute search for my bag of all the king pin parts for the Texas truck and found a set of spacing washers. Then I realized some how I had two sets of spacing washers in the bag. So I am back on track spacing washers and shims are perfect fit. I got the front end mocked up and is ready to take back apart and be cleaned and painted. While fitting the breaks I noticed the drums have a slight lip on them so I plan to take them down to the machine shop and have them turned for good measure.

Evapo-rust

Evapo-rust nuts and bolts. and sorting.

Sorting and cleaning nuts and bolts is the most tedious and unsatisfying thing I have ever done. The only highlight to it all was using Evap-o-rust for the first time. I will say I was thrilled by the results. It cleaned the wheel bolts and locks really well. I have done a lot of ebay hunting lately and found a couple great pieces, an original headlight switch and a wrench that would have come in the IH tool kit.  I got the finders and side steps all sorted and ready to start body work. I fixed my broken finder braces. Now for more sand blasting and more paint! 

too busy!

I have been too busy with family lately to get much on the truck done. Basically I took a year off.  I have been doing a few little things. Mostly looking for extra parts for the truck. Anything I can find that I might need later like a extra water pump rebuild kit or a distributor drive gear. Extra hard to find pieces that might come in handy one day. Like a new ring and pinion and extra bonus 5.28 gear ratio much better than 6.12 that is on it now. I cleaned up a extra set of side plates I had. I found my rear hub bearings at the local auto parts store. I wanted to keep as many parts nos or original replacements as possible. So I had looked up and down for the old IH numbers and found nothing, so I finally ordered the National brand locally and low and behold they all are bower which is the company that made them for International so close enough in my book for original replacements.Now with these in hand I am back to work. I have been making gaskets this week and getting the rear end put back together. I have waited a long time to start putting thing back on. So in the flowing weeks I will be getting brake shoes relined and the new king pin set installed. Feels good to start working on it again.