One of the perks of working in an automotive museum is the ability to see some pretty cool stuff the folks visiting us Hoon around in. Last week there was a pretty good size car show here in the central part of these here United States of America. A customer of ours from the Dallas area came up with three of the five cars he has purchased from us over the past couple years. Yeah, a 61 Bubble Top 409, 56 Nomad and a 68 Camaro made the trip up, on trailers of course. He left with a grey 39 Ford Sedan as well. But as those are rather pedestrian automobiles, this olelongrooffan didn’t even gather an image of them. However, on Monday of this week, this beast was spotted in the parking lot and certainly captured my attention.
Yeah my fellow Hoons it was this awesome, and I believe totally Hooniworthy, truck hailing from the great state of Colorado. Although I was unable to catch up with the owner, this truck looked like it has had every nut and bolt replaced on it but no fancy dancy paint job was applied. Unknown as well is whether this is a true International chassis but ya know what? I don’t give a damn. It was just jaw dropping gorgeous and was definitely a daily driver. The builder of this ride relocated the fuel tanks from in front of the driver’s feet to the extreme rear of the chassis. The reason I know this fuel tank location is because of that Travelall this olelongrooffan spotted on US 1 a couple years ago.
And the pee spots seen on the parking lot beneath it are definitely not from this ride. It was liquid tight and totally desirable to this olelongrooffan. The ole boy who built this replaced every nut and bolt on this thing. See that differential cover plate? The rest of this truck was just as clean.
Against the backdrop of those other rather plain jane vehicles residing in the parking lot with this thing, it truly looked menacing and very much in proportion. Judging by the grille on this one, I’m guessing a 65 or 66 body. Any of my fellow Hoons got a guess on the chassis utilized?
Yeah, this olelongrooffan can’t wait to see what else is to be seen out in the parking lot of this old car place.
Image Copyright Hooniverse 2015/longrooffan
Truck Thursday: Long Shots: The International Edition
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That is an IH chassis, identified by seeing the second set of holes for mounting the shackle for the front springs. For what ever reason IH used different length front springs on 2wd vs 4wd trucks but used the same frame for both. So looking in the wheel well you can see the large round hole for the shorter 4wd springs just in front of the shackle. Wait you say it is a 4wd, yes it is but it is no longer riding at stock height. Since no one makes lift springs for full size IH’s anymore the standard swap is 73-87 Chevy springs which are the same length as the 2wd IH units. The axles are not the originals though you can use them with the Chevy spring swap but you might as well go with the Chevy style Dana 44 (or 10 bolt) with its disc brakes and the modern (OK relatively speaking) 8 lug pattern rather than dealing with the drums and wide 6 lug pattern used on the 3/4 and 1 ton IH’s of this era.
All in all a very nice Travelette.-
It is truly amazing to this olelongroofan that outside of an IH specific forum
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These have the delightfully diminutive name of “Travelette”. Tres petit, non?
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that we have commentors such as Scoutdude and Batshitbox to edumcate we Hoons in things such as this. And it’s not just IH stuff but microcars, MOPARs and Northstars. This olelongrooffan Loves The Hooniverse.
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Can I get an Amen to that!?!
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Why is there trim around the windows for the rear doors but not the fronts? Do they not open or something?
Very cool truck none the less!-
Well the windows would have rolled down when it left the factory. Most likely is that one pair of doors came from another truck. The higher trim levels came with additional “bright trim” vs the base model trucks. So my best guess is that the rear doors came from a Travelall that had the Custom trim level since Travealls were more commonly equipped with they higher trim levels and the Travelettes are more common in the lower trim levels.
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Wow. I hope that ICON guy doesn’t see it; that’ll be his next insane project.
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The owner is none other than Gary Billings, a well respected member of the IH community, and frequent poster on binderplanet. He literally has more Scouts and IHs than he can count. This one, like many of his projects, is a beautiful truck built on a low budget with a lot of talent. It has a 454 and K30 axle swap. Check out the build thread for this truck. It speaks for itself.
http://www.binderplanet.com/forums/index.php?threads/another-travelette-build.127551/
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