Project Tallhoe - 1971 IH Travelall

[datsunfreak]

13 hours ago, Lockleaf said:

I built pseudo body mounts?  In case the body settles at the back from overhanging the Tahoe mounts too much I've built these.  Square tube with tire tread attached.

 

 

 

 

I think you have a screw in your tire. Might want to fix that...

[Lockleaf]

Finally put together another video.  This one is all about taillights.  I welded up new housings and welded them to the original chrome bezels, added new sockets and gave them a shiny silver coat inside.  Then I made new lenses from another vehicles taillight and restored the color on some other lenses. Check it out 

 

 

[Lockleaf]

Part 46 - Back to the tailgate

 

 

 

Last time we were here, I had gotten to this point installing the suburban tailgate handle.

 

 

Leaving it up and exposed like this was my original idea. So I just finished it off.

 

 

Turns out this not only looks crappy, but after doing this I caught my foot repeatedly. It was annoying me very rapidly. A friend of mine suggested just building a sloped up shield for it, so I decided to go down that route. So I built this

 

 

 

Which is now fully welded in.

 

I don't have any pics but I also had a huge curve from side to side and my window opening got so narrow in the middle I couldn't pass a window through it. So I had to stretch that metal back up. The new handle shape also helps to reinforce the middle of the panel to prevent that from happening again.

 

If you want to see how I did that, watch on!

 

 

 

Edited June 5, 2023 by Lockleaf

[Lockleaf]

OK folks, trying to do better here.  Also some of the video length and format is changing over the next few videos below.  Lots less time lapse, shorter total video times, more about "finishing a job" than it is doing a video every week or so.  Videos are currently happening at about a 3 week interval.

Anyway, there are a ridiculous number of holes in the back of the Travelall.  Like 30+, so I made a howto video of different ways to fill holes in sheetmetal.  Here's that one.
 

 

[Lockleaf]

Episode 48 - I accidently attempt to kill myself.  Oh and I do a bunch of work to make the Travelall's sheetmetal interior fit around the Tahoe middle row.  There is a pretty subtantial amount of interference between the two.  There is also a panel wide strip of serious cancer rust, where the original wheel well had rusted from in the wheel well, all the way through to the interior.  At this point, you could have thrown a rock from the wheel straight through into the vehicle!  And lastly, I decided, for reasons, that these interior panels needed to be removable.  I should have just cut them at a different point originally, but now I have to reweld my entire cut seam, finish it down nice and make a new cut about an inch above the old one!
 

 

[Lockleaf]

Episode 49 - Hybrid fuel neck.  And no I'm not talking about some Prius.

I got lucky in the fact that the Tahoe and Travelall fuel doors are on the same side and in basically the same quadrant of the vehicle.  Rear Drivers area around the wheel.  They aren't in exactly the same place, but I have a plan to deal with that in the near future.  Right now though, I just need a way to mount a fuel filler neck to the Travelall.  Stock, the T-All had the tank actually in this rear quarter.  Not below the vehicle, but actually behind the interior cargo paneling, right there behind the exterior sheetmetal.  Like 510 wagon kinda thing.  There was a small vertical fuel neck is all.

Since I had the complete Tahoe, and I know its fuel system all works together, I decided to use that fuel neck.  Turns out, making that happen in a way that fit all my needs was super difficult.  It kicked my butt repeatedly for a week or two.  I'm not sure how many times I had to take it apart and start over.  And as you will see in the next episode, it still didn't end up being what I really needed.

Oh well.  On to the major construction!
 

 

[Lockleaf]

Episode 50 - Necking a Tall Hoe

With the fuel door/gas nozzle bit figured out, its time to connect the Tahoe fuel system back together with a few extra bits.  Turns out the easiest way to get those extra bits was to take the entire fuel door to fuel tank hose assembly from yet another Tahoe!  It wasn't the worst thing to pull from a junkyard luckily.  there is a decent amount of space under there.

In this video I cut my way through my new floor pan so I can install a passthrough, flange some piping so it holds a hose clamp, and get the fuel system all reassembled.  And I think it will even work!
 

 

[Lockleaf]

I currently have enough video for at least 3 or 4 more videos.  But I'm real slow at making them, even mediocre as they currently are.  I have done a ton of work fixing and fitting the front clip that will be coming in the next few episodes!

[Mattndew76]

WAITING!!

[Lockleaf]

Sorry Matt!  Here's a few more.

 

First up, I cut all the strength out of the lower windshield frame, and now I need to put it back.   There has been a 2 inch gap between the windshield and the tahoe firewall since I put the body in place.  Now its time to get some steel on that and put the strength back in the windshield frame
 

 

 

Since i had to cut off the original cowl from the Travelall to attach everything from the video above, it now has to be reinstalled.  I decided to make the cowl bolt on, so I could more easily get in here to mess with wipers when that becomes necessary.  So in this video, we customize and reinstall the cowl.

 

 

 

And with the cowl in place, I decided to move on to figuring out the front clip.  The Tall fenders don't fit the Hoe inner fenders at all.  There is something like a 4 inch gap between them (the Travelall is much flatter across the front than the Tahoe was).  In this episode, its all about building some frames that bolt to the Tahoe and then the Travelall fenders can bolt to those to hook it all together.

 

 

And just for fun, here's a short one, about some wagons I built a few years ago when my kids were much tinier than they are now.

 

 

I'm struggling to edit videos and get them posted, and I'm struggling even more to get the videos posted in places where people might watch them.  Thanks for being interested enough to comment!