by stillsmokin » Sat Dec 20, 2014 11:14 am
With Pete's help, I finally got some scab rubber under the truck and got it home in October. I spent an entire week cleaning nature out of the cab. I changed the build some, I'm putting a 12V and an Eaton Fuller RT-613 "baby 13 speed" in the chassis. I acquired the transmission and SAE 2 flywheel housing a month or so ago. I bought a kit to make the RT an RTO (overdrive). It has straight cut gears and no syncros in the main box so it'll have some old school gear whine and it'll drive slightly better than the crash box 4 speed thats in there.
I'm undecided on what to do with the chassis. The cast spoked 20" dayton wheels are real nostalgia, its pretty easy to forgive the lock ring rims. The 5.28 gears are the problem, I think the axle is a cousin or similar to the 50'S-70'S RA20 IH axle so I might be able to swap out third members for a better ratio (4.20 or 4.88), if I could find a donor axle. I could double over with a larger brown-lipe-spicer auxiliary box, but it would be inefficient. The reality is I'll probably have to do a total chassis swap using a 1 ton cab and chassis pickup or motorhome frame with a long wheelbase and put 8x19.5's on it to fill the wheel wells.
I'm also looking for a 1937-1940 IH D35 hood, the engine bay is currently only 33" long and there isn't room in the tiny cab to bring the engine back into the firewall. The D35 hood is 6 inches longer than mine so my theoretical engine bay would be 39" long which would give me plenty of room for the fan and all.
I'm also a member of oldihc.org and have found out that there are very few of these 37-40 IH d series trucks are around, so if you know where a parts truck is or somebody who has pieces and parts laying around please let me know.
92 W250LE REG CAB, SLED PULLER, S400
93 W350LE EXT CAB, dually, 5 speed