T-all Tow

["DP1 Mike Stenstrom" <stenstm@domain.elided>]

Reapers,
   The '68 Travelall is home!  I'm now the proud owner of a white Travelall
with black trim and a shredded cloth interior.  The body is nearly perfect!
Worst spot is the driver's inner front fender.  Looks like somebody forgot
to cap the battery once or twice.  There is no battery tray or fender
beneath it!  I'm going to need a new front seat.  (Did the 68 ever come with
buckets?)  Even has all the trim in perfect shape!  The liftgate window has
a few problems.  Worst is the part of the frame that stays inside the
liftgate.  It's solid rust.  I'll have more on the condition later.
   The beast was in a muddy field so we used a chain and the f-250 to drag
it on the road.  Quite a job since there was a front axle from a '74 scout,
a 727 tranny, a 4-spd tranny, some kind of twin-stick transfer case, 3
various grills and a scout radiator in the back of the truck.  (Man- there
is a LOT of room in the back of that thing!)  The rear springs were about a
quarter of an inch above the bumps!  All the weight made for a difficult
hook up between the one-ton f-250 and the artificially low front bumper.  We
also had a hard time finding a good place for the safety chain.  After
dropping the drive line at the rear diff, we towed about a mile and stopped
to tighten everything.  Turned out the screw that held one of the chains
around the frame was stripped.  Stopped at a local hardware and purchased
nuts to act as jam nuts for both chain tension screws.
   We stopped at a scale to check weights.  The f-250 weighed at 5160, and
the T-all weighed 5120.  I thought the Travelall would be higher than that,
so we checked it twice.  Overall, the rest of the trip was smooth.  Got lost
in Portland (on Halloween night!).  The combination was very well mannered
on the highway.  A couple of pucker moments when we hit highway that had
truck worn surfaces and the narrow wheels of the t-all hopped in and out.
Lessons learned:  1.  Check the rental tow bar VERY carefully.  Make sure no
hardware is stripped or snapped.  2.  ALWAYS bring extra long tow chain to
replace the short, piece of crap safety chain provided.  3.  Bring a bunch
of cable ties for the tow lights.  4.  BRING RAIN GEAR!!!!      Now for some
questions.
   The reason I got this truck so cheap is the gas tanks are fouled.  The
only remaining tank has a healthy coat of rust and scale on the inside.  Is
there a way to bring this back to life???  If not, does anybody have one to
sell/trade?  What I can see of the rear deck seems to be wood.  Is it
supposed to be??  The rest of the truck has almost no rust, so I hope that
the rear deck did not rust away to be replaced by wood (VBG!)  Well, thanks
for the bandwidth.

Mike
74 Scout 345/3spd
68 Travelall (dubbed "The Behemoth" by my wife) 304/autosomethinrother
tranny.