It's home!

My old IH that has been in Lawton for the past fourteen years is at my house. In the bed it holds its new heart.

Congratulations! Sounds like you've been waiting for it for quite a while.

A 1952 model? Those were the days when pickups were used for actual work - not for show. Wow, manual transmission, no a/c, no stereo, no GPS, no raised double-rear wheels, hardly any chrome - how did we ever get things done?

Please post photos of the engine bay, interior, dash, etc. Really enjoy seeing the old, simple, reliable, and "work-worn" iron.

Thanks.
Tom M.

So, what are your going to do with it? Just get it operating, restoration, restomod, leave it in the driveway for you neighbors to admire?

Okay, this is a bit long guys so just bear with me.

This pick-up is my first car, I bought this when I was not quite fifteen and it is what prompted me to get my first job; that was twenty-three years ago. My father was told about this old pick-up by a cousin of ours who, at the time, was a local insurance agent. Our cousin's dad had owned the IH dealership around here and another agent he knew up around Kingfisher had just bought this pick-up off the original owner and thought my cousin would be interested in it. Needless to say my cousin didn't care but told my dad and gave him the couple of Polaroids he had been given of it. I asked my dad about it and he said that the $1500 asking price was too high and he wasn't interested in it. I told him I was but he wasn't going to loan me any money. I found a friend of my mom's who agreed to loan me the money on the condition I paid it back within a year. My dad coached me on how to haggle and we went to Kingfisher to meet the guy who had it. After a little negotiating I bought the pick-up for $1200. I had planned on mowing lawns to pay for it but stumbled into a job as a woodwind repairman at my local music store and managed to pay it off in three months.
The next year I saved up another $800 and had it painted by a guy my dad knew. I proudly drove it throughout high school and off to my first year of college. It developed a bit of funny feeling over the summer after my freshman year and I decided it might need a valve job. I pulled the head and on two cylinders it had broken out the upper compression rings due to carbon build up and had chewed up the exhaust valves. These were the #2 and 5 cylinders. The block looked okay so I set about rebuilding the engine. It took awhile to locate all the parts and I had them all ordered by the end of May. the summer dragged on without all of my parts arriving, September arrived and I drove my grandmother's old 79 Mercedes back to Stillwater for school. Some of the parts wouldn't make it to Lawton until the end of October.
My dad had been a GM master mechanic and an IH mechanic back in his day but at this point he was suffering from multiple sclerosis and couldn't do the work himself. He wanted to surprise me for Christmas when I came home and found a local mechanic to build the engine for me. I arrived home to find a fresh engine and was over the moon. I dropped the engine into my pick-up and drove it around over the break. January came and I left the pick-up at home and drove the MB back to school.
I found a summer job working a Boy Scout camp in CO as the shooting instructor, I decided to drive my pick-up out there and tossed my sea bag and my guns into the tool box and hit the road the second week of May. I made it nearly to Palo Duro canyon in the Texas panhandle and it threw a rod, the #5. I knew as soon as I pulled off the road because you could read the number on the end cap sticking through the block. I had followed the proper break in procedures for the engine and had been driving it pretty easy so I couldn't for the life of me figure out why it had blown up. I hitched a ride into Claude where I found a room and called my dad. He and my mom came out on Saturday and we towed it with a chain back to Hollis. My dad was having a hard time driving and my mom wasn't that practiced towing with a chain so I talked to the owner of the Hollis Case IH dealership and he agreed I could leave it there for awhile, he even offered to buy it. I came back with that tow bar in the photo, I had borrowed it from a buddy who had had it made for his 41 Ford. The owner had it sitting out in front of the building by the road and again offered to buy it from me, I passed, borrowed a cutting torch from the fella, cut a hole in the bumper to accommodate the bolts of the tow bar bolted it up and pulled it back to Lawton.
When I got home I tore into the engine and found a baffling thing, the bearings in my engine had been squeezed out on the sides I pulled one and examine it and found that it had spun. It turns out that while IH built the 220 engine from 1950-1968 they changed the bearings in 1958. The company I ordered the bearings from had shipped the wrong bearings and the engine builder had slapped them in without plasti-gauging them. When confronted he admitted to letting his fifteen year old nephew build the engine and because my dad had always been a handshake kind of guy there was no receipt for the services. This #$%& guy refused to refund my dad his money or to make good what he had carelessly destroyed. Never since have I trusted anyone else to do engine work for me. This was 2001.
I started looking for a new engine which turned out easier said than done, if someone had a good engine it was either in a running pick-up or they wanted an arm and a leg for it. Several people tried to convince me to just drop a V8 in it and be done with it but I liked it the way it was. I finally found an engine in the salvage yard in Alamosa, CO for a couple hundred and drove out over the next summer and picked it up. When I got it home, I found that in the years it had been sitting it had been infiltrated with sand. So I tore it down to rebuild it. I had a problem finding the older style bearing, which is probably why the parts company shipped me the ones they did. After a year or so I got married, had a family to provide for, and my pick-up went on the back burner. The last time it was moved was when my grandmother sold her old house and I had to move it from my grandad's old garage to my folk's house, that was 2004.
A few weeks ago I located a short block. It had been in a running pick-up that the the PO had decided to put a Cummins in and had sold the engine to a guy in NY state. This guy only needed the head and decided to sell the rest. He wanted $500 for it I told him I only wanted the block and rotating assembly so he pulled everything else off and agreed to $400 for it. I picked it up from Fastenal, who freighted it, on Monday. If I can use the magic of the internet to locate everything I need to hope to have it on the road again in June, only seventeen years after it originally blew up.

Tom, I'll get some photos for you either this evening or later in the week if it's raining.

Blew up? Please include those photos as well!

:angel:

Okay, I may have been using hyperbole but I'll be sure to get a photo of the hole in the block.

I love those old trucks Walter, my uncle had a 39 or 40 model IH when I was a kid and all I can remember about it was it's steering wheel had a very thin grip, funny what you remember as a kid, he had it for many years. I had a 68 IH Travel all and drove it from Lubbock Texas to Albuquerque, NM to NY city and back, 6 cylinder and preformed flawlessly. Not easy on gas though, almost kept me broke! :highly_amused: PJ

Here are the photos of the pick up. The speedo is out of it because I am sending it off to be rebuilt.

The engine bay, the last one shows the hole in the block.

These two are of what it looked like when I first got it painted back in 96.

Oh gee - that is a true classic. You are so lucky to have it and keep it original.

When I saw the clutch pedal, I thought "wow - a real truck!" yeehaa! When I saw the six in the engine bay, I remember how the six was the "standard" engine for most cars and trucks back then. Buicks and Cadillacs got the eights ... sorta. And that "spartan" dash panel with pull knobs. Fantastic.

Anyway, please share the work you do as it progresses.

Thanks Walt.
Tom M.

Thanks Tom. I currently have all new brake cylinders and brake hoses coming for the brakes, the rear cylinders were replaced twenty years ago but the master and both front wheel cylinders are original because you just couldn't find them when I was in high school and the hoses are original because I was young and didn't replace things unless they were broken but now I'm older and I am thinking more about how safe it will be when I push on the brakes and one of those 66 year old hoses ruptures. Speaking of the clutch, it is an old enough pick-up that it has a mechanical clutch. I'll be sure to take pictures as I go and I'll post them here.