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1974 International Travelall - an early 4X2 SUV that, at the time, was the preferred tow vehicle of RV owners everywhere. With AMC's 401 CID V8 and a 2bbl carb, it was a torque monster, able to pull anything you could get on the hitch. It was also a gas pig, but in the days of 49¢ gas, who cared? It had two tanks, 26 gallons in the rear and another 18 gallon tank under the passenger's floorboard. A push-pull **** on the dash switched tanks while rotating it switched the gauge from front to rear. Odd, but it worked just fine.
The truck was odd in so many ways. I'd learn after owning it for several years that IH built them from a parts bin that consisted of leftovers from the Big 3. It had an AMC engine, GM Hydramatic transmission, a Dodge rear end, Ford drum brakes in the rear, Dodge discs in front. The radiator was GM, which caused another problem - the radiator hose needed a 2" fitting on the radiator end, and a 1" fitting on the other to connect to the water pump. They were specially made for IH, so when none were available, you lashed up two different hoses with a muffler swage.
A friend who had worked on the IH line in St. Louis asked me if I found a strip of paper with a lot of five-digit numbers on it in the glove compartment. Yeah, I wondered what that was, but it looked important, so I tucked it into the owner's manual. He told me I was lucky, a lot of people threw them away, but it was the "line setting ticket" that accompanied the chassis all the way through assembly at the plant. It contained the parts ID's for everything on that particular vehicle. Basically, every Travelall was different, and this little slip of paper was the key to everything on yours.
Originally a horrible Dijon-mustard color, I had it resprayed in Lincoln's "Wimbledon White" to match the color of my boat. The fake-wood vinyl trim had to stay because getting it off would require sandblasting which brought up another problem. The thing rusted like crazy. I had it patched twice and repainted each time over a period of six years because rust was eating away at everything, popping up in new places every time. Finally I gave up and bought my first 4WD Suburban, trading the IH to a neighbor for painting my house. I think I got the better deal.
Did that truck have 4 doors? The Suburbans were 2 door until 1967, which they were then 3 doors, with one rear door on the passenger side. 1973 and later they were the regular 4 doors you associate with modern SUVs.
IH was best known in the Midwest and out on the Plains as a manufacturer of farm machinery. They eventually split off an RV division that was separate from the tractors and farm implement and heavy truck divisions. They, like their agricultural counterparts were known as basic tools, no frills, just good value for the money. The Travelall was one of the first 4-doors that could legitimately be called an SUV - whether visionary or just lucky, their RV lines including Scout, Travelall, and motorhome chassis, arrived at the right time for the explosion of the RV market in the early 70's.
Rather than being based on the previous generations of 2-door "panel trucks" that were normally equipped with a bench seat up front and a flat floor all the way to the big "hearse door" in back, the Travelall was well equipped, in the more upscale versions, with a tailgate, power windows, and rather nice woven vinyl seats. Fit and finish were rather iffy, but it wasn't too far off the mark as a heavily modded pickup of the day. Unlike its predecessors, it was a fully realized automobile and not an embarrassment as a daily driver.
The Travelall was odd because the production was rather limited, unlike the more popular Scout. The big SUV was supposedly designed for towing after finding a niche market in the late 70's among the RV crowd. I met a gentleman about that time who had retired from IH corporate who told me the Travelall was produced from everybody else's parts bins - bidding on overstocked items to get the best deal.
That was years before the JIT delivery process where your parts for the next 48 hours hit your loading dock every other day. IH had fairly large warehouses and the inside joke was that the Travelall was produced just to even out the inventory. If true, it made sense to buy up overstocked items at a friendly price. It really didn't matter too much just whose they were, so long as they were suited to the task. Since they were almost all parts from everyone else's pickups, that wouldn't have been much of a problem.
As I learned about my Travelall's mixed pedigree, I couldn't help thinking about Johnny Cash's "One Piece at a Time" . . .
04-21-16, 03:01 PM
