Columbus..the 1957 IH 4x4..

[Advanced Design]

Nice work Greg. Did you use a milling machine?

[mongocanfly]

Thanks Doug....all ive got at home is a small lathe..(do have plans for a mill in the near future though)...I just chucked the plate up in a 4 jaw chuck and bored the center hole...the outer shape was sawed with the bandsaw..
working on the air filter adapter thatll mount on top of the tb now...

[mongocanfly]

Here's where I'm at on the breather side of the tb...I made a adapter ring from aluminum..I had to grind the little lip off the tb for it to slip over...when I bored the adapter I kept it .010 under the od of the tb neck...this allowed me to heat the ring and slip it over the tb..thus ensuring it won't ever move...the step in the ring is for the breather base to sit on and be centered..still have to make the filter lid stud to hold the filter together and to the tb

[mongocanfly]

Then for the breather..I kicked around several ideas and also was thinking of doing one like dayj1 did....i had a 5.7 breather that was in the old 91 burb i parted out for axles...I asked around some of my hotrod buddy's looking for another one...one guy had a 91 dually he bought for parts...just so happened the breather was in the back seat...so now that I got the 2 ,it was on to trying to figure out how to go about making it......this pic is of dayj1s setup...he used parts of 2 breathers and stacked them to create his..this is kinda the look I was wanting..

[mongocanfly]

Heres the 2 breathers ive got to work with..the bbc breather on left sbc on right

[mongocanfly]

I messed around with the pieces of the breathers and heres what i came up with...1st pic you can see the difference in height of the 2 lids...so what i did was take the bbc lid and use it for the bottom...and use the sbc lid on top..this'll leave a 1/2" air gap between the lids with a bbc filter inside.....then I cut the neck ring out one of the bases and will graft it onto the bbc side and use it to mount the unit to the tb..

[mongocanfly]

Then I had to do a quick mockup to get a idea what it was gonna look like...
It will sit a little lower when finished...right now it's just all stacked up...I'll cut a hole in the (bottom-top) and recess the base mount in the breather...so it'll drop a inch or so more..
I'll sand blast the pieces and paint..and then we'll see what it looks like....

[Advanced Design]

Now that is a creative solution and continues the stockish theme with the rocker covers. Nice.

[mongocanfly]

thanks Doug...sometimes you just gotta work with what ya got....I may do something different later on...one idea I had was use a cartridge style air cleaner like is on a tractor ..and keep it under hood..but was concerned about it cluttering up the engine bay..even though theres plenty of room under hood....
the old oil bath cleaner on the IH sat kinda high over the carb anyway..
and im thinking I may use the top off the oil bath on this cleaner lid..maybe...somehow

[Old57]

That throttle body, plate and air cleaner are all really nice ideas. I like how it turned out, and yes, it looks a lot more stock that way.

[mongocanfly]

Thanks old57!!!...it's finally starting to take shape...but I'm getting impatient...

[regan wilson]

Originally Posted by mongocanfly

Thanks old57!!!...it's finally starting to take shape...but I'm getting impatient...

I'm getting impatient too! The motor looks awesome! I love the valve covers and the air cleaner is a nice touch. Great fab work Mongo.

[mongocanfly]

Got started on the air cleaner today..tried a couple things to drop it lower but the throttle is limiting how low I can go...it is about 1in lower than the previous pics..so it looks like this it where it'll sit...cut the center out of the BB lid and tacked in the base of the old cleaner...this is gonna be no fun to weld up...the lids are .024 thick..making it 24ga...last pic is where it'll be when finished...

[mongocanfly]

Got breather finished and painted...also got the valve cover painted and decals applied

[Old57]

Originally Posted by mongocanfly

Got breather finished and painted...also got the valve cover painted and decals applied

That looks great, and I'm sure will make some people scratch their heads.

[mongocanfly]

After 2 weeks of fighting a uti I finally felt like doing a little sumping....one thing on the list was tail light brackets...I wanted to use the originals but they just wernt worth saving....so I made a set from some 1/8" sheet...hammered the reinforcing dimple in the bend...looks close enough for guvment work...

[mongocanfly]

thanks old57.....your truck is sweet...

[mongocanfly]

Since I swapped in the. NV4500 in place of the old IH trans I had to do something with the e-brake/4x4/4low-hi levers....on the IH all this bolted to the side of the trans.....so I fabbed up a bracket to mount all this on...I welded it to the trans crossmember and added a brace off the frame...the nv is a wider trans as well so that moved all the levers over about 2in to the pass side.....so I had to make some modified linkage as well...got it all fabbed up and works great..will pull and pain't it all and thatll be another check mark on the list....

[mongocanfly]

Got the Eaton trac-loc in today...gonna go with all new gears as well...probably in 4.56s...

[Old57]

Great job on the levers, that's nice! Jealous of the locker... I need to do that someday in mine.

[mongocanfly]

Thanks 57....
I was planning on doing the locker and gear swap all along but I was gonna wait till I got it drivable before doing it...I wanted to drive it on the 3.73s and g80 and see how it did...the other night I decided I would change fluid in the diffs....when I drained the rear about a half gallon of water and sludge ran out..(thanks P.O.).....I pulled the cover and wow what a mess....so the plans changed....and Eaton has a $50 rebate till 12/31..

[mongocanfly]

Another small side project was brake light and clutch safety switchs... I got a couple of normally closed plunger switches ,,,made some mounting brackets and welded some tabs on the pedal arms...works good ..

[mongocanfly]

Working on the steering column now...I wanted to keep the original steering column and had planned on using a Column Saver on it....when I got ready to buy ,I found they only make 2 sizes with the largest being a 2in...and those were on back order for 2 months...when I disassembled the column I found that of course IH made theirs 2-1/8"...so...I just made one....started with some 2-1/4" alum round stock ..cut the od to match the column dia and bored it for the bearing...fit very good so this should work just fine...

[mongocanfly]

Yep.....

[Advanced Design]

That looks really good! Well done!

Are the folks suspicious yet?