We’re suckers for three-tone paint schemes. Anything red, white and blue — we’re in. Think AMC Rebel Machine.

We like old pickups, too. And everybody loves old Internationals!! This beauty is the best of all worlds: a ’51 IH L-110 pickup with crazy red-white-and-black paint scheme that is guaranteed to get you noticed on your Saturday cruise night.

According to the listing, the paint scheme is a nod to the International Harvester logo. She uses an inline 220-cid six-cylinder for propulsion and nice little upgrades: “power steering, a 12-volt electronic system, JVC stereo system, SunPro gauges, and Uniroyal Tiger Paw tires mated to Ion Alloy 15-inch rims. The truck also features a Rhino sprayed bed liner, tow hitch and diamond plate roll pan style rear bumper. The truck also has an interesting styling cue with a split rear window and a double hinged piano style opening hood.”

It all looks good to us! She’s for sale at Gateway Classic Cars in Milwaukee, Wis.

Somebody needs her in their life!

CHECK IT OUT

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The post Old Cars We’d Buy That: 1951 International Harvester L-110 pickup appeared first on Old Cars Weekly.

Curt Kindschuh was kind enough to share the story behind his awesome 1937 International. He had this to add…

I have been a reader of Old Cars for about a year now, and I thoroughly enjoy your fine magazine. It is read cover to cover on the same day I receive it. Attached you will find some “before” and “after” photos of my 1937 International truck. My Grandfather, Helmuth Tornow was a farmer near Poy Sippi, Wisconsin, and he purchased the truck in the late ’50s from a man named John Scripp, who passed away in 1961. Mr. Scripp either worked for a butcher shop or owned a shop in the Chicago area, and the truck was used as a delivery vehicle. At one point there were folding steps on the back of the vehicle that my grandpa had removed, that, combined with the sloped bench type seats on the back and the original yellow color, lead me to believe that it could have originally been a school bus for a rural area. A few years ago I saw a very similar old school bus manufactured by the White Motor Company at a museum in Denver. 

My grandpa used it as a farm truck until he had a tragic farm accident, losing his left hand, and four of his fingers and the tip of his thumb to a corn-picker. (attached is a newspaper clipping from 1972 showing him at Olsen’s feed mill in Auroraville). 

My father, Calvin Kindschuh, bought the truck in 1974, and as a 12-year-old, I rode the 50 miles back home with him, and what a thrill that was! My dad had the truck in a number of parades on behalf of the South Byron 4-H Club and the local Grange, and I remember riding shotgun and handing out small containers of ice cream to kids on the parade route. He also used it as a runner, as he liked to buy and sell antiques; I went along on a number of occasions to help him carry the big stuff!

My dad passed away in 1979 at the age of 53, way too young. He never made any changes to the truck, and you could still read the name of the butcher shop on the door and “original sweet nut hams and bacon” on the side panels. Sadly, another member of the local Grange borrowed the truck for a parade and painted over the original graphics on the doors. 

My younger brother, in 1982, was hauling wood with it, and there was a mechanical failure with the clutch. He and his friends pushed it into the shed at the farm, and there it sat. I have always appreciated antiques and those that came before us. My grandpa passed away in 2001 at the age of 93, and nine years later I decided to spend the money and create a tribute truck to my grandparents, Helmuth and Clara Tornow. 

In the fall of 2010, I reached out to Mark Kemmel of Muscle Car’s by Mark, located near Brownsville, WI. Mark is a one-man show, and you will find him in his shop seven days a week. I had first met him when he drove into the local post office parking lot driving a Mayberry squad car that he had done for his dad, Gerry, and I mentioned the old truck to him. We had some mutual friends, and they gave him a thumbs-up, and thus started a three year journey of bringing the ’37 back to life. I asked my mom, Joyce, to give me the truck as it was, and I said I would spend whatever it took to bring it back to life. There were dead mice in the engine block and the skeletal remains of two cats under the seats. Mark tore it all down and did a complete rebuild. We kept the original engine, which Mark had taken elsewhere for repair. As a history buff and a man that likes to have fun and see people smile, the photos will show my additions to create a one of a kind truck. My grandpa’s farm had a huge rock on the side of the hill in the woods, and they called that spot “Old Baldy.” With the name of the butcher shop being lost to history, the doors now read “Tornow’s Old Baldy Farm, Poy Sippi, Wisc.” My wife, Shelly, and I call the ’37 The Time Machine because if you are going somewhere, it takes extra time to get there! My top speed is 47mph and I am OK with that. I do not participate in car shows, and to date it has only appeared in one parade. I drive it, running errands, meeting friends for a meal, taking back roads and such, and my mom, who is now 90, loves riding in it. The old man in the rocking chair in the back is a huge hit, every time I drive it, I see people smiling and taking photos. 

A few years back, I was at a pizza joint with some friends, and observed two older ladies with smiles from ear to ear as they walked around the ’37, looked inside, and then shook hands with the old man as they left! We have a lot of fun, the ’37 and I. 

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Jeffery Borders sent us a pic of his stunning light blue ’73 International Harvester TravelAll custom with a little history behind it. This is what Jeffery shared with us…

I’ve only owned my 1973 International for 2 months now. I’m 42 years old and it’s the first classic vehicle I have ever owned. I’m from Radcliff, KY (2 minutes from Ft. Knox where the Gold Vault & America’s gold is supposedly still stored at) I had been shopping for a classic vehicle for over a year when I came across this International TravelAll on the website of a classic car dealership in Denver, Colorado. 

I had never seen or heard of an International TravelAll, I was familiar with the Scouts that International made, but this TravelAll was something new to me, the only one for sale that I could find and I knew I wanted it as soon as I seen it. I actually found a for sale ad for this exact International when it was first listed for sale in California back in 2015 & the owner listed everything they had done to it including some 22 inch wheels that were not present when I obtained it, Here is the link to that ad: https://saleofcar.com/international-ha/072905 and that’s the only history of it that I know as of now . 

I went bigger and put 26 inch wheels on it, I had to shave a little off the rear fenders to make them fit and it looks awesome according to all the people that take pictures of it and give me a thumbs up every where I drive it. This International TravelAll has forced me to become a social person because every time I drive it somewhere, total strangers gather around it and talk about it, hahaha, I enjoy it.

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One of Joe Kahn’s earliest memories of his late grandfather, Joe March, was riding on Grandpa Joe’s lap while he drove. “I was probably 3 or 4 years old at the time,” recalls Kahn with a chuckle. “He’d let me steer and he’d work the pedals and we’d be driving around the streets of Chicago — that’s where he lived. I can still remember it.”

And it wasn’t just the trips that Kahn remembers fondly. It’s also the vehicle that they were taken in — an International Scout. “I think my grandfather only had it for probably a couple years, then he got rid of it,” Kahn says.

But the truck made a lasting impression on Kahn, a Lindenhurst, Ill., resident. The happy memories led him to venture to a collector car auction three years ago in hopes of landing his own Scout, and he wound up coming home with a glorious baby blue 1973 Scout II Traveltop that fills his garage with nostalgia and happy vibes.

“I’ve loved cars since I could talk or probably before that, and pretty much all the old cars I’ve had go back to some time in my life, probably like most people,” Kahn says. “After [my grandfather] died I decided to start looking for [a Scout] and I looked for a maybe a couple years and all the ones I saw were all rusty or modified or pimped out.

“I was really just looking for one that was stock and clean and really didn’t need anything. Then, oddly enough, one came up at the Mecum auction in Schaumburg right here, about a half hour away from where we live. So after looking all over from coast to coast, I found one right here and I went to the auction and bought it. They had it on their website and I had been trackingit and staring at pictures all day. My wife [Kristine] took the day off — we went together. I decided if it was half as nice as it looked, I’m going to buy it.”

Kahn joked that he was hoping to buy the Scout “on the low-down” and not attract any attention while he was at the auction, in part because he was taking a day off from work, but the sale wound up on Mecum’s cable TV coverage. “Yeah, there we were, you could see me and my wife on TV, and there we are buying the thing … It was anything but secret! But it was all pretty funny.”

It was pretty much love at first sight when Kahn spotted the largely original, numbers-matching Scout II, and that affection hasn’t cooled much in the past three years. He’s had a great time becoming a card-carrying member of the legion of hard-core Scout enthusiasts in the collector car world. He admits he still doesn’t know as much about them as many of the Scout buffs that drive and collect them, but he’s learned plenty. “I really didn’t know anything about them, other than they made them from about 1972-’80,” he says. I was just looking for one that wasn’t all rotten. I’m a Mustang guy and a GTO guy … but I figured it would be cool to get one because they were different. You go somewhere in your Mustang, everybody knows what it is.

“I was at Menards with this one time and a woman says to me, ‘Is that new?’ I said to here [laughs], ‘No, it’s not new!’ … Another time I was at my favorite cigar shop and a guy says to me, ‘Are you showing this, or is that your daily driver?’ Some people do remember them, and they will be surprised to see them and say something like, ‘Holy crap, these used to all rust out!’”

SURVIVING AND EVOLVING

International Harvester helped prove there was a market for rugged little utility vehicles beyond the farm and field with its first-generation Scout. True, the original Scouts saw a lot of duty off-road in the dirt and in the woods, but they also began to prove themselves as a versatile family rig that could adapt to city and suburban life.

For 1971, IH decided the Scout needed to grow up and redesigned the model — which it now called the Scout II — to be larger and perhaps just a touch more refined. The Scout II debuted in spring of 1971 and offered power brakes, power steering, air conditioning, automatic transmission, a bigger clutch, a wider choice of rear axle ratios, more axle capacity, manual or locking front hubs for 4×4 models, and 5 more cubic feet of load space. The rear seat was lowered and increased in width to accommodate three passengers.

The base 152-cid slant four-cylinder was still used, but there were other engine options on the menu, including the top-of-the-line 345-cid V-8, which is what Kahn’s IH carries.

For 1973, the Scout II was again offered as either a pickup or as a removable-top Traveltop SUV. Both used a 100-inch-wheelbase chassis. Buyers could choose between either two- or four-wheel-drive. Two-wheel-drive models started at $2,605 for the pickup and $2,752 for the Traveltop. The prices jumped to $3,394 and $3,549, respectively, for four-wheel propulsion.

The Scout II had a new front end treatment featuringa rectangular front panel with a single round headlamp at each end. Between the headlamps were now two grilles, one on each side of a narrow, body-colored vertical divider. Each grille had a rectangular opening with a chrome surround and six vertical bars finished in body color. An International nameplate ran horizontally across the lower section of the outer four bars on the left-hand grille.

The Scout II rumbled on through 1976 before more major revisions arrived. That year International dropped all of its Metro vans, station wagons and regular pickups and began to focus on its heavy-duty truck offerings. The Scout grew again and used a 118-inch-wheelbase for ’76 and came as either a Terra pickup or a Traveler hatchback station wagon. The 1980 model year turned out to be the final year for both the Scout and IH’s line of light-duty trucks. The company tried unsuccessfully to sell off the Scout part of its business and the Fort Wayne, Ind., plant where the Scouts were built.By then, more than 532,000 Scouts had been built, dating back to 1960, and the Scout name had been indelibly etched in the history books.

THE FAMILY ‘SCHOOL BUS’

As Scouts go, the Kahns’ gorgeous blue example is about as fancy as they come. It won’t be confused with a ’73 Cadillac or S-Class Mercedes, but it was pretty refined for its breed. “It was sold in Montrose, Colo., from Montrose Equipment. They probably sold farm equipment, I don’t really know,” Joe says. “But it’s got about every option. It’s got the 345 (144 hp) V-8, which is the bigger motor. It’s got the luxury interior, which has the Sage seats. It’s got color-keyed dash, the decor trim on the outside with the belt molding and chrome bumper. They had the dual exhaust. It was Glacier Blue and Sage. The stripes somebody added later. Somebody painted it at some point, and that’s really the only thing that has been done to it.

“It’s odd, but it used to be that if you wanted a cheap paint job, you just painted the outside and that was about it. That’s what they did with this one, but the paint job is so good, I really don’t know what they all did… At some point it came to Illinois, I don’t know when. The guy I bought it from was from the Chicago area, in the northwest suburbs.”

Kahn doesn’t sugar coat what it’s like to travel significant distances in his Scout, or even just wrestle it around town on short trips. It’s fun, for sure, but don’t confuse fun with simple and easy.

“Its very bouncy, oh yeah. When I was a kid, I used to ride in International school buses to and from school every day, and that’s what this reminds me of,” he says. “It’s that winding ‘err,’ ‘err,’ and shifting gears. That’s just what this sounds like.

“And it bounces a lot! I took my mother for a ride when I got it and she got nauseous! That’s the way it rides. I think it’s funny, but she got nauseous from it!”

And the gas mileage? Well, Kahn figures it’s got to be under 10 mpg, but he’s not going to figure it out. He’s also not planning any New York-to-LA road trips. “[Laughs] I don’t want to know! If you are worried about that, it’s probably the wrong vehicle for you.”

Kahn says he has a hard time parting with his toys, and figures his Scout II would be especially difficult to say good-bye to. As long as the truck continues conjuring up memories of his rides with Grandpa Joe, the Scout figures to be a part of the family.

“I don’t sell anything. Especially if it’s connected to somebody in my life, I don’t every get rid of it,” he says.“And this is just too cool. I know you look at the values and they have gone up some obnoxious amount, but I couldn’t get rid of it. No way. It’s just too cool.”

SHOW US YOUR WHEELS!

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The post Car of the Week: 1973 International Scout II appeared first on Old Cars Weekly.

Story and photos by Brian Earnest

When it comes to rat rodding, Don Duchene and some of his car buddies are all about reaching new lows.

The lower, the better.

If it’s loud, crazy, cheap and can sneak in the garage when the garage door is only halfway up, chances are Duchene digs it. The Franken-rod he built a couple years back and dubbed “Slim” fits the bill on all counts.

“It was 42½ inches [high] when I originally built it. With spring sag it might be 42 now,” laughs Duchene, a resident of Harris, Minn. “It has a 150-inch wheelbase … so it’s long and lean.”

In recent years, Duchene and his rat rod brethren from Minnesota have been regular participants in a series of custom car build-offs for Rat Rod magazine. The rules of such contests generally follow the same formula: build ‘em cheap, build ‘em fast, and make ‘em the only one of their kind.

When it came to creating “Slim”, Duchene decided to start with an unlikely candidate for a build and just go where the spirit moved him. “I had another one that I built a couple years earlier and then I found some parts when I was retrieving another truck … It kind of sat around and we looked at it and looked at it and just started to think about what we could do with it.

“Then I just drew it and built it. I started out by finding parts and the whole cost of tin was I think under $250 for the whole car. I started with a ’35 International pickup truck cowl and doors, and then a ’92 Dodge extended cab full-size pickup for the roof and back section, and then a Model A pickup box.”

Duchene knew there would have to be a lot of fabrication, consternation and trial and error trying to get so many mismatched body parts to somehow meld together, but the challenge and difficulty are a big part of the appeal.

“If you don’t build something neat, people don’t look at ‘em. That’s all there is to it,” he says.

Duchene had to make his own door posts and figure out how to make the squarish IH doors fit the rounded Dodge roof and rear cab section. His original drawings never had exact measurements, so he just kept eyeballing everything until it fit his vision. “The height I didn’t really know, I just kept taking more off and more off and kept modifying it and chopping it. I made the window sections so the ’35 era fit the ‘90s era. I tried to make everything kind of flow for being 60 years apart.”

Slim has had a heart transplant since it was originally built, receiving an upgraded drivetrain. Originally, though, power came from whatever parts Duchene could scrape together for a few nickels. “It used to be kind of cheap built. I built it with a $100 rear axle, a couple hundred-dollar transmission and an engine I had. Then I decided I wanted a lot more out of it and I put a lot of money into it. Now it’s almost $9,000 in drivetrain, and that’s really the expense of the whole car. It’s a 383 stroked Chevrolet small-block; 700 R4 transmission and custom narrowed Ford 9-inch [rear], all disc brakes. It’s got all-new steering, all-new brakes, new gas tank.”

There are almost too many other miscellaneous and randomly matched pieces to name. Among them:

— “I put a Chevy emblem on it out of a mid-’30s Chevrolet pickup truck, due to the Chevrolet drive train. I’m big on Chevrolet drive trains.”

— “It’s a ’50-something Pontiac — ’56 Pontiac maybe — custom stainless steel numbered limited edition hood ornament.”

— “The pinstriping was done by a friend of ours, a 19-year-old kid. He works all over the country and he’s really good!”

— “It’s got Corvette door handles on the back of the cab. Two Oldsmobile tail lights. You have to do something real unique. It’s a ’48 Pontiac hood ornament — bought the thing for 5 bucks and not more than 5 minutes after I bought it a guy offered me 50 bucks for it!”

— There is a wooden box cover in back to hide the tank. “You can’t store anything. because the fame is all the way to the top of it… There is no room to store anythig in there.”

— “The steering wheel is homemade. The column is out of a ’72 Chevy Nova. It’s a custom dash, custom supports… the battery is mounted under the dash with a cover. The tunnel is run right through the car. It’s got 2006 Mitsubishi Eclipse seats.”

— “There’s a authentic International tractor toolbox [inside] for some storage …”

— “It’s got some mid-‘30s aftermarket mirrors … I’m not sure for what make and model.”

Among the many questions Duchene knows he’ll field everything he shows up somewhere with Slim is the most obvious: “How do you drive that thing?”

He starts by getting on all fours on the ground, then using the steering wheel to help squeeze into the seat. From there, it’s just a matter of how long you can tolerate being hunched over. “You have to slouch to drive it, but when you your eyes down there, you can see pretty good,” he says. “It’s hard to switch to the left lane in a two-lane because you can’t really see that, but that’s about the only bad thing.”

“Believe it or not, it’s very drivable. We drive ‘em on the highway. It drives real good. It steers great. The response is good. It rides real smooth.”

Speed bumps and other small elevation changes are clearly an issue, however. Slim is a pavement scraper, with just 4½ inches of clearance between car and Mother Earth.

Duchene has carted and driven Slim all around the country the past few years. Sometimes it’s on a trailer, sometimes it’s on the ground. It attracts plenty of attention either way. “We’ve had it down Duck Commander … Counts Customs in Vegas … Cajun Nationals… [rat rod icon] Steve Darnell’s shop… Coker Tire … This one’s been all over the country. It gets around because we are chasing build-offs that we do for the magazine. We’ll trailer it, but it’s just a luxury thing and we’ll drive it when we can. We have to get our build done and complete whatever journey we’re on and get to the judging.”

Duchene is also one of the chief organizers of his own grassroots Minnesota hot rod gathering — the Rat Rod Resurrection show in Harris. This August 20th will mark the show’s fourth year.

“Building these cars is what we focus on,” he says. “We’re just doing what we love.”

_____________

Show us your wheels!

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The post Car of the Week: 1935 International rat rod appeared first on Old Cars Weekly.

By Angelo Van Bogart

Richard Cleer of Ipava, Ill., considers himself a Ford man and an International Harvester man, and he probably never thought he would have to betray his allegiance for one to get the other. However, that was the price Cleer had to pay when he retrieved a family heirloom earlier this year.

When Cleer found the 1946 Ford five-passenger coupe his uncle had hot-rodded in the 1950s just 25 miles from his home, he was actually following a lead to a 1939 flathead engine for another car.

“A guy said he had a 1939 Mercury flathead in the weeds,” said Cleer. “The engine in the weeds wasn’t right, so he said, ‘Maybe I have one in the barn.’”

The barn Cleer was taken to last fall was so overgrown with vines, trees and tall grass, it would have taken Indiana Jones to find it. When the owner cracked open the weathered red barn doors, Cleer saw the unmistakable shape of 1940s American iron.

“When he opened it up, I said, ‘That looks like my uncle’s old 1946 Ford,’” Cleer said. But he was mistaken. The car at the front of the barn was a 1946-’48 Chrysler. His uncle’s 1946 Ford was actually parked behind the Chrysler.

Cleer asked where the seller had bought the Ford coupe, and the man repeated the name of Cleer’s uncle. It had been parked since the early 1960s, not long after Cleer’s uncle sold it to the man. Cleer was able to further verify it was his uncle’s car, because all of the tell-tale modifications he remembered from his uncle’s Ford were still present. Blue paint still covered the Ford’s body, the push buttons were still in place to open the doors and the hood and deck lid had been de-chromed just the way Cleer remembered his uncle’s car.

Since the doors opened electrically and the long-parked Ford’s battery was dead, Cleer couldn’t determine whether the knob his uncle installed to open the deck lid from behind the seat was still there. Undeterred, he crawled in the side windows for a better look inside. Sure enough, that old knob was right where it should have been.

Despite Cleer’s excitement, he was told the Ford wasn’t for sale. Two months later, Cleer had worn down the Ford’s owner, although the Ford still wasn’t exactly for sale.

“He said, ‘If you want that car, you have to trade me for a John Deere tractor,’” Cleer said. “Well, I’m an International-Harvester man — I worked for International Harvester.”

Despite his allegiance, Cleer began searching for John Deere tractors for sale of the same value as the Ford, and one that would also satisfy the seller, to complete the trade.

“It took until May or June to find a tractor, because I didn’t want to get one he didn’t want and be stuck with it,” Cleer said.

Eventually, a John Deere was located at a dealership in Missouri, so Cleer called the Ford’s owner and asked him to call the dealership to make sure the tractor met his approval.

“He had the dealer run it for a half-hour, and he said it would be fine,” Cleer said.

After Cleer purchased the John Deere, the next challenge was retrieving the Ford from its approximately 50 years of storage. Although the brakes weren’t stuck, the Ford had been parked on a sandy floor, which helped preserve the sheet metal, but also caused the car to sink into the ground.

“It took four people five hours to get it loaded on the trailer,” Cleer said. “It had two flat tires, so we loaded it with used tires.”

Once it was in the daylight, he finally had a good idea whether all of his efforts had been worthwhile.

“When I looked at it the first time, I didn’t have a flashlight and I didn’t know what it looked like,” he said. “It’s in really good shape — it’s really unbelievable. There’s just a little rust in the driver’s floor.

“It still has the same paint, and the interior my aunt put in it,” he added. “It looks like the seats and door panels are drape material.”

The Ford is still powered by the 1950 Mercury flathead with a 4-inch stroke that Cleer’s uncle installed with high-compression Edelbrock heads and dual 94 carburetors on an Edmunds intake. Cleer has already begun rebuilding the setup to make the Ford roadworthy again.

“I’m going to leave it that way,” Cleer said. “I had to pull the heads because it wouldn’t turn. I do all my own engine work but the machine work, and the machinist said [the engine] is in pretty good shape and the heads have never been ground.”

“It’s a good hot rod,” Cleer said, and one worth temporarily forsaking one tractor allegiance for another, even if the John Deere had the last jab.

“We had to use the tractor I traded to pull the cars out of the barn, and after we got the car loaded, I had to load the tractor and deliver it to his farm.”

Ford fans should check out these Blue Oval resources from Old Cars Weekly:

• Standard Catalog of Ford 1903-2002
• Just Fords: Fascinating Finds & Great Machines From the Blue Oval

The post Ford Find: Fan finds uncle’s long-lost ’46 hiding in barn appeared first on Old Cars Weekly.

By Brian Earnest

A big ol’ truck that rides hard, can’t keep up on the interstate, has room for only two passengers and needs a jumbo-size garage to call home isn’t everybody’s idea of a perfect hobby vehicle.

For guys like Fred Kilmer, though, nothing is more worthy of preservation than a humble, loyal, hard-working farm truck. One with dual back wheels, old-fashioned clearance lights, mudflaps that really catch mud, and absolutely no fuzzy dice.

Kilmer remembered from his childhood what such trucks felt like, rode like and even smelled like — and it all came back to him when he and his son Rick finished restoring their 1951 International L-130 1-ton. The truck now has a wooden sign mounted on the back that reads “Kilmer’s D&P Lumber.” That might not mean much to anybody beyond his immediate family, but it means a lot to Kilmer.

“When I grew up my dad worked at a lumberyard and they bought a new L-130 and L-160 pickup truck in the little town of Dawson, Iowa,” Kilmer recalled. “I was born in ’46, and I think what they bought was a ’52. Those L-130s were the same in ’50 and ’51 and ’52 … I remember those trucks and learned to drive on those trucks …

“One day I was talking with my son and I said, ‘I wish I could find one of those.’”

Sure enough, a short time later Rick found an L-130 that was restorable, and the wheels started turning. “He found one advertised in Spencer, Iowa, and we went up there and looked at it,” Fred said. “A couple weeks later we trailered it back home [to Lake Panorama]… It had been on a farm [near Spencer]. They probably used it to haul hogs to town and do whatever. It was a one-owner truck and it eventually blew a head gasket, we think, and it sat out in the grove for probably 25 years. A local guy there bought it and never did transfer the title. He was going to restore it and never got around to it … so I’m actually the second owner …

The all-new L Series line of trucks was introduced by IHC in January 1950 and lasted until 1953, when they were replaced by the R Series. They were totally restyled and re-engineered, with styling characteristics that included a one-piece windshield, two-section rear cab window, broad flat fenders and a wide and flat front end cap. Single headlamps were flush-mounted into keyhole-shaped recesses with rectangular parking lamps below. The new grille consisted of horizontal bars with 19 vertical slots above. The three outermost vertical blades on each side were shorter. A bright metal strip ran across the lower edge of the nose. The bow had an IHC badge and a chrome molding ran up the center of the hood. A painted, wraparound bumper protected the front. The floor-shifted manual transmission was powered by the new overhead-valve inline six-cylinder Silver Diamond engine. It displaced 220.5 cubic inches and was rated at 90 net hp with a maximum torque rating of 173.5 lbs-ft.

The L Series IHC models were first sold mainly as chassis and cab trucks. A station wagon with wood body construction could be ordered. Metro vans, milk trucks, baker trucks and small school buses were available, too. The pickups came with ample 9-foot beds.

The trucks were not produced on a yearly model basis and changes were minimal over their three-year run. The L-130 could be fitted with two or four rear wheels — the Kilmers’ truck has four – and was considered a 1-ton truck. It carried a gross vehicle weight rating (GVWR) of 6,800 lbs. with a cargo capacity of 3,700 lbs.

Fred Kilmer remembered such trucks at the lumberyard during his childhood, but the truck he and Rick found had spent most of its life on a farm. Fred knew it would take many months to bring the IHC back and get the restored truck he envisioned, but the pair were in no rush. The International had been neglected for a long time, and it needed help everywhere. “It looked terrible,” he said with a chuckle. “Most of the paint was gone. You could tell it had originally been red, but you couldn’t tell much else… Since the engine didn’t run, we didn’t know much about it mechanically.”

When the Kilmers purchased it, the truck was missing its original combination bed that probably came in plenty handy on the farm. It wasn’t what Fred had in mind for his truck, anyway. “A combination bed was one with sideboards to raise for livestock or lower for grain,” he said. “The truck had duals originally, so it always had a big 9 foot bed, never a pickup bed. My son cut down a flatbed he found in the Quad Cities to 9 feet, so it’s the same as the original and the same as the original flatbed on the company lumberyard truck. What I put on it was just a straight flat bed, like a lumber truck. We converted it from a farm truck to a lumber truck”

Rick wound up hauling the International to his home in Bettendorf, and eventually wound up doing an “absolute ground-up restoration,” according to his dad. “He’s quite handy and he can do the paint and the mechanical work… It had a lot of surface rust, but had very few places where it was rusted clear through. He put in a new clutch, went through the transmission… The glass is all new. The glass was all there, surprisingly, but it all had to be replaced. I was even able to find a new-old-stock windshield, with I thought was cool.

“It’s got new upholstery, new brakes, new exhaust. We had the head replaned and valves ground … The bottom end [of the engine] is just fine … Shoot, those rings don’t smoke and it runs great. As far as we know the bottom of the engine is all original.”

One of the biggest challenges of the restoration was dealing with the truck’s original two-piece rims. “They had a heck of a time,” Fred laughed. “Surprisingly, the tires would still hold air, but they were all rotted of course. Those two-piece rims are just dangerous. We had to take them to a tire shop and one of the fellas there chipped a tooth and they said they couldn’t do it … My son eventually took a Sawsall and I don’t know what else, but he was finally able to get the [wheels] apart.”

The father and son sent out the generator, starter and radiator to be refurbished. They also got some help with the seat upholstery. “It’s got all the extra [options], which is a heater and a radio,” Kilmer joked. “I’ve got the radio, but it hasn’t been restored. I haven’t put it back in. In the dash where the radio would go I had a professional make an engraved plate that says, ‘Restoration by Kilmer.”

Cosmetically, the Kilmers didn’t have to alter much, although they eventually wound up changing the clearance lights mounted on top of the cab. “It originally had painted clearance lights, and my son was able to find some chrome lights,” Fred said. “We also wanted to find some horizontal chrome grille bars. On this truck they were originally painted black. On some they were chrome, but we were never able to find them.”

The outside rearview mirror was salvaged from a Jeep that had mirrors almost identical to the original 1951 IHC versions. The finishing touches were the oak stakes and sideboards, which Fred made and mounted himself around the wooden flatbed. “I just used my own imagination and, of course, I wanted it to look right,” he said. “I was going to use tongue and groove flooring, so I just took ¾-inch plywood and bolted it to the frame and went in and laid the floor like you were laying flooring in a house.”

All things considered, the restoration on the sturdy IHC went very smoothly, but the elder Kilmer admits he was a little nervous about driving the truck home from Rick’s house for the first time after its facelift was complete. “He and I built a hobby garage in a town near here and he had a Mustang convertible and wanted it back,” Kilmer said. “So I drove the convertible back to Bettendorf and drove that old truck all the way home. I was thinking, ‘Boy, I don’t know if I’ll make it home.’ It’s 220, 225 miles, and it just rolled right along. That was quite a maiden voyage.”

Kilmer probably had never traveled such a distance in an L-130 truck before, but the ride and personality of the truck were very familiar to him. “It was an absolute time warp,” he said. “It rides and sounds and smells just like the truck from back in the ’50s. You just can’t believe it.”

All the Kilmers’ effort and investment have resulted in a unique hobby vehicle and sure-fire conversation piece. Vintage IHC trucks have a loyal following, but not many buffs take on the challenge of restoring the 1949-52 L-Series machines back to like-new condition. “There is one guy around here that has one. I think it’s a 120, that would be my guess,” Fred said. “But you don’t see a lot of them. It’s funny how many people you run into that say, ‘Oh, my dad had one of those,’ or my neighbor or brother had one.”

It isn’t exactly a vehicle he’s going to drive coast to coast in or take on any multi-day cruises with a car club, but that wasn’t the plan anyway. For now, Fred is just happy to show the truck off when he gets the chance and do some low-speed cruising when he’s in the mood for a rough, bouncy ride. “Yeah, I originally thought we’d just go out and have Sunday drives with it,” he laughs “But it’s a beast to drive! It rides hard and drives hard and it’s not really something my wife wants to ride around in. But I’ve had it out a few times. I’ve got the hobby garage and it’s got a nice place to sit. We enjoy it and I really don’t know about what I’ll do with it eventually.

“I’m not done yet, and I have a tendency to hang onto things, so I’d rather just acquire something else rather than get rid of it.”

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The post Car of the Week: 1951 International L-130 truck appeared first on Old Cars Weekly.