On Sat, Apr 12, 2008 at 02:25:49PM -0500, Cybe R. Wizard wrote: > Andrew Sackville-West <andrew@farwestbilliards.com> said: > > [...] > > > only a matter of time. real traffic is down, OT is up... flame wars a > > comin' ... > > Andrew, since it's OT time, tell me more about your International. I > am currently restoring a 1948 IH KB1, myself. Parts and reliable > information are hard to come by for one that old. Not much to say really. It's a straight six, four speed, 1/2 ton ( I guess) delivery van. Got sliding doors up front, both sides, but only one seat. Double doors in the back. Nice rounded corners throughout. Parts are tricky. We had the brakes fail when one of the springs died. I took days to find a replacement. I literally went to this rundown shack of a "brake service" place that you'd swear was abandoned, but nope, theres this old guy in there. He looks at the spring and says "nope, ain't got one. International?" SO then after much pleading, he starts digging through greasy barrels and comes up with a couple that are *close*... so close. And close enough to work, but he was right, he didn't have the proper one. I've got a mechanic who is into old stuff and he always keeps an eye open for parts trucks. And I guess a lot of the parts are similar across different models. Eventually, something will break irrevocably and we'll have to start swapping out non-stock driveline parts or something like that. It currently serves as the coolest damn ice cream truck you've ever seen. It seems to me that once you get back to '48, you need to be prepared to fabricate parts. That means when something breaks, you need to keep *every* scrap of the part for use in creating a new one. And go ahead and make (or get made) two of them... A
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