If one is still working a half-century old ruck, even an International, a possible breakdown has to be factored into the equation. This IH Loadstar is exactly like the dump truck one I drove in 1973 for the Baltimore Department of Sanitation’s road-sweeping crew. Its 392 V8 pulled hard and sounded healthy through its shorty exhaust pipe exiting just behind the cab, and the five speed with a splitter rear axle shifted slickly. The cab wasn’t overly large, given its origins in 1957 and shared with the IH pickups. Ours never broke down, but that was 40 years ago. Even the best machinery is not immune to the forces of entropy.
I remember working on these tough trucks .
I hated the all black wiring that made fast electrical diagnosis difficult and the gasser V-8 exhaust manifolds used no gaskets and so often began to leak when they warped .
Luckily NAPA had gaskets , the IHC Dealer didn’t .
Did these have the Clark 5 speed trannies ? .
I forget .
-Nate
The SV family of engines most certainly left the factory with exhaust manifold gaskets as they were also a heat shield to prevent from cooking the spark plug wires.
The 5sp transmissions IH used in this era were of their own design but they did later sell that design to Clark who continued to produce it.
Loadstar CO1600 cabovers with Perkins and IHC diesels were assembled in Heidelberg, Germany.
(Photo: Peter Kautz)
More photos and data here:
http://www.fahrzeugseiten.de/Nutzfahrzeuge/IHC/Loadstar_1600__D_/loadstar_1600__d_.html
I spent a lot of time working on these. Most of ours were later models with the MV 404, and they had Spicer CM50 5 speeds. I still have a few parts for them around.
Tough, tough trucks. Rust got the majority of them in these parts.
Quick tip, these were a lot easier to work on from above if you wrapped a bungie cord around the hood latches to pull them up and together, then unbolted the center brace and removed the whole assembly. Much less chance of banging the back of your head!
Good to see one still at work, the Loadstar and Travellette are my favorite Internationals.
I can’t remember the last time I saw one of these on the road….but it seems like yesterday.
Oh boy! X2 on the 392 exhaust manifolds, I changed so many back in the day I still remember that part number (309222C1, fit both sides). Interesting to drive, the cab was narrow, the seating position was bolt-upright, huge steering wheel at a cockeyed angle, halfway between bus and pickup truck. The later versions (like the one pictured) had a raised roof and a correspondingly raised seat to give a little more leg room (that cab was pretty short front to back), so if you were tall your line of sight was out of the top of the windshield. I never drove another truck quite like them. Under the butterfly hood (if you were lucky there was a fiberglass tilt hood option) was a real smorgasbord, could be anything from the early IH Black Diamond or larger Red Diamond 6’s, VS series V-8’s (304-392), the MV’s (404 and 446), the large V’s (up to 549) and naturally a mess of diesels, some of the more notable being the C series Cummins, 6V-53 Detroit, and IH’s own DV550. Late in Loadstar production a few were built with IH’s excellent DT-466 in-line 6 diesel. My company had a number of these things.
Are you sure the IH isn’t rescuing the Chevy truck? 😉
+1000 😛
CC-effect, saw a couple of these the other night in Goldfinger’s raid on Fort Knox, but only half the time, when they weren’t driving GM trucks in a sign that continuity errors were paid far less attention. The trucks would change from one shot to the next! I gather some of the filming was done in the UK (including the scenes set at Fort Knox itself) and some in the US.
A rare sight these days to be sure, but these have always been favorites of mine since my first school bus was on this generation of Loadstar chassis. It was a 1979 model, which had to be one of the last before they gave way to the S-series.
Good to see such an old truck still out there paying the bills, even if it does look like it needs a hand here. Reminiscent of a paving company back in Raleigh that was still using several Mack U-model dump trucks as recently as 2012 (and might still be; I’ve moved since then). Those things had to be 30+ years old but you’d still see them all over town. This Loadstar is probably considerably older though, so even more impressive.