(first posted 4/27/2011). Nothing beats a helping hand. Summer is around the corner, and some four years of procrastination and denial while writing for TTAC and starting CC have caught up with me, so I’m going tackle a big list of building and maintenance projects on my little fleet of (usually) immobile Curbside Classics. The key to making it possible is help: thanks to new contributors, CC will keep rolling while I cut back my desk time. Now my poor old overworked ’66 F-100 could use some help too, like a big brother of sorts. Here it is:
It’s got everything the F-100 doesn’t: all-wheel drive, a dump bed, serious load and towing capacity, and lots of gears to play with. But it does share one thing in common with the Ford: a straight six, although quite a bit bigger. The International L and R Series trucks and their Red Diamond big six engines were legendary in the fifties. In the era before long-haul trucking really took off, they were one of the most significant players in the big-truck field, taking on every demanding job and in the process creating a reputation that made International the biggeat truck maker in the land.
The L Series arrived in 1950, and except for some of the really huge “West Coast” rigs, defined the modern big truck of the times. The sleeper cab version above is pretty representative of long haul trucks of the eastern half of the country, when severe length and weight restrictions on the old two lane highways make these semis look like toys compared to modern giants.
The L Series, which was replaced with the very similar R-Series in 1953, came with a new family of big sixes, the Red Diamond big block. The first version had 372 cubic inches, but larger variations appeared in 406, 450 and finally, even a 501 cubic incher. These gasoline engines were revered for their fat torque band and toughness. And there’s nothing quite like the sound of a really big gas six, working hard. Either you’ve been initiated into the cult, or your time hasn’t come yet. Better hurry; big truck gas sixes aren’t exactly getting more common.
Of course I appreciate a diesel’s inherent efficiency advantages. But except in the newest ones, their tremendous noise and vibration levels are an assault on my poor old ears. And there’s another thing: diesels inherently have a very narrow power band; often just 400-600 rpm. Gasoline engines have a much broader power band, and are really much more pleasant to drive in typical situations. Of course they suck more fuel, but back when fuel was dirt cheap in the fifties and sixties, truckers were very resistant to giving up their big gas engines, and for good reasons.
Let’s take a look at this legendary engine. This particular truck has the RD406 engine, as the block plate makes clear. By the time this truck was made, it was making a mighty 193 hp, probably at about 2800 -3000 rpm. Now we usually think of straight six engines as having very restrictive log-type exhaust manifolds, but not the RD. Check out these nice cast “headers”, and the genuine dual exhaust system. These big engines had to breathe in order to put out the kind of power required of them, and it’s evident from their plumbing.
Interestingly, the exhaust ports are all individual, but the intake ports are siamesed. Reducing exhaust back-pressure was an obvious design priority.
I didn’t properly take it in when was shooting, but this rather unusual big two-barrel Holley carb doesn’t seem to have a float bowl, as this is a propane-fueled engine.
The other side: well, it shows off the big six’ nice lines, eh?
This particular R-190 has a somewhat interesting provenance. The R Series was mostly replaced by other more modern IH trucks, already by the late fifties. And by the sixties, International had diesels as well as a new huge gasoline V8 engine. So this 1966 R Series is probably one of the last years it was made (this ad is form 1963).
But certain customers still preferred the R Series, especially public agencies like highway maintenance authorities and utilities. This one appears to come from the Gregory South Dakota Rural Electric Cooperative, if I’ve deciphered the fading door sticker correctly. Utilities and public agencies were more interested in a rugged truck that would last them in their low-mileage use for decades, than the latest and greatest over-the road machine with maximum efficiency.
And for those muddy ditches in SD, AWD is the way to go.
The beefy front axle on this one is a thing of beauty, no?
The rear axle looks hefty too. Twin sets of massive leaf springs on each side; the upper set only comes into contact and use when the load gets serious. Still, this is not going to be a plush-riding urban-cowboy pickup. Looks like the brake lines have just been replaced.
The L and R Series cabs were none too big, but had a rep for being particularly rugged. One operator said that the R Series doors were the best in the industry; they never went out of alignment and became hard to close, despite the grueling punishment. Those are the kind of details that make a legendary rep.
I’m ready to slide in, fire up the big six, and roll down the road with a load of whatever in the back. Hook up a rental trailer with an excavator on the back (I used to pull them with the F-100, but I just don’t have the heart and guts anymore). Pick up a load of gravel at the quarry…
Back to reality…I don’t even know how much the asking price for this truck is, and I know I’m better off just renting a dump truck by the day when I really need one, even if it is a diesel. Well, the new turbo-diesels do have a nice little bump in the torque curve when the boost comes full on.
But I can let have my few hours of longing, and try to get it out of my system by writing about it. That usually works for all the other vehicles I write about.
You had me fooled at first, Paul. I thought this was a new purchase!
Needs a little bit more aggressive tread on the front tires. Add a snow plow to it Paul and tell your wife it will actually MAKE you money for those very few days of snow in your part of Oregon when all the neighbors freak out about the white flakes. 😛
ODOT could certainly use the help, they tend to do a pretty awful job in the valley when a snowstorm comes in. I suppose they don’t get much practice. Can’t salt in Oregon, either.
It makes me laugh when Americans call little toy shit heaps like F series, Trucks,.If you can drive it on a car licence its only a UTE.Real trucks are capable of working and carrying a decent ;load this old inter would still rate as a 4 wheeler and gross at 14 tonneGVM but here you need a class 2 licence to drive it ie light truck licence, wanna pull a trailer with it class3 required Diesel torque is where its at the 430hp Navistar I drove would pull all the way down to 950 rpm b4 a whole gearshift my nightly trip of 400km had nearly 170 km of steep hills an twisty corners 2 lane blacktop roads some of the steeper climbs needed low boxand difflock it wet or icy @45 tonnes
Americans call little toy shit heaps like F series, Trucks
Stay classy.
Yea… right. I’d like to see one those toy ***heap utes you have in Oz actually tow a decent trailer. Not happening.
“Hate begets hate.” Bryce may have been out of line in his comment, but it was addressed the first time this article ran nearly 3 years ago, and you do us all a disservice by exhuming the issue.
FWIW, a Ford F-150 equipped with the Heavy-Duty Payload Package (3/4 ton 7-lug axles, thicker frame and an extra leaf in the spring) or the Max Tow Package can tow over 11,000 lbs. But when was the last time you actually saw a half-ton pickup with that kind of a load?
Toyota advertises its Hilux’s towing capacity as 750 kg (1650 lbs.) unbraked, and 2250/2500 kg (4960/5511) braked on 4×2 and 4×4 models, respectively.
That’s a good idea, I think, to give two ratings based on whether you have trailer brakes or not. I guess I should be happy when people actually use their pickups as pickups (i.e., towing vehicles) here in the U.S., but all too often their lack of adequate brakes makes them a hazard to themselves and their fellow motorists.
Roger, I certainly realize the inherent difficulties in fully understanding Bryce’s legendary posts on CC, but he said exactly what you did. He’s an institution in and of himself on here.
I find it very refreshing to read the uncut and undiluted comments of a professional truck driver here. He has decades of experience with American, Asian and European trucks, so obviously the man knows what he is talking about. In Bryce’s Gear Jammer-style.
+1
About towing capacity. Install air brakes on both SUV/Ute/Pick-up and trailer and you can pull a hell of a load very safely. Plus ABS and a heavy-duty trailer hitch of course. Any horse can always pull way more than it can carry.
Example of an air brake system on a Dodge Ram 2500. Nicely packed in an insulated box.
More pictures in the link below, the trailer also has air brakes and ABS. Disc brakes all around.
http://www.usatrucks.nl/forum/viewtopic.php?t=5192&f=31
Nobody is pretending that the sedan-based utes can tow a ‘decent’ trailer but they are perfectly capable of towing a car trailer, boat, caravan or your average tradesman’s trailer, which covers a lot of peoples’ needs.
Beyond that I agree there is an advantage in comfort and performance in the heavy duty pickups over the smaller cabover trucks that are common here, but as gray imports there is a heavy price to be paid for that.
When Ford last sold F-series here, they realised there was no point selling the F-150 because they didn’t have a worthwhile advantage over the ‘midsize’ pickups that can now tow 7500+lb and went straight to the F-250 and F-350 which cost $50-80k from F-250 single cab 4×2 to F-350 crew 4×4.
Cool old truck and I especially like the ads.
Leadership follows when you build a truck to do a job. I scanned this two page ad from an old Life magazine about 10 years ago. Great minds think alike.
Paul, Paul, Paul, how could you possibly resist that? Those beautiful old Eaton axles and that vinyl bench seat, now I want one! There is a 1957-60ish IHC 2 ton 4×4 dump in a field near me. This only makes the longing worse.
Paul, you NEED to come back to the midwest for the Jamboree at the I80 Truck stop! It’s a blast!
http://iowa80truckstop.com/trucker-jamboree/
You’re killinng me, Paul. I’d just about put a Hendrickson found out in a field out of my mind until you brought this up. It’s knawing away at me again, no thanks to you.
Getting a better look at it today, and that is a propane conversion. The fresh air tube goes to a mixing valve on top of the carb.
When we moved to the sticks in 1970 my dad hit it off with the owner of the local contractor who hauled most of the dirt and all of the garbage for the parish (non-Louisiana read county). He had a pack of these old beasts for dump trucks and garbage trucks, and they were forever hitting them with crane booms and other trucks, so Daddy gained a pretty good recurring business pounding out the roofs and putting in new windshields, etc.
They had been in business seemingly forever, and the field behind their repair shed was a grease monkey’s playground, something like a big-truck version of the swamp junkyard Paul treated us to recently. The repair shed itself was an incredible collection of tools, large chunks of truck, and decades worth of grease. You could probably have scraped the floor and found parts from Model AA Fords buried in the gunk. If it had caught on fire (not unlikely considering the frequent and necessary use of hot wrenches), the grime would have burned for days.
Of course, now the yard would be a brownfield, and th repair shed an OSHA nightmare. It’s all gone now, but I wouldn’t have missed it for anything.
Do you have any old contacts for anyone that would have a windshield for a 1957 R190 International. I need one in clear if I can find it.
Do you know anyone who wants a 1957 R 190 tandem with 18′ grain box?
It just sits now. E-mail sims.farms@yahoo.com
Yes if you still have I am interested, I have a 1959 R190 with a 20ft Grain Box currently great truck I need a second one though.
I have always found it interesting that several truck makers used the previous generation or older body styles (cabs) on a given generation medium to HD truck. International with this early 50’s cab used here in the 60’si, Dodge did it too, and didn’t GM use the 67-72 cab into the late 70’s?
Actually, no. Chevy/GMC updated their mediums in 1973, the same time they changed the pickup body. Now GMC did use a SIMILAR cab for one heavy-medium truck/city tractor…it somewhat resembled the older cab but wasn’t identical. It had a two-piece windshield; the door-window channel separating the vent window was straight-vertical, not angled as the older pickups and mediums were. And there was a fold in the sheet metal below the beltline that was absent on the older cabs. And the interior and dash were different, and I believe the cab was wider. That particular model actually lasted into the first years of WhiteGMC manufacture.
Dodge only did as you say with the Power Wagon and their medium cabover, which used the Van front quarter after the van had been updated. International, being on a tighter budget and not style-oriented, used older-pickup cab styles on their Loadstars long after the pickup had been modernized. I suspect it was to use up parts and as a cost amortization for obsolete body parts that were still in demand.
Also, GM did use the ’67-72 medium front styling on the flat-cowl chassis into the mid ’80s.
Yep. We had plenty of school buses in my county’s fleet that used the older nose styling, despite being in the ’78-’82 range.
I picked up a ’50 L-172 for $600 a few years ago which now resides in the back of my barn awaiting time and funds to put on the road hauling hay and the occasional load of gravel for the driveways. I believe the cab is the same between the L and R Series trucks – looks like it from your photos.
The BD269 straight six is rated at all of 89hp, and with the two-speed rear axle, the final ‘low-low’ gear ratio is something like 11:1 – true tree-climbing gearing.
I love the styling – kind of the last gasp of the old era and a breath of the new. The L Series was only in production three years…
No the l had different doors and of corse grill two back widows untill60 my co. Had 35rmodels 10k5 s a7s8 k9 10 k12 15 1910s 11 2070s 20s2574s. 1 2576 last 2 trip axles 20′ monotone boxes in business 1931 also 2 oh dealerships
Hi, I love old trucks, grew up around them and driving them with my dad who started trucking when he got out of the army in 1945. I have a 1957 372 rebuilt Red diamond engine with less than 1000 miles on it, it has Stellite filled exhaust valves (to run unleaded), and the head was shaved to pick up a point in compression. It has the generator, air compressor, and an up draft gas carb on it, with the split exhaust manifolds as well. $800.00 to a good home, I have been saving it for years, as my friend that I got it from did, but on unemployment now, and I would like to see someone put it to good use, and let it live and breath again! You can e mail me @ fivo2fst4u@aol.com, or call 352.551.7492. Thanks a bunch, keep on splitting em!
Keith Cantone, Eustis,Fl 32726
Are you parting the truck, I could use a dash plate and title.
Thanks, Roy
royj20@hotmail.com
I had aInternational AL110 very noisy and fairly crudely built but it ran well a silver?diamond IIRC it was 220cube I fitted 30 thou over Chev rings to it new bearings and rebuilt the head it went but didnt stop well but would carry anything we put on it as fast as you were game to go
Darnit that truck is in mighty fine original condition! You like this truck . . . you want this truck . . . no, you NEED this truck!
Judging from the number of rear spring leaves (leafs?), I’d say you’d need to have about 22K lbs of stuff in the back in order to achieve a nice ride.
Hey Where is this truck at if your not going to jump on it give someone else a shot. I just traded for a very simular R-190 with a dump box, 2 wheel drive I need a windshield if anybody knows of one. I intend to resurect this truck for local deliveries. It should be quite a site.
Our town has a truck show every September y’all come to St. Ignace, Mi. for the fun.
Maverick
You wouldnt know where to get R190 parts and possibly a title would you.
Thanks,Roy
I put lots of miles on a R 190 in my days and my Dad went thru a few of them on the Road, These were real trucks.
I loved them wish Ihad one today just to have and drive when ever I like .
Interesting that this large heavy spec’d truck has hydraulic brakes. Maybe air brakes weren’t available or compatible with the live front axle?
It makes me laugh when Americans call little toy shit heaps like F series, Trucks,.If you can drive it on a car licence its only a UTE.Real trucks are capable of working and carrying a decent ;load this old inter would still rate as a 4 wheeler and gross at 14 tonneGVM but here you need a class 2 licence to drive it ie light truck licence, wanna pull a trailer with it class3 required Diesel torque is where its at the 430hp Navistar I drove would pull all the way down to 950 rpm b4 a whole gearshift my nightly trip of 400km had nearly 170 km of steep hills an twisty corners 2 lane blacktop roads some of the steeper climbs needed low boxand difflock it wet or icy @45 tonnes
Well Bryce….I guess you would be the ” back’em up billy big rigger ” What kind of truck did the Canadians build? errr…. oh yea….you da man!
Todd if your “ute’s” could pull/haul as much weight as an american pickup, you might tend to call it a truck too. – – I’m not interested in that right now. Right now I’m interested in aquireing a title for a 1957 Int. R190. If anyone has a lead please let me know, I’ld even consider buying a parts truck to get one. you can send E-mail to ; royj20@hotmail.com.
PS our “ute’s” are called El Camino and Ranchero pretty cool rides if you get the year you want.
Ahhh, I see, I’m writing to this line of conversation instead of individuals, well maybe I got it across that I would like to find a title
I’ve always been a 1 ton guy because they have always gotten the job done. But now I sometimes have a demand for a bit more then a 1 ton can take. I started looking for bigger trucks with a dump bed and found a 1962 R 190 Series International for $3,000. It comes with a plow, chains and the dump bed I need. Not knowing mutch about bigger trucks, I’m turning to the Internet. Is that a good deal and will this truck be up to being used once every week or so and daily during the winter months?
Good article on a great old truck. I’ve heard a big old truck six at full chat once. My wife and I walking around an old car show north of Toronto several years ago when we heard this roar. I turned around, and a beautifully restored 1935 Mack BM was pulling into the lot. Google 1935 Mack BM, and you’ll see it under Images – it’s the red one.
to hear a 501 cubic inch i6….. I’m all ears.
Truck fantasies are certainly fun. After about 50 miles in an unloaded, stiff leaf sprung, non-air seat, short chassis unit like this though and you will be ready for the chiropractor.
Agreed. It’s a good thing I did my summer stint with the Highway Dept. and the 1984 F-350 flatbed (itself a bit of a CC) when I was young and strong (as if I’m now old and weak, 2 years later).
You hit the nail. Nice hobby vehicle, but try to drive this every day for years in a row. Old trucks are health destroyers, period. From your knees up to your ears.
Things have changed for the better since the early seventies. Cab and seat suspension, heat and noise insulation, air sunspension plus a huge improvement of ergonomy all make you last longer as a professional driver.
Not sure if you ever got an answer on the carb, but it looks like a standard Holley 885 with a governor to me. I don’t see any of the hardware or plumbing needed for propane. The float bowl is under the air horn assembly. The IHC RD engines were very common in units like crane carriers and special purpose self propelled equipment at one time. I don’t know when they quit making them but you could still get parts in the mid ’80s. Any I saw or worked on had a carb like this as I recall. Seems to me they were also found on some Ford industrial engines as well. They may have been used in automotive applications without a governor before the famous 2300/4150/4160 carbs were developed. I haven’t seen one in a long time!
Must say I share your lust but have not a single clue what I could do with one of these. Fun to think about though.
Paul,
Invest some of those rental-generated profits on this thing – you should have no trouble writing this baby off as a business expense. That is one straight, clean truck!
Then you can write about the ownership joys of vintage medium-duty iron.
It would be fun to master driving one of these. Just because.
All this talk of trucks reminds me of the film ‘Hell Drivers’. They don’t make em like that nowadays!
I’ve seen that one, with Sean Connery. Not a bad movie for its time, it has held up well.
There are lots of old trucks like this sitting on farms but I’d say that these days they have generally moved down the totem pole from seasonal use during harvest to emergency backup or ‘might restore that one day’.
I like the lights on top!
Another point worth noting is that the front axle looks like one produced by Colleman for IH. Colleman patented their axle way back in the 20s and they are easy to recognize due to the hub reduction cover, which gives this truck a Swiss appearence (Swiss Saurers had a similar front wheel drive system), as below.
Right, T. The front axle is definitely a Coleman product. Here’s the straight skinny on Coleman and Howe-Coleman from the internet’s resident Coleman guru, Craig Trout.
http://forums.justoldtrucks.com/22610/Coleman-Trucks?PageIndex=11
What are the axle ratios? And what ratios do the 2 speed rear ends have? My International has a 5.38, I found a big 60s international 4×4 with a divorced transfer case but it’s got 7.17s and hydraulic brakes. Where can I get 4×4 air brakes axles with 3.08s?
Hello, the intake ports are siamesed for efficiency. Siamesing keeps the momentum of the air in the ports, where it just has to change direction for the valve that’s open. That way, the air/fuel mix can stay moving rather than stop and start. It’s why Chevy used it on their 230-250 sixes.
I disagree. Siamesed ports are there because it’s harder to find the room for individual ports on a reverse-flow head. It’s intrinsically a compromise, and one that modern engines have long gotten rid of, since it impedes output and efficiency. From Wikipedia: The gain in port area comes from effectively removing the material between 2 adjacent ports. This solution encourages charge robbing, where one cylinder “robs” the charge from the port leaving the next one with less mixture. This happens because the 2 cylinders which share the port are not equally spaced in terms of firing order.
As you will note, the Chrysler slant six, widely considered the best breathing six of that generation, did not have siamesed ports. Nor did the new Ford “big six” (240/300), which lasted in production in the US well beyond the Chevy six.
That’s not to say the Chevy six isn’t a fine engine, but it’s universally agreed that individual ports are superior for efficiency and output, which is why all modern engines have them.
Anyone got insight on why domestic inline 6 engines did not favor cross throw heads? From packaging perspective, with carburetors and exhaust manifold on different sides would make space utilization easier. Can’t cost much more if any and didn’t have to be HOC either, Ford of Europe did make a HOV crossthrow inline 4, the popular Kent. But domestic I6 all had reverse flow. Cause the exhaust manifold warms the carburetor?
You hit on a key reason: carb heat. Also, it really is easier to cast a non-hemi head with all the ports on one side. In fact, it can get a bit tricky not doing that, which was one of the challenges with the modern OHV V8. And if you have a wedge combustion chamber, the ports obviously tend to lean one direction.
But the carb heat was a critical issue for mainstream cars. It really made it easier to get cars to run smoothly in the winter.
That being said, technology for water heated manifold was well established ….
Nice old rig .
.
We had an ex U.S.A.F. L series dump truck on the Farm back in the 1960’s , compared to the other brands of large trucks it rode well , was fairly quiet and had a decent heater .
.
I never complained out working out of it .
.
Agreed , listening to a big six at full chat is impressive .
-Nate
When I was traveling for work recently, the insurance agency near my hotel had an R-series International fire engine painted up to advertise their business. I’d never seen one close up before, so it’s enlightening to read about them here. No idea what year it was though–I’m surprised these were still in production in the mid-late 60’s as it really has the look of a 1950’s machine.
Did the Loadstar finally replace these, or was it one size bigger?
Both the R and Loadstar have a range of different sizes, sometimes they overlap, but in general the Loadstar is smaller than the R. The “big” sixs were not available in the Loadstar, the hood was to short. There is also a Fleetstar, which has the same cab and similar hood as the Loadstar but is a little larger and can squeeze a Cummins diesel in.
Interesting article to me, I worked on a lot of R190’s in Australia in the early 70’s. The comment on the carbies was of interesting, they do have a float bowl under the main cover. The 406 as we called the engine was governed to 2900rpm by the fleet owner, There about 40 primer movers so they all pulled semitrailers, there was 1 372 engine and 1 or 2 450’s.
I remembered watching an episode of Barnaby Jones as a kid, where an International dump truck tried to smush Barnaby and his LTD. I found the episode, and it appears to be an earlier V-Line model stalking Jones. The cab and body design appear very similar to the R190. (14:43)
https://youtu.be/CmqeovE_0rg?t=882
The V series was essentially the R series truck with a wider hood to accommodate the large IH V-8’s like the 478 and 549. The Loadstar was very much a junior to the R/V series trucks, built much lighter but nonetheless a good truck. The Loadstar used the smaller Black Diamond 6’s and ‘small block’ 304/345/392 V-8’s. The Fleetstar A used the Loadstar cab but that’s were the similarities ended. Most were Cummins or Detroit powered. In those days International had every conceivable truck market niche covered. Usuallly by at least 2 models……
1910-1970s International truck specifications are available at the Wisconsin Historical Society: ( https://content.wisconsinhistory.org/digital/collection/ihc/search/searchterm/international%20truck%20specifications ). You may already know, if not, it might be fun? And I can post it here for anyone else who might care.
I love hangover designs like these, along with the ‘civilian’ Dodge Power Wagon and the chain drive Mack FCs. There’s another in the ad you posted – the Metroette milk/delivery truck, which kept its 1956 front clip until the end.
Seen in Arizona on I-10 east of Tucson