Well its been another year and half. I am trying to get to some "quality of life" improvements in the old 9670. On my other trucks I have air start and deep cycle batterys. With these I can run an Espar all night and fire it up in the morning. There just isn't room on the short cabover frame for an air start tank. Unless I get real lucky and find an old "CF" Freightliner from the '60's with the vertical "hot dog" air start tank, I'm SOL for air start. I think I am going to go with a Maxwell Super Capacitor for starting, leaving enough room in the battery box for 3 deep cycles.
http://www.maxwell.com/products/esm/esm-ultra-31-1800Next I ordered new window weather strip, both belt line "wiskers" and full weather strip. I replaced the door lock mechanism (a real problem area on IHC's big trucks) and modified the latch so it will open more reliably.
Last I dug out the original trans that came on my 89 9600. It started out as a RTF11609A but I put a "kit" in it to make it a RTOF 11613A years ago, but swapped in a RTOF14613A that came in a truck I broke up for parts. The lighter 13 never gave a bit of trouble even though I was doing "heavy haul" at the time. When I get done with all the changes/upgrades, I hope to move back to driving it over the winter.
I had a slight dilemma, the period correct shift knob would have been the old chrome knob with a two position (direct/overdrive), with the range being a button lower down on the stick. These are plentiful on E bay but are most are imports that have a bad rep for leaking. There was one guy sell NOS Eaton units but the price with shipping was over $100. I don't need it that bad. There are many selling the newest Eaton style, but that wouldn't look right on this truck, so I settled on the older "squared off" style aftermarket.
For me, the advantage of the original style is I could leave my range control alone, as the truck has a nine speed now. I just couldn't part with $100 to do so. My '89 had the "squared" knob, so these two will "match".
One good thing about cabovers, changing the transmission (or doing a clutch) is an easy day job.