Well, finally pretty much caught up with all the stuff over the last couple days.
Jason - thanks for the compliments. Glad I'm able to help you out. Ya know, I don't know why it is I'm pretty good at spotting stuff that's done differently. Just one of those things.
Now, I'm really sorry to see that 1250 sittin' out in the woods. You know it just doesn't do anyone any good there. If you just tear it all apart you can hang most things up someplace in your garage/shop. Probably not much reason to keep the frame and broken rearend around so those could disappear.
You did ask about tri-ribs for your front tires and someone suggested using the 1250 rims. I don't think the tri-ribs were help you much but I do have a suggestion that you have to just try. For some reason IH reversed the front wheels when they changed from the narrow to wide frames. The narrow frames have the wide offset to the outside and the wide frames have the wide offset to the inside. The wide frames tend to show a lot of camber so on my 169 I used narrow frame front wheels. I don't have a good pic but I'll attach one below so you can at least see the offset.
You can reverse the wheels on your 149 just to see how it looks/feels/steers/etc., BUT you can't do it for long. Reversing the wheels puts your valve stems toward the inside and they'll hit the spindle on each revolution and eventually tear. You really need to check them (rotate a couple times) when you reverse and install the wheel. Sometimes, with longer valve stems it will catch and just tear out.
And yes, the Correct Police will likely pick up on this. All I can say is that my version is using original IH parts (narrow frame wheels).
Since you're really handy with your welder you could take those 1250 front wheels and weld over the original holes for the valve stems, and drill new holes on the opposite sides if you decide the reverse positioning gives you that little bit extra stability feeling.
