I decided to take this car to the club fall meet in Newport, Rhode Island. The steering box is a bit loose (plan to replace this winter) so I had the car trailered. The car did well, taking first in class (people's choice).

I noticed this car was missing the unique heel plates used on the H (and the J) so I set about checking for spares. As far as I know, the H-J heel plates have never been re-made whereas you can get new F-G heel plates from either Gary Goers or Michael Burke. The F-G and H-J are the same size but the H-J have a special "waffle" pattern.
I dug through spares and found a pair that were in fairly good shape, scrubbed them clean and brightened with a fine wire brush. I had good original rubber inserts to re-use. Under the rubber inserts is a metal backer plate. I had one, made a second and now just a matter to find the original drill holes in the floor.

Finding the original screw holes was difficult. The undercoating hid some, some screws were broken, but I was able to find the lower left hole and that was the key. There is a rubber plug in that area and you can't screw into that. The other 7 screws have plenty of metal to bite so I located the left plate off of the lower left screw and went from there.

The right plate was an easy locate off of the left plate. The far most edge also traps the end of the console carpet. If somebody some day makes a new batch of H heel plates, I'll get a set and swap out these well-used originals. See more in Video #8.

While I was working in the area, I decided to repair the turn signal switch. I had right and left signals, but the switch would not cancel from the left position. I removed the switch and got lucky when the cause was 60 year old grease that had hardened. A quick clean and lube with fresh, we were good to do. See details in this video.

On to the replacement of the steering box. The car drove quite well but I had more "dead-zone" in the center steering area than I wanted -- a common complaint in old cars. Sometimes you can adjust the backlash screw to dial this out but I don't have that luck -- I can get the center steering tight but then the extremes are so tight the steering binds.
I had a spare box so I sent it out to Steer & Gear for rebuild. When it came back I made the swap which you can see in this video.
I was hoping to complete the project before winter arrived but didn't make it, so the first test drive of the new box will have to wait for spring.

There was a break in the winter weather so I thought I would take the H out of the boiler house garage (the only heated garage) and swap with the J since the new J interior has arrived and we'd like to get it installed. I first needed to remove the engine hoist from the boiler house garage. In order to do that I get the Dakota pickup to haul the hoist. While backing up to the garage I felt the Dakota's rear wheel fall into some pot hole. Thinking it was nothing, I backed up and the front wheel fell into the same hole which was now a lot bigger. 4 WD got us out of that hole and a quick look showed a sewer pipe had collapsed under the snow.
Had I been driving the H, likely I'd be writing about how "The Sewer Ate My H!"

We did get the H safely out of the boiler house garage and decided to move it to the house for the winter. We had to move the car trailer out there anyway and might as well transport the car as well. I was surprised the H started quickly even after several days of soaking in the 25 degree temperatures.
The next day I rewarded the H with a car wash inside the garage. With the doors closed and the heat on, it went well. I had the leaf blower handy so I used that to blow dry. That went well until it set off the smoke detectors in the house, but I call that an acceptable trade-off.