All Spark, No Joy

I put in another day of work on the Scout 800 to try and breathe life into the engine over the weekend (and before the snow fell), and I was met with failure at almost everything I tried.

When I left off last week, I was looking at an engine that would crank, a distributor sending spark to the plugs, and a carburetor backfiring when I sprayed it with ether, which told me the timing was way off. So I started the new day by cranking the motor over until I felt air coming out of the #1 cylinder, which indicated the compression stroke. I pulled the distributor back out, lined it up properly (rotor pointing at cylinder #1) and re-stabbed it, then verified I was getting spark at the plugs. I also pulled the coil out of the Travelall and dropped that in, figuring that maybe the used coils I had weren’t providing enough power. But no amount of cranking, fiddling with the wiring, adding the battery from the Scout, or fooling with the carb got the engine to catch.

At this point, I think it’s one of a couple of things:

  1. It’s not getting enough power. The engine turns over VERY slowly. I replaced the positive battery cable with a new one and cleaned up the negative cable connection on the block, so I don’t think it’s a delivery issue. But my jumper cables didn’t seem to be transporting any power anywhere, which was frustrating. (I have one heavy-duty set that’s probably 40 years old from the repo lot and a cheap set from HD that I got to help jumpstart a van in a Wegman’s parking lot a few years ago.)
  2. The starter is either bad or not getting enough juice. I have four spares and for love or money could not get any of them to respond, but now that I think about it, I wasn’t jumping them the right way. Luckily, this should be easily remedied this evening.
  3. I’m not getting any compression in the cylinders. I have no doubt that the rings are pretty frozen after 10 years of sitting, but if I was feeling strong wind from cylinder 1 when spinning the crank by hand, I have to imagine there’s some compression. David dropped my compression tester off this weekend, so that’ll be the first thing I check out before pulling the starter.

During the day, I took a bunch of breaks to think over next steps. This keeps me out of trouble and away from going off half-cocked and getting myself in trouble. One of the things I did was to pull the old bias-ply spare off the tailgate, jack the truck up, and put it on to see how it looked. I actually dig it a lot!  The original wheels are skinny—16×6″, which is perfect for a set of military-style pizza cutters which would look period-correct on this truck. I’m pretty sure I saw the other two up at Dan’s place behind the garage, in which case I’ll grab those next time we’re up there. In the meantime, the white wagon wheel spare I got with Peer Pressure turns out to be the exact same size and backspacing as the wagon wheels already on this truck, so I’ve got five of those now.

I also found a couple of 5/16″ bolts and used those to fasten the rear of the cab top to the truck. There are only two at each corner right now, but it’s got five mounting points across the bulkhead, so I’ll add more later on. I can’t figure out, however, how the front of the top  is supposed to attach to the windshield. I assume there are holes that go down into the windshield frame, but the top hangs out over the front of the windshield frame far enough that I don’t think it fits right. More investigation is warranted here.

Here’s the running total on this truck so far:

Item Cost
1966 Scout 800 $500
Lunch for the recovery crew $85.00
Curved points $7.00
Battery cable $33.37
Carb Rebuild kit, fuel pump $46.30
Total $671.67

Meanwhile, I ran the Travelall up with the intention of taking it for a test spin after torquing the U-bolts down tight. But I had the same problem that popped up last week: the engine bogged down and died on acceleration every time I got on the gas. I limped it across the street and then right back into the driveway, and looked things over: the clear fuel filter right after the pressure regulator was filled with crud. So I replaced that and parked the truck, then pulled the carb off to hose it out with brake cleaner. I have no idea where I’d be getting crud in the fuel from, but it’s pretty obvious I’m going to have to empty the tank and check it for dirt again.

I did take a little time to install one of the new cupholders on the bench seat, and I’m really happy with the way they turned out. I think this looks fantastic. The only thing I want to add now is a hole in the center of the drink crossbar to add a small rubber bumper of some kind to dampen vibration between it and the trans tunnel cover.

Posted on   |   by bill   |   Leave a Comment on All Spark, No Joy  |  Posted in Progress, Scout 800, Travelall

Stocking Up

In another example of late-stage capitalism, a huge conglomerate of auto parts manufacturers has been imploding over the last couple of months after the company failed to meet its debt payments—debts racked up by purchasing more companies. This means that known brands like Raybestos, Autolite and Anco are shutting down completely. I use parts from each of these manufacturers on my trucks, so I’m going to spend some money I hadn’t budgeted to stockpile some parts: brake shoes, cylinders, wiper blades, and spark plugs. Brake parts are some of the hardest things to find these days, so I ordered a spare set of Raybestos shoes for the Travelall, a set of Autolite 85 plugs (good for all IH engines) and a set of Anco wiper blades for the Scout II.

Saturday morning broke sunny and warm. The temperatures by 11AM were over 40˚ with a forecast in the mid-50’s, so I made a beeline for the driveway and got to work installing the passenger side spring pack on the Travelall. At first things went very smoothly, and I was thinking I would be able to wrap the project up in a couple of hours, but hubris had gotten the better of me. I had to clean up the threads on both shackle bolts (I’m re-using the originals because they’re nonstandard shoulder bolts pressed into the fang mount and shackle). Once I’d done that I was able to get the rear shackle in place but the front fang took a bunch of time, clamps, and adjustment to wiggle into place so that I could get new bolts secured.

Once that was done I tightened up the U-bolts on each side and started the truck up to get it up to temperature. My intention was to take it for a quick spin around the block, but I found that it was stalling on acceleration. I’m not sure if it’s an issue with the accelerator pump or something else, but it was getting dark and I didn’t want to strand the truck out on the street somewhere, so I pulled it back in the driveway to diagnose later.

On Sunday I had a little time after doing some house projects and set up the MIG welder to assemble three C-series cupholders I got from SendCutSend. These are the Version 3 design, made from 14 ga. steel with wider openings for drinks, a revised curve around the front edge, and a simplified drink stand underneath. I’m pretty happy with these, although I’m going to make one final modification to the drink stand, but these three will go out for powder-coating and then I’ll see if I can market these to the Light Line dealers as premade units.

Posted on   |   by bill   |   Leave a Comment on Stocking Up  |  Posted in Design, Part Numbers, Travelall, Welding

Engine Revival, Part Seventeen

Because I am insane, I put three layers of work clothes on and ventured out into 12˚ weather (with the wind chill, feels like 1˚) to see if I could make some magic happen on the 800. The first thing to do was to chip the ice/snow melt away from the garage doors, put the Scout into 4WD and pull it out on top of the crust to warm up. With the garage clear, I cleaned off and sanded the points from the 800 and re-installed them in the engine. Pulling the battery out of the Travelall, I removed the spark plugs and bumped it over to blow out all of the remaining ATF from the cylinders. With that done, it was time to yank the distributor and pre-oil the engine.

Looking high and low through all of my bins, I could not find the fancy pre-oiling tool I inherited from somewhere, even though it was clearly noted in my spreadsheet. So I found a steel bar in my stock, cut it down to size, and welded a bolt to the end to make my own tool. With some careful filing at the end I had a workable tool. I marked the distributor location and pulled it out carefully, then put the tool in the bore and ran it for about three minutes. I’d pulled the valve cover off to see if I could see any of the oil making its way to the top of the drivetrain, but I didn’t notice anything.

In the garage, I aimed the space heater at my hands and used a plastic scraper to clean years of mud and oil off the distributor housing, revealing an original IH part number. This is a Prestolite unit, with curved points and female connectors on the cap, and with some brake cleaner and a rag I was able to get it to shine up pretty good.

Stabbing the distributor back in the engine, I re-connected the ignition system and put a spark tester on the #1 wire. At first the starter didn’t want to catch, so I whacked it with a hammer a couple of times to wake it up. After turning it over, I got no spark, so I popped the cap back off the distributor and checked the points with the key in the On position. I did get spark with a screwdriver between the points body and the shaft, but not at the points themselves, which tells me they are toast. A new set of curved points were only $7 on the jungle site, so I’d bought them last week but they won’t be here until Tuesday, so I’m at a standstill. Which is OK, because the battery did not want to crank at this temperature, and my fingers did not want to continue taking direction from my brain. So I buttoned up the 800 and returned the battery to the Travelall. With a little bit of choke she fired up immediately and settled into a good idle, so I let her warm up while I put my tools away. Man, I love that truck; I can’t wait to get the other spring pack installed.

Inside the garage, I had a plan to get my storage bins up and off the floor. Searching for the pre-oiling tool underlined just how annoying it was getting to move crap around just to get into a particular bin. With a handful of 1×3″s I built a frame and sliders on the far side and was able to get six bins stacked from floor to ceiling, cutting their footprint in half. There are still other bins that had to go next to them along with some other miscellaneous parts, but that freed up a huge amount of space at the back of the garage.

And because it’s so damn cold out, I need other projects to work on. So I modified my cupholder design again. I guess I never updated the progress here: In December I’d modified the design to widen the cupholder openings, deleted the vertical support, added two holes for the mounting bolts, and rounded the top edge. When I ordered it I made a mistake and specified 0.12″ thick steel, which turned out to be SUPER-beefy and overkill. And somehow the openings for the cupholders were still the original size. So I modified it again to verify the holes were larger, and redrew the edges a third time to match them better. With that done, I sent it in to have three examples cut and bent out of 0.071″ thick steel; hopefully the third time is the charm, and these will be fit for production.

So for the 800, the next steps will be:

  • Swap in the new points
  • Swap in new spark plug wires
  • Test that the wire lead from the coil to the distributor is functioning (it’s very frayed)
  • Turn it over and test for spark.

Here’s the running total on this truck so far:

Item Cost
1966 Scout 800 $500
Lunch for the recovery crew $85.00
Curved points $7.00
Total $592
Posted on   |   by bill   |   Leave a Comment on Engine Revival, Part Seventeen  |  Posted in Scout 800

Archaeology

The weather hasn’t gotten above 25˚ outside this weekend, but I did fight the good fight and get outside when the sun was out to tackle a couple of easy things that didn’t require digging into or laying on snow.

I really want to figure out the backstory on this truck, and there is no VIN tag or data plate anywhere visible. So I dug into the snowbank on the driver’s side to free up the wheel, and jacked up that side. Once I was able to get the wheel off, I used a wire wheel to clean off the frame in front of the shock mount. Way up toward the bumper I was able to find the serial number stamped into the steel:

That’s hard to read, but it says G219425, which roughly decodes as a 1966 model 800, one of 24,410 made that year. There is no easy information available beyond that (when IH went to the 13-digit VIN in 1972, it was easier to get some basic info from the number) but I’ll have to order a lineset ticket from the Wisconsin Historical Society on Monday to learn more.

While I was in there I put the ratchet on the crank bolt and turned the engine over about two full revolutions. It’s sticky in one spot but not stuck; I think when I run it up and clean the cylinders out that should clear up pretty quickly.

Next up, I pulled the distributor cap, rotor, and cover off to get a look at the points and condenser. They’re pretty dirty but might still be serviceable, so I’m going to try them first before buying any parts. I do need to identify this particular model, as it doesn’t look anything like the one in the Scout or the Travelall (sigh.)

Then I scraped off the stamping boss on the side of the engine and confirmed that it is in fact a 196; this engine was a new option for 1966 and could very well have been a 152, but it appears I got lucky—the extra 10 horsepower will make this truck feel like a rocket.

Posted on   |   by bill   |   Leave a Comment on Archaeology  |  Posted in Scout 800

Dreaming of Warmer Weather

Now that the 800 engine is free, I’m itching to get outside and start fooling with it. Unfortunately the truck is under three inches of snow covered with a layer of ice, and the forecast for the forseeable future doesn’t rise above a high of 25˚. So I’m thinking ahead and making a list for when I can get back out there.

  1. Spin the crank around at least four revolutions. This equates to two full engine revolutions and should clear out any crust on the cylinder walls. Done! I’ll do this again, but it did spin with little to no problem.
  2. Bump it over from the starter and clean the cylinders out. There’s probably still some ATF in the cylinders, and that needs to come out so that it doesn’t foul the plugs. Done. It made a mess, which I was expecting.
  3. Diagnose and replace the starter, if needed. It’s too early to say what condition this one is in, but I have a spare. A couple of love taps with a hammer has it waking up, but it’s on its last legs.
  4. Pull the points off and clean them up. I haven’t touched the distributor yet, so I have no idea what to expect. It does have a dust cover, which could mean it’s not full of mice poop, but I’d expect they’re crusty and will need cleaning. They are garbage, so I have a new set coming. I also replaced the condenser.
  5. Replace the coil with a known good unit. I’ve got two here that test well, so this shouldn’t be an issue. Done; this was simple to do, other than having one of the connectors pop off the end of the wire.
  6. Pull the distributor out and pre-oil the cylinders. This is the easy part. I inherited a pre-oiling tool from somewhere years ago and it’s still in the bag. Done! I made my own tool, but it worked just fine.
  7. Stab the distributor back in. This is the part that makes me nervous; I’ve never pulled and re-stabbed one before, and it requires aligning the right cylinder at top dead center and pointing the correct plug on the distributor in the right place. Further research shows that pre-oiling does not move the valvetrain at all, so this should be very easy to do.
  8. Replace the plugs and coil wire. Easy-peasy.
  9. Hook up the new electric fuel pump and boat tank, and fuel filter to the carb. Super easy; I’ve done this a million times on the Travelall.
  10. Buy a new battery. I’ve got the old one here to swap as a core; Costco has great deals on these.

Down the line, the next steps will require some purchasing, but again, the intention is to keep things as cheap as possible.

  • Swap out the bad tires for good ones. I’ve got two 16×6″ wheels with the truck, and I think there are two more up at Dan’s place. There are period correct bias-ply wheels available for wheels of this size that are cheap, but bias-ply tires aren’t the best for long-distance travel. Not that this truck will be optimized for that in any case. In the worst case, I can find some cheap 31″ tires to slap on the wagon wheels the truck is sitting on now.
  • Brakes. At the very least I expect I’ll need to purchase wheel cylinders and soft lines. All four wheels spin—a miracle—but I have no idea what shape the drums or shoes are in. I have plenty of hard line but will probably need to stock up on fittings.
  • Drop the fuel tanks and clean/replace them. Brian just sold the plastic tanks from Slowflake, and I’m kicking myself for missing out on them. But I might switch over to a central fuel tank mounted under the rear bed to simplify the system instead of fighting the fiddly factory dual-tank valve setup.
  • Find some new seats and a passenger base. Holy crap do the seats in that thing suck. I’ll see if I can source some cheap replacements.
  • A rollbar. The blue truck up at Dan’s has a rollbar, and I’ve inquired about buying it. This would make me feel much safer. The alternatives are more expensive; I do like the one Brian has, which is pricy but sturdier than the originals, and covers more of the bed. I’d have to weld it together myself, which would be an interesting project.

Meanwhile, two things popped up in my feed in the last two days which merit mention. The first is this interesting assemblage, which looks to be the marriage of a quad-cab Loadstar and the rear of a Travelall.

Clearly this needs some more fabrication to be finished, but I appreciate the vision.

Second is this shot from one of the Facebook C-Series groups, where one of the members has been talking about fabricating cowl vent replacements for a couple of years. It looks like he’s made some great progress. These look really nice.

Posted on   |   by bill   |   2 Comments on Dreaming of Warmer Weather  |  Posted in Scout 800, To-Do List

Unstuck!

The temperature outside never got above 20˚ today, but I still bundled up in three layers of warm workclothes to get as much done outside as possible before the snow really hits us. The forecast is for the storm to begin overnight, go all day tomorrow, and shift over to ice before stopping. Next week’s temperatures will be equally cold, so it won’t be going anywhere for a while.

First, I made a quick run to the store for some hardware and Hobo Freight for a medium-sized narrow prybar that I could put on the 800’s flywheel. The main task was to try to get the springs back on the Travelall. I started with the driver’s side, jacking it up and pulling the wheel off. I horsed the spring pack into place and got it oriented in roughly the right place, then finger-tightened the rear shackle in place. This was not easy, as my ribs and butt are still sore from snowboarding on Tuesday—using my body as fulcrum on the ratchet was pretty painful. I should have taken some ibuprofen before going outside. I have an old shop heater I keep running in the garage while I’m working, and I found I had to come in and warm the tips of my fingers up every half an hour or so.

The front bushing was about 2″ away from the front fang, so I had to be creative with a combination of wood wedges, a bottle jack, floor jack, ratchet strap, and Hi-Lift to compress the pack enough to stretch it out and get the holes aligned. I put new Grade 8 bolts in the front mount and tightened everything up, including the U-bolts and shock absorber. By this point in the day the sun was behind the clouds, the temperature was dropping, and I knew I didn’t have enough time to try to install the other side.

The truck sits a lot higher on the front wheel now, which is great to see—overall the stance looks much better and the truck doesn’t look like it’s being squashed on its haunches. I figure I’ll have to get it aligned after I do all the bushings in the steering gear, but this should make a huge difference in handling. I let the fuel pump run and with two pumps of the pedal, it fired right up. I ran it up for about ten minutes while I was cleaning up my tools and then buttoned everything up.

With the remaining light, I shifted over to the 800. All attempts to move it from the crank bolt this week have been a failure, even after I put a ratchet strap on the wrench and left it under tension. Crawling underneath, I put the new prybar on the driver’s side and tried working it toward the center. I was surprised to feel a small amount of movement, so I kept at it until I’d moved it about 6″. I went to the other side and moved it back to where I’d started, and then repeated the process. When I got to the tough section that originally stopped me, I worked it a little more and suddenly felt it give way with a whoosh of compression. Excited, I got up and put a ratchet on the crank bolt and found that it moved pretty freely.

This is a HUGE relief, as now I can start pre-oiling the cylinders, rig up a fuel system from the boat tank, re-install the radiator, and start testing the ignition system for spark. So far I’m only into this thing for the carb rebuild kit and the prybar, so $20 for some new points won’t hurt too bad. I’ve got a set of wires left over from Peer Pressure’s last tuneup, as well as spark plugs with maybe 10K miles on them, so we might be able to get this thing running for pocket change. We’ll see.

Posted on   |   by bill   |   2 Comments on Unstuck!  |  Posted in Scout 800, Travelall

Cold January

Saturday morning I waited until it stopped snowing to get bundled up in work clothes to go take care of a bunch of truck stuff. My sister bought me a set of Redkap coveralls for Christmas, which, like all other work/utility brands were my correct measurements but cut for someone four times my size. We did some re-configuring and I traded up to a set of Dickies bib overalls which are a bit heavier, and I’m very pleased with how they fit—and they’re plenty warm too. Thanks Renie!

The first order of business was to see if the engine in the 800 had loosened up. I pulled the spark plug in cylinder 1, which is the only one still holding liquid, and found that it was still full. I decided I wanted to make life easier on myself, so I drained and pulled the radiator out, freeing up a ton of space so that I could put the breaker bar/pipe combination directly on the crank bolt without having to crawl in the mud under the truck. This was remarkably easy; the four bolts holding the rad/shroud combination came right out, and all I had to do was pull the crosswise support rods out to get it past the cooling fan. With that out of the way, there was suddenly all kinds of room to move in there.

The engine, however, would not budge. It’s been sitting for two weeks with ATF/acetone down each cylinder, and there has been no change. I’m happy to play the long game right now though before I go to the nuclear option and decide to pull the head off—there’s plenty more to do. I’ll just keep going out there and yanking on it every couple of days.

Over on the Travelall, I jacked the passenger side up and made pretty short work of pulling the front spring pack out. Back in the warm garage, I wire-wheeled the packs and mounting plates and sprayed the latter with some Rust-Stop before it got too cold. I had MLK Day off from work, so I drove into Baltimore and dropped them off at the shop where I had the rears done.

Meanwhile I’ve been gathering the parts to put in a working dome light, and I think I’ve got a plan put together. One of the first things I needed were special clips for two of the headliner bows, which I found at our local ACE hardware, and they fit perfectly in the factory channels. With all five bows in place, I now have something to hang dome lights from. I started the wiring part by looking at the factory diagram and realizing I’d perhaps missed one of the pins on the light switch, so I pulled the switch out, hosed it off with electric degreaser, and noticed that the copper contact on the rheostat for the dome light had broken off at some point in the past. I pulled the switch from the green truck dashboard, cleaned it up, and put it in DH. With the system wired up as I understood it from the diagram, I still wasn’t able to get light from the switch, and when I tried to stub in a door switch I blew the fuse.

About that time I got a call from the spring shop, who told me it was ready for pickup. Pleasantly surprised, I drove back into the city, paid them cash (I don’t sneeze at a $50 discount) and returned home with my updated spring packs. By then it was too dark to continue outside, so I stored them in the garage and called it a night.

I’ve been outside as much as possible, but the weather has been lousy for a while now so I moved to some indoor projects. When I pulled the steering column out of the truck in Pittsburgh, I got a basic tw0-spoke steering wheel as part of the deal, which matches the one in the 800. I pulled out the two-part epoxy I used on the steering wheel project last year. This wheel was sun-baked and cracked but not nearly as bad as the first one. With two rounds of epoxy and sanding, I’ve got it mostly ready for primer and paint.

Left column: original PLA print, several larger PLA prints, and poured tin on the bottom. Right column: Resin options 1, 2 and 3, and the new ABS prints (black and silver).

Finally, Brian handed off a couple of new 3D prints of my dealer badge from a guy on his side of the bay who offers ABS as one of the options; ABS is much more temperature-resistant than the PLA prints I got at the library. I’m thrilled with the results, but I’m going to see if he can increase the size for me.

Posted on   |   by bill   |   Leave a Comment on Cold January  |  Posted in Scout 800, Travelall