With the thick supplied gasket installed, one of the linkage rods isn’t long enough to reach, so he had to call around to find the correct gasket and have it overnighted for tomorrow—which is great, because we can’t pick it up until tomorrow evening anyway.

Meanwhile, I parked Peer Pressure out in the driveway while I was hauling garden tools and other stuff around the yard. My original plan was to drive her over to the Home Depot in the afternoon to browse the doorknob selection, but plans shifted and Finn accompanied me in the CR-V instead, and rainclouds meant it was back in the garage by 2:30. During the rainstorm I decided to try both of the spare windshield motors I have on hand to see if either of them worked. I plugged them both into the bulkhead connector after verifying that the one I have installed works, but neither one made a sound. I know the wiring on my original unit (the one I’ve been dragging around since 2002) is frayed and the green wire has come loose, so that didn’t surprise me. Doing some research on motors, I found A couple of good threads that deal with the motors and their wiring, another with some info about motor replacements (apparently a 94-01 Cherokee motor will work just as well), and one containing interesting info about testing (putting it on a battery charger at 2 amps).

Anyhow, I was disassembling one on the workbench downstairs, when the doorbell rang. It turned out to be a guy who lives in the neighborhood and who owns an orange Scout I’ve noticed on occasion, hidden behind the shrubs lining his driveway. He told me he was going to sell his truck, and knew I had a Scout, and wanted to know if I’d be interested in what he had?

Well, I said, would you mind if I took a look?

It looked better from the road than from up close, unfortunately. It’s been sitting in his driveway for a couple of years, but he claimed it will run with a jumpstart. The body was toast. The front fenders and tub are pretty far gone. The hood looked to be in decent shape. I couldn’t tell how the top looked from the inside because the inserts were still in place, and I didn’t stop to examine the doglegs or crawl under to see how the bottom of the tub looked (the right rear tire was flat).

However, it’s got a 4-speed and 44′s (3.54 gears according to the lineset). It came with highback buckets, a sport steering wheel, green tanbark interior, and white spoke wheels. And a quick review of the contents of his garage revealed:
A second set of inner fenders (I’d say fair to poor shape, but repairable).
A stored set of Traveler doors in fair to good shape.
A skid plate, looks to be in decent shape
A stored tailgate in very good shape
A stored passenger fender in very good shape (from what I could see; it was up in the rafters)
An unused poly gas tank
A stored windshield in excellent shape
Another stored windshield in fair shape (what looked to be surface rust by the mount points)
And a bunch of other smaller stuff that I can’t remember right now.

The price for what he has is very reasonable, but the problem is where to put this thing, how to part it out quickly, and how to have the carcass hauled away without blocking everything else in the driveway. I think it would fetch decent money for the spare the tailgate, transmission, axles, and doors, and possibly (over time, of course), pay for itself, minus the parts I’d like to keep.

I put the word out with the local crew to see if anyone needs anything, and checked in with Mr. Scout about the steering wheel; I’m waiting to hear back from everyone to see if it’s worth the time and trouble to pick up the whole thing, or make him an offer he can’t refuse on the stuff I’m most interested in. We’ll see.

I also started replacing the bolts fastening the rollbar to the body. The PO used some kind of zinc-plated hardware, so I bought a handful of grade-8 replacements and started swapping things out. I also found an angle bracket in the decking section of the Home Depot that I think I can modify to use as a secondary tiedown for the bikini top straps. (There’s one tiedown fastened to a passenger-side rollbar bolt, but the driver’s side has nothing).

Still on deck: A rebuild kit for the ThermoQuad. Stay tuned.

FYI, the Mud Terrains I’ve got on now list for about $179 each.

My local friend Karl is selling his Scout in preparation for a move north into Pennsylvania, so I’m also stopping over to pick through his stash and see if there’s anything I’m interested in besides two clean seat bases—which will replace the ones I currently have installed. The plan is to clean these up, mount the old seats from Chewbacca, and replace the strange aftermarket seats it came with.

Not to be discouraged, I continued on to my friends’ house (a few knocks on the tank verified there was sufficient gas available) and made it home alright. But now I’ve got to source a hose that won’t disintegrate with exposure to gasoline.

* * *

Last weekend I removed the entire soft top and folded it carefully for storage in my basement, along with the door frames, bed rails, and hoops. With soft tops being scarce and expensive, I’m going to try and keep this one in good shape for as long as I can. I replaced it with the bikini top, which went on easily, although I’ve got to add a tiedown on the driver’s side and redrill the holes at the edges of the windshield to secure the rail. This is the first time I’ve had a bikini top, and I have to say, it’s very nice.

filthy

When it was dry, it didn’t look like it was in bad shape at all. There was some surface rust and some corrosion on all surfaces, though, so I went at it with some fine-grit sandpaper and a lot of elbow grease.

washed

When it was cleaned up enough for my liking, I hit it with some automotive primer to see if I’d missed anything; it turned out much better than I’d expected. I have to wet sand it down before I hit it with the finish coat of satin black, but I’m really pleased with the results. I can’t wait to put it all back together.

primed

Out in the garage on Sunday, I started pulling the old fan shroud off to get a better look at the fan assembly, and one half of it fell off. From what it looks like, after the PO added a 2″ body lift, the radiator moved in relation to the fan—and the coolant hose on top. In order to fit the shroud under the hose and over the fan blades, he chopped the bottom half off and then must have snapped the shroud in two to fit underneath. Or, perhaps the shroud came into contact with the heat from the hose and snapped on its own. Either way, it’s off now; I’ll use it as a template for the new shroud mounts and then toss the pieces.

original fan shroud

It turns out the dead headlight was only playing dead; I fooled with the connector a while and found that there’s a dead spot on the female side. I’ll have to read up on how to clean the contact inside the plastic housing.

Finally, I bought a 25′ length of flexible HVAC hose and hooked it to the second tailpipe, primed the carb and turned her over for about 5 minutes, long enough to get some water out of the tailpipes and scoot her back a foot or so. I have to tighten up the hose so the exhaust doesn’t blow it off and open the other windows, but it sure felt good to hear that thing turn over again.

Browsing through Binder Planet last night, I stumbled on a post about the location of the frame serial and how it’s keyed to the last 8 digits of the VIN, so I picked up a scraper and headed out to the garage. I first looked in the wrong place (back behind the B body mount), but then found the right location after scraping off some engine grease: right in front of the driver’s firewall, forward of the hoist port, on the vertical rise.

Frame VIN

As it turns out, the VIN screwed to this truck does not match the frame. Big surprise. Using a VIN decoder linked from the BP, the tub correctly dates to a ’76 model Scout II. But when I drop the eight numbers from the frame (Year, Plant, Line, serial) in front of the first five from the body (Model Year/Unused/Model/Model/Engine), I come up with a 1979 model year frame. Curious.

I suppose I could spend $100 on a lineset ticket to see if the VIN I’ve got on the title matches the tub (I know the original color of this tub, which is always on the lineset ticket), but its current location and method of attachment leads me to believe it may be from a third donor vehicle—one that had a clear title, and made it easy to register—and that would be money wasted.

When I was in college, I borrowed my roommate’s Traveller to drive myself and two friends to D.C. to attend an evening seminar at the Smithsonian. On the way down, it began to snow, and it was at that point (late for the seminar, we were doing 65mph on I-295 in late January) that the wiper motor died. We found some string in his parts bin in the back and tied it to each of the wiper arms, then ran it through the butterfly windows so that my passenger could pull it back and forth, effectively cleaning off the windshield. We made it to the seminar and drove it home like that, too.

Now, at the risk of drawing the ire of anyone over on the Binder Bulletin, I’m going to repost some of the information I’ve found useful here, with a direct link and attribution. (I’m not casting aspersions on the admins of that great site, but I’ve found that information residing in web forums tends to disappear or move unexpectedly, usually at the point when I need it).

(1) If you still have the stock wiper arms, then there are only a few sources for replacements, but apparently NAPA has their 11 inch “Classic” wiper blades which should be an OEM replacement. I didn’t go that direction because I like more variety in wipers.

(2) If you want to use commonly available wiper blades, you can install ANCO replacement wiper arms. 

ANCO Part: 41-02 (Passenger Side Wiper Arm)
ANCO Part: 41-03 (Driver Side Wiper Arm)

The previous owner may have already installed these for you. You probably have ANCO replacements if the wiper arms have small gray friction discs at the end that allow you to adjust the blade angle.

Once you install the ANCO arms you should be able to use them with most after market blades.

I believe OEM blades are 11″, but I like to use 13″ heavy duty winter blades for better durability and coverage. The ANCO 30-13 13″ Winter Blades work pretty well.

Here are some sources for Wipers/Arms:

NAPA: http://www.napaonline.com Classic Blades. Not cheap, but if you’re staying stock it’s a good source.

RockAuto: http://www.rockauto.com Has the ANCO wiper arms and blades at competitive prices. Arms: $9.05, Blades $4.55 as of 01/19/09. This only issue with them is they ship from all over creation and sometimes the shipping can get out of hand for small orders of obscure products. 

Given how old my wipers look, and how hard it is to source parts for Scouts, this is great information. I used to have two spare pairs of Anco blades in my old parts bin, so I’ll have to restock. Luckily, I have a spare windshield with a wiper motor still attached and all the linkage up to the wiper blades.

Update: The Binder Bulletin went down for maintenance only a few hours after I wrote this.

Update 25 Jan 2009: I just got a friendly email from the original author of the forum post, who added this new information (and kindly passed it along to me):

1. If you just want to use 11 inch wipers (the original length from IH), most manufacturers blades should work with the ANCO arms including (no suprise) the ANCO 3011 (11 inch winter wiper blade).
2. If you like the increased coverage of the 13 inch blades (and who doesn’t), then you can’t use any old blade. In particular the ANCO 13 inch blades were problem. The blades themselves are high quality, but the two connectors that come with them are (a) a direct connect for baton-style arms and (b) a quick connector for baton and possibly other arms. The problem is that you can’t use the regular connector because the baton jack on the connector is too shallow which prevents the ANCO baton from clicking in. The quick connector is fine, but it makes the total arm length too long and the tip of the ANCO blade then exceeds the windshield height when sweeping.
3. Two 13 inch blades use connectors of the correct length are the Trico 37-111 and the Duralast 13″ winter blade from Autozone. While the Trico seems to be a fine blade it doesn’t have an adapter for the 5mm bayonet of the smaller ANCO arm (the passenger side).
4. That leaves the Duralast 13″ winter blades I found at Autozone which come with both 7mm and 5mm bayonet connectors. The Duralasts look almost exactly like the ANCOs, but they have blue instead of red tips on the end. They’re made in China (if that matters to you.)

So the current out-of-the-box score is:

• For 13″ Blades and ANCO Arms you’ll probably need to use the Duralast 13″ Winter blades from AutoZone. No quick connects, but they’re the right length and have both 5 and 7mm conectors. A decent compromise.
• For 11″ Blades and ANCO Arms the ANCO 3011 11″ Winter Blades are well-constructed, look good and the connector options are excellent. Their bayonet connector is 7mm, but they comes with 5mm adapters. They have quick connectors for swapping them out and their bayonet sockets can be easily unlocked from the ANCO bayonet should the need arise. The bayonet lugs on the Trico and Duralast are difficult to remove, doubly so since there aren’t any quick disconnect options.