On Monday I took a day off work and drove out to Lewes Delaware to visit a nice guy named Lee, who has been quietly working on Scouts exclusively for the past ten years. His bread and butter has been the wealthy beach clientele who can drop thousands on a rig each year for upgrades, but he’s helped average guys out like me as well. He was kind enough to take most of the day to talk with Brian and I, and I didn’t have enough space in my brain to hold all of the stuff we learned. His shop is stuffed full of IH parts and gear; he has two gleaming 392’s up on stands being rebuilt.
He was kind enough to put our rigs up on his lift, and we went over the mechanicals from the underside. Brian’s truck is, of course, in excellent shape (Lee had worked on it for the previous owner, and actually was trying to help him sell it at one point) and he showed us how to add rear disc brakes with the kit he and his son developed for one of the larger Light Line vendors. Then we put Peer Pressure up on the lift, and predictably he found some things that needed attention before driving to Ohio: both of the right side wheel bearings are in need of replacement, and the tie rod end is shot on the passenger side.
There was some little stuff that can get fixed later: when we put the front brakes on we put the hoses on backwards. At some point if I’m feeling sporty I can remove the shim on the starter motor; that’s only required for automatics. And I’m going to have to replace the transmission mounts pretty soon, as they are toast.
I also learned that the belt driven spaghetti-hosed lump next to my battery is an air pump, designed to thin out the particulates in the exhaust for 1970’s era emissions laws. Lee pointed out all of the smog hoses I can get rid of to plug vacuum leaks and help the engine run smoother. When that day comes, I bought eight specially-designed plugs to fill the holes left behind.
While we were there a bright yellow Scout came in on a flatbed from Colorado, freshly bought sight unseen from the internet. We walked out and looked it over with him, and even that was an education for us both. Dig that crazy chrome rollbar. It’s pretty incredible what Scouts are going for these days, and from what he says, some of the IH-specific parts are getting as thin on the ground as the trucks are. I mentioned what I had squirreled away in the garage and he told me I was sitting on a goldmine—and not to throw anything away.
We sat and shot the shit until about 5PM, and paid him what he asked; his time was worth much more but he refused to take anything beyond that.
I hit the road and was lucky enough to avoid all but about 3 minutes of a downpour in Glen Burnie, which actually cooled me off a little bit. The truck ran great both ways and I can’t be more pleased with the heat matting. According to the Googles I put 234 miles on the truck, although the odo says 194 for various reasons.
I took the Scout over to the Eastern Shore yesterday on an IT mission to help Karean out with her various bits of technology. She’s got a 12-year-old iMac, several iPads of varying vintage, and a handful of older phones that haven’t been backed up. My mission was to make contact with the iMac, get the photos backed up to a new drive, and then see if I could revive or repair the old gear.
It was a beautiful day, and broke sunny and cool. I took Hazel for a walk, packed up my tools, and hit the road. After topping off the gas and putting a quart of oil in the engine, I picked up some coffee and jumped on the Beltway. Peer Pressure ran like a swiss watch the whole way there—two finger steering except for some exceptionally bad patches of I-97 and the expansion joints on the Bay Bridge. I stopped in a bean field to shoot some pictures before I got to Karean’s house, and I’m glad I did.
We got a lot of stuff done, including some home repair (an electrical outlet, which had always been balky and loose, basically fell apart in my hands, so we ran to Lowes for some replacements and I re-installed it) and I hit the road at about 7:30. The air was warm and all the lights on PP worked perfectly except for the speedo gauges. I’m used to driving by sound and feel though, so it was fun to enjoy an evening drive over the bridge.
She ran flawlessly for another 150 miles. I’ve put a bunch of work into her this year, and every penny of it has been worth the trouble.
Now that Brian has a new Scout, we were excited to bring both of them to Nationals for the 30th Anniversary show.
He stopped by the house at quitting time and we shot the breeze in the living room while waiting for Bennett, who was finishing up work, and Ray, who had driven down from Pennsylvania and was waiting for Bennett at his house. They got in at about 5 and we hit the road soon after. Bennett and I took Peer Pressure while Ray and Brian took his Scout (as yet unnamed). Both trucks ran great to Brian’s family’s house on the West Virginia side of the Potomac River, where we were staying the night. We got in at about 8:30 and had a beer or two from the keg on the porch, and then bedded down in a camper out behind the cabin.
The next morning Brian and I were up early and ran into town for bagels, coffee creamer, and Clif Bars for the road. We fueled up on coffee, said our good-byes and hit the road by about 9:30. I followed Brian’s truck for a good portion of the trip out and back, as he’s running a 4-cylinder and doesn’t quite have the same power to climb the hills in West Virginia as I do, but his truck ran great and stayed steady at about 65-70MPH the whole way.
Somewhere in West Virginia we stopped off for gas and followed our noses to a barbecue stand sitting out in a field. It was made up of a pavilion covering two giant smokers next to a rattletrap trailer, with a couple of picnic benches nearby. I selected the pulled pork sandwich with coleslaw and pickles. Holy SHIT that was a good barbecue sandwich. We all devoured our food, thanked the owners, and got back on the road. That location also got noted for future reference.
The rest of the trip was pretty uneventful. Bennett and I switched off driving after he was somehow able to take two calls and get a bunch of work done on his laptop—the second one during a downpour. We chased and outran several storm fronts but got caught in two showers, the second of which was enough to make me worried for a few minutes. Peer Pressure’s wipers aren’t exactly sprightly, so I’d doused both our windshields with Rain-X before we left, and that really helped my visibility. What didn’t help was the rearview mirror deciding it was going to fall off during Bennett’s leg; we threw it in the glove compartment and left it there for the rest of the trip.
This is the first time I’ve had her out in a rainstorm in years, and it was alarming how much water came through the bottom corners of the windshield. I’ve got to get working on one of the spares in the garage to get it cleaned up, weld some patch material inside, encapsulate the interior, and get it ready for new glass so that I can swap it out. Not that I plan on driving in the rain any more, but still.
Coming in to Troy we headed straight to the hotel and found some spots in the parking lot, which was already full of Internationals of all stripes. We knew a bunch of the people out there and immediately found ourselves split off into multiple conversations with old friends and new. At some point we checked into the hotel and moved our bags upstairs, and Brian and I took his Scout up the street to the drive-through liquor store for some beer. His Scout is beautiful but has manual steering, so I was completely unprepared for the effort it took to make course corrections at a standstill. On the road it was a dream to drive, and felt more like a roadster than a truck. I do like my synchronized first gear, though: I ground his gears more than once and winced every time I did it.
Back in the parking lot we met up with a great guy named Todd from Hill Country Binders down in Texas, and shot the breeze with him. He’s got a project Scout he’s disassembled in his garage which is suffering from some scope creep. Because we ate lunch late in the day our clocks were off by a few hours so we wandered over to a local restaurant and got a booth all to ourselves. Todd explained where his truck was at present and we all offered our own bits of advice. Toward the end of our meal a man stopped by the table and told us he’d noticed our IH T-shirts and said he’d spied an old broken-down International pickup about 10 miles north of town in a storage lot, and would we be interested in it? We got his information and thanked him for the tip.
Then we wandered back to the parking lot and stayed up talking with people until about 11:30, at which point Brian and I called it a night. Bennett, ever the social butterfly, came in at around 2AM.
Morning one of the show broke early. Mercifully I didn’t feel any of the beers I’d had the night before, and the coffee at the hotel was reasonably good. We got on the road early because we’d learned the year before that all of the good parts for sale went early on Friday morning. So we hustled to Tim Horton’s for some coffee and donuts and got to the fairgrounds by about 8:30.
Brian and I registered our trucks and parked them and we walked over to the parts selection to browse. It’s amazing what people can dig out of a shed or haul in on a flatbed: piles and piles of sheetmetal, boxes of parts, tires, wheels, hardtops, whole front clips, and a row of different trucks, some in excellent shape and some real beaters. Dan Hayes pulled a bunch of parts off his truck from Oregon and sold them as fast as he could put them down. Several trucks were pulled out on flatbeds that morning.
I saw two things I was interested in and paid nothing for one of them and probably too much for the other. The first was a kick panel vent for the passenger side, which my truck didn’t have because of the A/C setup. The giant condensing unit sat directly in front of it, so IH covered it with a blockoff plate at the factory. Now that the A/C unit is gone, Bennett’s feet were roasting on the trip so I found one and got it for $5. The other thing I needed was a passenger wing window: the spot weld on the upper hinge has come loose so the window flops around in the frame. I found a decent one inside a covered trailer packed with parts (chrome, like mine) and paid $50 for it before realizing the hinge on that one was fixed with a booger weld of its own. I can probably file it down and clean it up, but I was a little bummed at that. (I have several spares in the garage but I don’t know what quality they are, and I know for a fact that the bottom weld inside the door on one of them is split).
We then sat in on Mike Moore’s body panel seminar in the big hangar, which was good but a little hard to hear. He had some excellent advice for getting doors and panels to align correctly, and some sobering views on how IH engineered our trucks to rust from the factory.
We met up with Todd and hung out with him off and on for most of the day, each of us splitting off and meeting back up at various points as we met people we knew or made new friends. At one point we got to talking with a guy in a floppy hat who introduced himself as David from Ohio by way of Colorado, and he offered us a beer. Well, we don’t mind if we do, we replied.
Wandering the grounds with David for a couple more hours, we stopped to grab a bite to eat, and he told us about his truck—which he drove in but had left in the parking lot with the hood up. We, of course, needed to see it in person, so we walked out there and looked it over. He comes from my school of thinking, in that he’d rather drive it than look at it in pieces, so there are sections of rust and multicolored panels and no driver’s seat and a big hole in the passenger’s B-pillar where he’s welded in new supports to make it driveable. As we looked over the engine Brian noticed that one of the plug wires wasn’t connected and David pulled it off to reveal a corroded tip.
After joking about how the parking lot at Nationals was the best place he could possibly have broken down, we wandered back in to the grounds to see if we could find a spare wire somewhere in a parts bin. We did in fact find a female plug wire for a Holley distributor but it turned out the insulator was too narrow. He wound up fabbing a wire and connector with some parts from another vendor and hooked things back up. (He made it home that evening). We bugged him to come back the following day and register his truck, and he said he’d think about it.
While farting around in the parking lot, I busted out my screwdriver and replaced the blockoff plate on the driver’s side with the new (old) knee vent, inhaling several pounds of dust from the insulation left on the firewall. A few tugs on the lever and fresh air was entering the cabin on the right side. Which is great, because the heater valve is stuck open.
We decided to head out at about 5PM to go get some burgers at K’s, a local diner in the middle of Troy that our friend Steven brought us to last year. We grabbed Jeff on our way out and the five of us found three parking spots on main street. K’s hasn’t changed a lick in a year, and we settled into a comfortable booth by the door where the air conditioning felt great.
Back at the hotel, we downed some water and then cracked into some local craft beers with friends, talking and telling stories and meeting new people until about midnight.
Saturday morning we were sure to get up early for breakfast so that we could stop out at the abandoned truck we’d been told about. What we found was about 10 years past its expiration date; an old 60’s model with a stepside bed, copious rust, and four tires sunken into the gravel. We walked around it and poked at the crusty bits and tried to get the doors closed after opening them (the passenger side was a bit reluctant) and said a little prayer for it. Then I handed Todd the keys and told him he was driving back to the hotel. He’d only driven one other Scout before, his friend’s, a fact I’d quietly noted the night before when he mentioned it, so I figured he needed some additional motivation to get his Scout put back together.
Once we got back to the hotel, Brian handed him the keys to the white Scout and he drove that to the fairgrounds. We all immediately went to the fuel injection seminar hosted by Bill Hamilton, who imparted 30 years of wisdom in an hour and a half. I left feeling exhausted by all that I’d forgotten to remember, but realized I wanted fuel injection a hell of a lot more now.
On my way out the door I stopped at the IH Parts America booth and picked up a gas-powered hood strut, something I’d been wanting for several years. I dropped it off in the truck and Brian and I began making our way down the first line of trucks. We kept getting sidetracked by conversations with people, remembering to look for something, needing food/water/bathroom, so I don’t know if we actually made it around to see all of the displays and vendors.
Somewhere along the way we ran into David, and he had in fact registered and parked his Scout in the grounds. We spent the rest of the day on line at the hot dog stand (actually, just 20 minutes, but it felt like the whole day) and then continued down the lines of trucks. There was a ton of stuff to see, and every truck had a different story.
At about 4 in the afternoon, we were pretty beat. We wandered back to Brian’s truck and set up our camp chairs under Ray’s awning and relaxed for about a half an hour. Then we decided we’d better mosey back over to the hotel to get a reasonable parking spot before the barbecue started. We said goodbye to David and got on the road. I peeled off to get more beer, and found a spot right next to Brian in the hotel parking lot.
The barbecue itself was something to behold: last year they didn’t do it for various reasons, but this year Mary and Carl fed something like 650 people in under 45 minutes. I dumped all of my available cash in the donation jar and loaded up a plate with food. meanwhile I struck up a conversation with Matt from California, who has several Scouts (surprise) and lots of good advice.
Then we all oriented our chairs toward the bed of a pickup where Ray was preparing to auction several tables worth of merchandise. This year, as with last year, I didn’t win anything, but the raffle and and auction were fun.
Sunday morning we woke as early as we could and fueled up in the lobby of the hotel. Other folks were gearing up to leave, and we said our goodbyes before loading the trucks. We decided to make a stop at Super Scout Specialists, which is now directly on our route home, as they were open for several hours that morning. The new shop is, I’m told, much larger than the old one, set in a smaller town outside of Springfield, with a huge showroom and warehouse on one side and a long machine shop on the other. The whole thing is impressive. I’ve wandered through Scout vendors before, and I’ve stumbled through parts barns before. This is a well-organized, spacious collection with tons of inventory.
We stopped for some photos in the parking lot and then got back on the road; we had a long day ahead of us. Bennett and I switched off driving again, which made the trip easier to manage, but the heat and humidity had come back in earnest, so we were much hotter than on Thursday. We straddled weather fronts through most of Pennsylvania—tornadoes to our north and thunderstorms to our south—and only hit one section of rain the whole way. Somewhere in West Virginia we hit traffic due to a lane merge, and I noticed the temp gauge creeping up past the edge of the white indicator line. It settled somewhere about 1/3 of the way along the line and stayed there even as we stopped and started and went no further. I think this is going to be my new normal in this truck, but I’ll have to try putting a real temperature sensor on it to see what the actual reading is.
We stopped off in West Virginia to transfer gear and pick up Ray, and said goodbye to Brian, who was going to stay over at the river. Then we headed back to Catonsville to drop off Ray, who still had a 2 hour drive to his house in Pennsylvania ahead. I drove Bennett back to his house and then came home, happy to shut the truck down at 8PM after a long day on the road.
By my recordkeeping, the gauge on the truck says we drove 955.6 miles, including back-and-forths to the event and hotel. Google says we drove 1051.2 miles, give or take a few—the discrepancy is due to the larger tire size vs. stock speedometer calibration. We put a total of 89 gallons of gas in the truck, which averages out to about 12MPG. Not great, but it could have been worse—and, we did a lot of climbing through West Virginia and Pennsylvania.
Some things I need to address:
The fuel tank still leaks from the top when it’s filled, which isn’t the safest situation in the world. I guess I’ll have to drop it and reseal the sending unit. I should also rig up a pressure relief system—I wonder if I still have any of the evaporation gear in the driver’s quarter.
I have to reinstall the rear-view mirror.
I have to replace the passenger’s wing window. It sucked to have to keep that closed the whole way home.
I need to readjust the wipers: the wiper arms are oriented too low to the windshield so the bottom of their arc is somewhere below the gasket. I have to open up the cowl and properly fasten the wiper motor anyway.
I should have the coolant system properly flushed now that we’re home.
I’d love to clean the underside of the transmission tunnel and cover it in Dynamat… but I don’t know if I’ll ever get to that.
I topped off the fluids in the Scout on Saturday, put the spare tire back in, and put the bikini top on in preparation for our trip to Ohio on Wednesday evening. Our plan is to meet up at my place, where Brian will drive in from Delaware, Ray will come down from Pennsylvania, and Bennett will drive over from Columbia. We’ll split the two passengers among us and drive out to Brian’s cabin in WVA to overnight, then continue on in the morning from there. It should cut about 2 hours off of the overall commute.
While I was farting around in the engine bay I remembered that the mounting holes on my radiator overflow tank were broken and looked through my stash for a spare. Luckily I’d pulled one off the Scout I parted out in Wheaton 10 years ago, and it was in excellent shape. I spent 10 minutes with a screwdriver and a pair of pliers swapping them out.
Speaking of parts scouts, this ad showed up on Craigslist this morning. A guy is selling a ran-when-parked Scout and a second “clean body” for a total of $6,000. Before I get into a back-in-my-day rant, I’d like to wish this guy luck; if he can get $6,000 for these trucks, more power to him. But even with the inflated prices Scouts are beginning to command, that price for these trucks is astronomical. $6K should fetch a running vehicle and a donor body with a clean title. If this guy spent a day cleaning up the red truck and getting it running, he’d have a much better chance of selling both. As they sit, I’d give him maybe $1500 tops and offer to haul them away.
About a month ago, Brian blew one of the cylinders on the front brakes of his shiny new Scout and decided it was best to just upgrade the entire thing from drums to discs instead of fixing the old technology. We local guys traded emails around to organize a work day, and settled on April 6. I loaded up Peer Pressure with some basic tools, stopped over to Bennett’s house to pick him up with a load of specialty tools (brake tools are exotic and having the right ones is the difference between a great Saturday and a miserable weekend), and then we headed across the bridge to Brian’s house. There we crawled over his new Scout ooohing and aaahhing at the shiny metal and clean mechanical bits before jacking it up on stands and breaking the wheels down.
Having done mine last year I wasn’t completely unfamiliar with the process but getting his drums and backing plate off (he has a Dana 27 axle, the smaller cousin of the Dana 44) required removing the hubs. I’ve pulled several hubs off—the wrong way—so watching over Bennett’s shoulder on the passenger side was super handy. After he’d gotten halfway done I went over to the driver’s side and with Brian’s help we got that hub off ourselves. From there it took a little test fitting to put the caliper mounts in the right place, and suddenly the rotors were installed and in place. We kept joking that everything is much easier to work on when it’s not covered in 40-year-old grease and there isn’t rust falling in our eyes.
When we’d gotten the rotors and calipers on and the brake lines swapped out, we bled the system and Brian took it out for a test. It was still pretty spongy so we bled it again, and then a third time. It never did get as strong as a Scout II, which has a full size brake booster, and nowhere near the power of hydroboost, but it’s stopping straight and it feels good. It’s really a beautiful Scout. The guy he bought it from had excellent work done, and it’s about as close to a new Scout as I’ve ever seen. The engine (a 4-cylinder) purrs and there’s no oil on the engine at all.
By this time it was about 4, and even though I’d brought my radiator and a flush kit I knew it was too late to start on that. We sipped some beer and shot the breeze until about 5, and then packed up to head back home.
Bennett hasn’t been able to run Heavy D (his D-series pickup) because of a blown hub left over from some adventures at Pinelands, and mentioned that he was running up to Barnes IH for a replacement on Sunday. I remembered I had a spare I pulled from the Traveler we found in Mt. Airy back in 2013 and told him it was his for the taking. We also talked about the lovely ’66 Mustang sitting in his garage waiting for new brakes and I told him to name the date so that we could set up another work party.
Peer Pressure ran like a top the whole way out and the whole way back; about 160 miles. I did throw a quart of oil in her before I left and that made a huge difference in the sound and feel of the engine.
Since May of 2009, I’ve put 9,436 miles on the Scout, according to the odometer. This is not accurate because the ratio gear on the odometer hasn’t been adjusted for larger tires (so, for example, 50mph indicated = 63mph). Doing a little back of the envelope math for the actual ratio (6 : 7.7) tells me that the actual mileage is somewhere around 12,100.Â
In that time I’ve spent a total of $3449.51 in parts and labor, or an average of $383.28 a year in maintenance (not including fuel, fluid top-offs, or horse-trading for parts or repairs).Â
The trip to Ohio was 982 highway miles (via Google), plus maybe 10 miles of running back and forth through Troy to and from the hotel. I’m figuring about 11mpg based on our consumption and Peer Pressure’s limit of about 8 gallons per fill-up. This isn’t as good as Chewbacca did (14mpg with the top down) but I’m running a bigger engine, bigger carburetor, and bigger tires on Peer Pressure.
I’m home late on Sunday night from the IH Nationals. I smell like exhaust, summer air, sweat, and Dairy Queen. I’m sunburned on my face, nose and scalp. My shift leg feels like rubber. I’ve got grease caked under my nails that I have to clean out before bedtime. But every mile was worth it, and I’d like to do it again next year.
My first leg was from home to West Virginia to pick up Brian. I made an early morning appointment to have the alignment done because the new wheels make the truck wander at speed and I don’t like that too much. I waited in the parking lot for about 45 minutes before the guy got her up on the rack and after that it only took about a half an hour to get it dialed in. He said everything looked good, but the wandering was still there when I got on the highway. It took about a half an hour to get used to the new handling at highway speed, but once I settled in it was OK.
In West Virginia I picked up Brian at his family’s river house and we got on the road in short order. We were both excited to be in a Scout going to Nationals, so we were smiling like idiots the whole way. The weather was beautiful for the entire day so we put the soft top down and rode like that for most of the day in cool 80Ëš sunshine. As we chased the sun West it lowered into our eyes so we put the bikini top on somewhere in Ohio and stuck with that for the rest of the day.
My previous calculations on fuel consumption put the average somewhere at 10mpg, and the venting on the fuel tank is still wonky, so she only likes to take about 8-10 gallons at a time at the pump. This meant our range was somewhere around 80 miles/1 hour between fill ups, and after a couple of stops it bore out the theory. We switched off driving so Brian got some wheel time and he got to scare himself when the truck would wiggle at speed.
Along the way we were given thumbs-ups and smiles and had our pictures taken; a helpful man in a pickup also let us know one of the license plate bolts had loosened itself with all the rattling and escaped somewhere in Pennsylvania. We pulled over and Brian asked if I had a zip-tie, to which I laughed as I pulled a bagful from the console. Once it was secured we continued on our way (and when the other bolt rattled itself off in Ohio we just zip-tied the whole thing on).
We pulled into Troy at sunset, following some signs for the WACO airfield, and suddenly found ourselves passing it. I pulled a quick U-turn and we drove onto the grounds to preview the site. Most people were out at dinner so we asked some of the few people milling around about timing for the next day, shot some quick pictures, and then went to find some food and a cold beer. We had to settle for an Applebee’s but the beer was cold so we didn’t complain.
Across the street at the hotel, the parking lot was filled with people and Internationals. I found a spot next to a familiar Maryland Scout owned by a friend of ours and we put the soft top up before checking in. Then we made a drink and wandered down to talk with some people until about 10, at which time we became pumpkins.
The next morning we were up early to get cleaned up and fed, and then we made our way to the site via a Tim Horton’s closer to town. I pulled onto the field and parked in the Scout II row, put the hood up, and got her ready. As we walked in to get registered I passed a couple I follow on Instagram who have a beautiful Scout they’ve been restoring and we made introductions. They walked with us to the registration desk and we filled out the paperwork and got our swag. I decided to have Peer Pressure judged for a laugh. Once we got that sorted out, we started walking the grounds.
At Carlisle there were a lot of Scouts but this was IH Mecca. There were more shiny new Scouts than I’d ever seen in one place, and they were out on the grounds and being driven regularly. There were the requisite lifted, caged, dieseled Scouts and there were rusty old original Scout 80’s with sliding windows and no seat belts. There was a gorgeous mid-60’s Travelall pulling a vintage Airstream. There were giant IH cabover tractors lined up in a row. There was a 6-door Airport Travelall. It was overwhelming.
We started with the parts vendors first, and I scored some bolts for my door hinges, which are missing, as well as four spare bolts for the bedrail caps. We were blown away by the sheer amount of stuff for sale (and this was the second day; apparently Friday is parts day) big and small. Everything from nuts and bolts to entire NOS quarter panels is available; there were trailers stacked with axles, body shells, and a few very clean turnkey Scouts as well.
From there we started looking at the display trucks, and that took the majority of the day. There were show-ready Travelalls, pickup trucks, and Wagonmasters (the El Camino version of IH’s Travelall). There were street-rod versions of the same, many with donor engines and drivelines.
We started down the line of Scout II’s and had to stop when we got 1/3 of the way for lunch. At the table we met up with a fellow all the way from Australia, who has a gaggle of Scouts, runs a club, and has been driving them for years.
From there we continued looking at the display trucks, stopping only to put the top up on Peer Pressure when gray clouds rolled in and rain started falling. Luckily it only rained for about 20 minutes and then cleared itself up; We spent that time in a tent filled with immaculate examples of IH’s entire range of trucks and even a Q-tip ready Farmall tractor. I looked at a Midas Traveler which, minus the outside paint job, was the spitting image of my college roommate Pat’s Traveler down to the brown plaid captain’s chairs and shag rug.
Once the rain passed we finished the displays and wandered up to the hangar where we ran into a bunch of friends, including Dennis, who had been one of the main mechanics on Peer Pressure’s brakes. We mentioned the wandering issue and he told us to get a Straight Steer bar and he’d help us install it in the parking lot. Never one to turn down knowledgable help, I ran to the Super Scout barn and grabbed the last one on the table.
By 4 o’clock Brian and I were pretty walked and talked out. We hung out in the barn for a while, waiting for another shower to pass, and made plans to follow Stephen into town for burgers and shakes at an old-school diner on Main Street. K’s is right out of the 1950’s from the interior decor to the paper hat on the head of the grillman, who knew Stephen from sight. Those burgers sure did taste good.
On the way back to the hotel we made a brief stop at a Harbor Freight for some box-end wrenches and a deadblow hammer and then found a parking spot before the raffle/auction started. Taking 1/2 hour to relax and kick back in our room, we poured some drinks and checked in with families, and then headed downstairs to join the crowd.
For years, there’s been a Saturday barbecue, raffle, and auction after the main show, held in the parking lot of the hotel. People bring all sorts of things to donate, and the entire pot goes to charity. They’ve raised tens of thousands of dollars each year, and the whole thing is a lot of fun. Dennis found us pretty quickly after we came outside and ran for his tool bag; with the tools I’d bought and his ratchet, we had the steering pump loosened and the Straight Steer into place with little effort. In 20 minutes we had the whole thing buttoned back up. Once again I thanked Dennis profusely for his help. Scout people are the fucking best.
Then we settled in for the raffle and auction. I’d bought 12 tickets, 6 for cash and 6 with my entry fee, and as usual, I didn’t win anything. (I had my heart set on a $500 gift certificate from IH Parts America. Oh well). The auction was fun, but I didn’t have a whole lot of cash left after the Straight Steer purchase and anything I wanted got bid out of my range pretty quickly.
I bumped into a nice fellow who asked about the safari top on Peer Pressure and the subject turned to the tires stacked in back; I didn’t have any bites on them at the show but he seemed interested when he saw them. As the night went on he thought more about it and told be he probably couldn’t do it. We stood and drank and talked with new friends and laughed until about 11, and by that point Brian and I were pretty crispy.
In the morning we got packed up early to leave, had some hotel breakfast and said our goodbyes, hit Tim Horton’s again for real coffee, and stopped off at the showgrounds for a toy for Finnegan. On the way out we saw the nice folks from @International_Camp_Bus striking their campsite and we traded a wave as we pulled away.
The ride back was quieter than the ride in; both Brian and I were pretty tired so conversation was more subdued. Peer Pressure drove maybe a smidge tighter, but the tires are still wandery in the tractor-trailer ruts and across expansion joints. It’s really a combination of the tires and the springs: the tires want to move around and the springs like to unload at speed, so just when you need some control the weight floats about six inches above the suspension and the steering gets squirrelly. And this with two adult males and 350+ lbs. of tires in the back. Amusingly, the engine and gearing are happy at 65mph and would easily do 70+ if prodded.
The sky was overcast for the whole way out of Ohio and through Pennsylvania/Maryland; it was only when we crossed the bridge into West Virginia that we got sunshine over our shoulders. I dropped Brian off at the river and stayed for about 15 minutes to stretch my legs. They offered me a dip in the river but it was 6PM and I was itching to be home, so I got back on the road.
The sunlight stuck with me on 70 into Maryland, and I was feeling good about getting home at 7 until I came upon brake lights going up a hill. As I slowly crested it I saw why: a rainbow crossed over the valley I was dropping into, and my heart rate increased a little. As I climbed back out of the valley the road got wetter and spray started kicking up in front of me. My wipers are functional but not at highway speeds, so I rely on Rain-X to keep the windshield clear. And, the soft top was completely folded up behind me. As I crested the next hill, fortune smiled upon me: a rest stop was directly ahead. I pulled off and put the top up in a light drizzle, then looked at the weather radar to see what was overhead: a small cloudburst was directly over I-70 and following it east about 5 miles ahead of me. As I waited the rain stopped and the residual heat started drying things out.
I figured I’d be smart and wait it out, so I killed 20 minutes making notes on the trip and then nervously got back on the road (after hoisting all the electronic gear and dry goods to a high spot on a tire in the middle of the truck). Fortune smiled on me again, because the rainclouds tapered off in front of me and the only problem I had was 20 minutes of stop-and-go traffic for some bridge maintenance up ahead. Peer Pressure’s lights all work flawlessly so I wasn’t worried about a night drive. The only one that doesn’t work is the speedometer but after ten years I can gauge her speed by the sound and feel of the engine through the pedals.
I pulled into Catonsville sweating the last couple gallons of gas (I was a little over my 80 mile interval and dreading the nonexistent breakdown lanes on the Beltway), backed into the garage and shut her down after a long day’s workout.
We covered almost 1,000 miles in three days, and she ran flawlessly. That truck never ceases to impress me. I am continually amazed at how lucky I am to have made the friends that share my hobby, and how willing they are to help and share their knowledge, as well as how lucky I am that this crazy purple-and-gold-and-red truck found me when it did. And special thanks to Brian, my best friend and Scout buddy, for talking me into this trip.Â
Peer Pressure made a 257-mile trip this past weekend to the Eastern Shore without a hitch. The kids loved it, I had a smile on my face the whole time, and it was her first visit to the shore–about as close as I’ll ever let her get to salt water.
I had no issues with starting, overheating, or odd distributor explosions. I am noticing that braking is getting wobbly up front, probably due to the rotors being warped (the only parts we didn’t replace during the brake job this spring) so I’m going to have them ground or replaced next month.
After that, it’s getting a set of road-going tires. Mud-Terrains are good for mud but loud as shit at 60mph.
