Fumes.
So, last week, I repaired the hose from the inlet tube to the gas tank, which had rotted out and was leaking. I figured, since I’d driven at least 75 miles since last putting gas in the tank, that I’d need some more. (The gauge reads empty). At the filling station down the street, the pump clicked off several times after only five gallons, and since my old Scout did this routinely on an empty tank, I thought nothing of it—until I heard the spatter of gas on the pavement below.
This time, it was a smaller hose the PO had used to plug off two of the evap tubes; I’d filled the tank to the top and now the little 3/8″ hose (which is at the high end of the tank) was leaking. Swell.
I returned home to see if there was anything I could do; I didn’t have any tape that would stand up to gasoline handy, so I decided to drive it to the dump (the entire bed was full of debris I’d loaded previously) and burn off some gas. After a brief stop at the Home Depot to pick up a fire extinguisher (the thought of cooking off while motoring down the highway was foremost in my mind), I waited in a mercifully short line at the dump and got rid of another load of crap.
On my way out, I quickly noticed something peculiar with the gas pedal; it was closer to the floor than it had been minutes before. I was still getting throttle enough to make it into 4th gear, but my speed topped out at 45mph or so with the pedal to the floor, far short of the 65 I’ve had it at before (I’ve never had the hammer all the way down before this).
Checking the linkage, I don’t see anything loose with the connection at the firewall, on the pedal itself, or up to the first mount on the carb. I’m dealing with a Carter Thermoquad, something I have no experience with (my old Scout had a Holley 1920 on a 2-barrel 304; this is a 4-barrel 345). Bad linkage? Bent pedal?
My first thought is the linkage itself. The wires and connections are tight, but perhaps something came loose in the carb iself. The throttle cable is brand-new (still has the vendor sticker wrapped around the sleeve) so I know it can’t be that. This is going to take some sleuthing by mechanics smarter than I.
Out On The Highway.
I drive into work yesterday to take advantage of the sunlight and warm weather, and the old girl did not let me down. She fired right up in the morning and I got out onto I-95 grinning from ear to ear. Larger bumps send her into a bit of a panic, because the shocks and springs are so tight any sudden movement gets transmitted and amplified by the short wheelbase and stiff suspension. I have to be very careful with the steering, as well—there’s a bit of play, and then when it starts turning, it’s turning.
In the parking garage I had a bit of a scare when I drive up to the height warning sign and could touch it with my entire palm from the driver’s seat, but we squeaked under it with inches to spare.
I had to drive out to Ellicott City after work to get some paperwork notarized, and enjoyed the scenic route by the river. There is still some question as to how much gas she needs to start; I’m averaging about 10 pumps of the pedal to coax her to life each time, which is concerning. The carburetor is a Carter Thermoquad, which will obviously need some attention in the near future. (I’d love to ditch it and go to a Holley 2300, but that may need to wait until money is not so tight).
Weekend Tinkering.
This weekend was in the low 70′s, and between spending time with my daughter and doing a ton of overdue yardwork, I took some time to fool around in the garage. The first order of business was to clean out the space and organize everything better; the back half of the garage has been used for a no-man’s land for years, and thus was piled randomly with junk. I’m also storing a bunch of parts for Mr. Scout, which demanded better accommodations, so I swept, organized, and cleaned up the entire bay.
Next, I wanted to pull the panels off my donor doors and see what shape they were in. It looks like they’re reasonably clean, although everything suffers from light surface rust and needs a good wash. The door pulls and window cranks are both clean, but one foam armrest is toast and the other is marginal. I also pulled what looks to be an original rearview off the driver’s door and took steel wool to the grime covering the chrome; it cleaned up better than I hoped it might.
On the sad side, the liftgate is rusted out beyond economical repair; every time I moved it I left piles of rust in my wake, so I’ll just strip the parts off and ditch the frame.
Finally, I got a strange urge to pull the dashpad off for examination. Someone paid a good deal of money to cover a cracked green foam pad with blue vinyl, ruining the foam with staples and glue. Hopefully the pad Mr. Soundman’s offered me is in better shape than this one.
Progress on a Scout (not mine, part 2)
This morning I dropped by Mr. Soundman’s house to lend a hand in de-tubbing his Scout. He has a 1972 with relatively clean sheetmetal but a frame that’s seen better days. His plan is to add his good parts to a donor frame to make one clean Scout.
He’d gotten everything off the tub prior to this morning, and soaked the body bolts in WD-40 to make for easier removal, so we got right to work. The body bolts came off, the steering linkage was removed, various electrical connections were removed, and the tank got drained and dropped.
Then, it was Miller time.
The next step was to get it as close to its final destination as possible so as to save our lower backs from years of chiropractic reconstruction. After removing a length of fence, we angled the truck out of the carport and into the backyard within a stone’s throw of a flat concrete pad. Experimentation with 2x4s and leverage determined that we needed to lower the front of the frame to get the tub high enough to clear the transfer stick, so we removed the front wheels and lowered the body onto jackstands.
Once that was accomplished, we heaved the tub off the chassis and the four of us got it over to the concrete with only one (hopefully) minor strain. Boy, was I glad that went quickly, and surprised at how much that thing weighed. Note to self: this is a 6-man job.
Then, it was a matter of redoing what we’d undone to get the frame back on four wheels and into the carport. A little shoving, a little kicking, and the chassis was under cover for the evening.
All in all, it was a very successful day—the four of us got a lot done in five hours.
Appreciation.
On the heels of my earlier post about Bisio Motors up in Portland, Mr. Scout sent me this weblog post with some more information and a video interview.
From The Archives…
From my old picture archives, a shot from the late ’90′s at the wheel of my first Scout.
Bisio Motors in the NYT.
I was doing a little searching around during the BB outage this week, and found a friendly little writeup on Bisio Motors in Portland, which is still going strong.
This is Why We Have Rollbars.
Yeah. Rollbar. Perhaps some 5-point harnesses, too.
And You Might Ask Yourself, “My God, What Have I Done?”
(reprinted from here)
Let me just start this out by saying, this was not the way I expected this Saturday to go. There was no ulterior motive, there was no carefully plotted scheme. Stuff just…happens. All we can do is roll with the punches and hope we can afford everything when the bills come due.
I’ll back up a little. Mr. Scout and I have been transiting the greater Baltimore area for the last year on the rare occasions we see a Scout pop up in the classified ads. It’s partially a good excuse to get together and catch up, and it’s always a good idea to look for parts for 25-year-old vehicles—you never know what you’ll find out there. Generally speaking, we always know we’ll be disappointed because the trucks in this area are usually long-neglected basket cases sold for exorbitant amounts by hopeful and deluded people. But that hasn’t stopped us yet.
He sent me a Craigslist ad on New Years Day about a truck for sale in beautiful Laurel, MD (home of hot-sheet motels, odd tire shops, the sketchy Laurel Park racetrack, mobile-home wholesalers, and the dot-com I used to work for) at an auction lot, and asked if I’d like to check it out. I didn’t actually get back to him until last night, when I sent him a text and told him I’d run out there for a quick peek. I wasn’t expecting anything special. The last truck we’d checked out actually looked kind of interesting in the pixelated, compressed CL pictures, but what we found after humping all the way out to Middle River was a frightening, leaky wreck.
The truck in this listing had “ragged out trail beater” written all over it, so I figured we’d be there for fifteen minutes, tops. It was a hideous grape color, accented with a bright yellow hood and an orangish-red windshield, sitting atop four oversized 32″ tires on blacked-out rims. As a rule, any lifted truck I’ve ever looked at has been thrashed to within an inch of its life, so my expectations were low. I sent him a text on Friday night after the baby went down, and told him I’d join him to take a look.
Early the next morning, he met me at the door to the house with a box of doughnuts (he knows well the way to my heart, that sly devil), and after I kissed my lady goodbye, we headed out into the cold.
The truck was sitting in a crowded impound lot, and on first glance, it wasn’t any better in person. But as we started crawling over it, I got more and more amazed at the condition it was in. All of the sheet metal was straight and 97% rust-free. It had a new-ish exhaust system, new-ish shocks, new-ish lift kit, a clean rollbar, soft top, full-size spare, clean rims, a 4-speed stick, and almost brand-new tires. The engine was not running, but it looked as if it wasn’t too far from doing so. Now, it was far from perfect—there were patches welded into the floors, the paint job was a 30-footer, the seats were hideous replacements, the interior hardware was pretty much gone, it didn’t run, and it was PURPLE. Inside and out. The doors, floors, tailgate and dash, all sprayed a noxious shade of goofy grape.
An old Scout friend I’ll call Mr. Clean joined us, and we discussed it briefly before going through the truck again. In retrospect, I didn’t actually say “I really shouldn’t buy this today”, because Mr. Clean, a veteran of many other auctions, went over and registered before I could stop him.
And when it came time to auction the truck, I seem to have failed to take into account the motivation of the auctioneer to get rid of his rolling stock as quickly as possible, because I tried to remain absolutely motionless after he hit the $300 mark, thinking, holy shit what am I doing?!? and he kept pointing at me, and suddenly it was at $500, and I tried not to blink, but it was cold, and then it was $700, and I tried not to breathe, and he pointed at me and raised, and then it was SOLD and I owned a Scout.
Oh, shit.
After the realization sunk in, I felt a little sick to my stomach, and Messrs. Clean and Scout took me aside for a pow-wow. They assured me it was a very good deal (as did a helpful gentleman who, unsolicited, pointed out that the tires were worth more than the purchase price of the truck).
I then got on the phone with my loving wife, who laughed and said immediately, “I kind of had a feeling you were buying a Scout today.” She could not have been more supportive, but behind her, I heard Finn giggle, and I suddenly felt like a selfish, stupid shit, and that made me feel sick all over again. At that point, I was ready to go find the two guys who’d been bidding against me to see if they were interested in taking over my bid, so I walked back to my two companions and told them my plan.
They could see I was worried, and assured me that they would help their pale, weak-kneed friend get the truck running, and if I changed my mind, they’d help me sell it or part it out for at least what I’d be paying for it.
And so it was.
So, the next problem: How to get this brick home. Mr. Scout dropped me at the bank to pick up cash (he’s my pusher man, that one is) and after a brief dalliance with a tow truck driver we saw in the parking lot ($65 flat fee, and $4/mi, which equalled at least a trio of Benjamins) we decided a rental trailer would be a better bet. Mr. Scout picked me up in his truck and off we went to lie to the U-Haul rep. As it turned out, his hitch is rated for much more than he thought, so the trailer we picked up was more than good enough for a Scout, and it was set up with hydraulic brakes. However, we had no winch. I don’t own a come-along, and time was getting short (the yard was due to close at 3), so we hoped for the best and high-tailed it over there. Mr. Scout navigated the tight maze of cars with the precision of a Swiss watch, and after consulting with the yard foreman, he had to turn the entire rig around in the space of a two-car garage. Once that had been completed, the money changed hands, and I was given a worn ignition key, a bunch of other chuckling employees appeared, I horsed the wheel left (power steering sucks when there’s no power), and we pushed it out of the spot and lined it up about thirty feet behind the tow rig. On the word “Go”, I let off the brake and aimed for the center of the trailer. I thought I hit the ramps dead-on, but apparently I was too far right, because the left wheel slammed up against the wheelguard, sending the entire thing forward, the tongue of the trailer off the ball hitch, and directly into the tailgate of the pickup.
D’oh!
Mr. Scout has a mighty good poker face, internets. Remind me never to play him for money.
At this point, that rollback was looking better and better, but my pusher man convinced me we should give it another try. We got the trailer hooked back up, tightened the hitch down as hard as it would go, and pushed the Scout back for a second run. This time, Mr. Scout took the wheel (I couldn’t bring myself to fuck up his truck a second time, and the yard guys all looked like they’d been asked to punt newborn kittens) and we yelled, “GO!” and everyone heaved and got it rolling, and the Scout somehow made it up and on the trailer the whole way. Relieved, we began to cinch it down onto the trailer when we discovered a new problem: The straps bolted to the trailer were made for tiny Geo Metro tires, not giant 32″ offroad Scout tires.
On the brink of despair, I had to marvel at the simple, practical, offhand solution offered by one of the yard guys (Mr. Scout, correct me here if this wasn’t your genius idea): “Looks like you’re gonna have to air them tires down.”
Um, right. I was just about to suggest that.
Using sticks we found in the gravel to depress the valves, the driver’s side tire only went down about halfway before the strap was long enough to grab hold, but the passenger side was sitting over the edge of the trailer and therefore was harder to deflate. The tire was so low the bead was almost off the rim and the strap just…barely…reached the ratchet, but there wasn’t quite enough of the strap to grab hold. On the verge of giving up, I decided my puny frame might give us the last bit of leverage we needed, so I jumped onto the top of the tire and stood there while Mr. Scout somehow coaxed it into the ratchet and cinched it down. I believe this was the point my heart started beating properly again.
The rest of the trip, while a little nerve-wracking for Mr. Scout, who was piloting the barge, was uneventful. We took the back way home, transiting the lovely, run-down Rt. 1 corridor between Laurel and Baltimore, and passed three police cars who took not a second glance at us.
Once in the driveway, we had to contend with two very deflated tires and a 4,600 lb. brick with limited stopping potential (power brakes, too). After ducking inside to grab my Christmas present, a shiny new air compressor—thanks, family!—we used an attachment from Mr Scout’s magical toolbox and aired both tires up in about two minutes. A call was made, and soon another friend appeared with an electric boat winch, which was attached to the frame of the Scout and the trailer hitch. After a few shoves to get the right tire off the rail, it only took one small push to get the Scout rolling, and suddenly it was parked in the driveway.
I’ve spent every minute since then wrestling with myself over what I should do. This truck cost less than one third of what I paid for my other Scout eleven years ago, and it’s in much better condition (aesthetics aside). If I was to keep it, it would need to go directly into the garage, which would mean cleaning out the garage, ripping up the useless plywood floor, and installing some rudimentary barn doors. I wouldn’t be able to do any major work on it for a long time, although simply getting it running would make me feel worlds better (and I have a date with my enablers Scout friends this coming Sunday to attempt just that). I could leave it in the garage and let it sit out of the elements until I’m ready to work on it in earnest, whenever that might be. The difference between this Scout and my last one is that this is in much, much better condition to start with, and I now have people in the area who are enthusiasts like myself. That alone is a huge hurdle compared to the old days when I felt all alone in my madness.
On the flip side, I have a wife to love (and who loves Scouts), a daughter to raise, a house to finish, and a lack of free time. I already have enough crap on my plate that needs to get done. And there’s this little thing called the recession…. If I’m to sell it, I’ve got one standing offer already (and possibly two). The parts alone are worth more than the purchase price, if I was willing to go that route.
Herodotus once said, “It is better by noble boldness to run the risk of being subject to half the evils we anticipate than to remain in cowardly listlessness for fear of what might happen.” While I’m not looking to a quote by a dead Greek to rationalize my ultimate decision, I’m looking for inspiration from the universe as to what my next move should be: this week is going to be filled with a lot of introspection while I wait for a sign.
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