I picked up a couple of handy tools this past weekend at a yard sale here in town: A Peerless brand vacuum gauge, a tach/dwell/volt/ohmmeter and a set of old-school ratcheting boxhead SAE wrenches, which will fit nicely in the Tuffy box between the seats. I found some good information on how to use a vacuum gauge here on the Second Chance Garage site, and I’m itching to get the old girl home just so I can test it out. Next to find: a timing light.
That sound you hear is a 304 V8 roaring to life after a couple of years marooned in the back of a driveway. A splash of gas in the carb, a jumpstart from a highly excited Honda Passport, and a cloud of white smoke produced from the tailpipe marked its triumphant return to the land of the (mostly) running. I confirmed that it shifted into gear and pulled it forwards and backwards, making it a viable candidate for purchasing.
So, this weekend, we will return to sign over the title and take delivery of the rig and all its associated parts. There’s a brand-new poly gas tank and skidplate with my name on it, and we should have a clean rallye steering wheel for Mr. Scout.
My carb rebuild kit arrived from the Carburetor Factory on Friday, so I’ve been spending some quality time poring over the Thermoquad service manuals I found online before doing anything rash like opening the box or tearing down the carb itself. The kit I got is a Walker 15711C which corresponds to the engine year, size, and model I have. I need to pick up some carb cleaner and other assorted products if I’m going to do this myself; I also left a message with my backup mechanic to see if he’d be able to help and for how much. Edit: He called back this morning, and I may be on for an appointment this coming weekend.
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 finally broke down and bought a new battery for the Scout this weekend after the donor battery from the Jeep decided it couldn’t crank the engine over anymore. While I was dealing with that (crank engine, jump out, twist the terminals down, jump back in, crank engine, repeat, repeat), the driver’s door latch spun itself around 180 degrees so that the latch would just prang off the striker uselessly. So, I tore the driver’s door down again and got inside to see what was happening with the mechanism.
A little backstory: In order to get the latch body out, the window needs to come out, and then the guide track closest to the handle. One bolt on my track was pretty well frozen but a little PBBlaster made short work of the other three. Once I had the track pulled away from the edge, the latch came free, and I compared it with another one I had in my spares (it’s the one on the right). Somehow the cam had gotten completely turned around and jammed itself into place. It had been “repaired” at some point in order to fasten the main pivot arm into place with a flattened bolt and nut, and the clip holding the door release rod was long gone—so they replaced it with a locknut hastily threaded onto the end of the rod. Instead of wasting time trying to fix the original, I shot the spare up with plenty of white lithium and used that instead.
While the driver’s door bolts were soaking, I tore the passenger door down and pulled the original regulator in there out. It looks to be a replacement unit like the ones sold by LightLine dealers (some of the original paint is still evident under the rust). I dropped the new one in, greased it up, buttoned the door back up, and then remembered that I need to tighten the outer door handle. D’oh! Eventually the window will need to come out and be replaced, because there’s some serious rust happening at the bottom of the channel on the inboard side, but that’s why I’ve got spares.
I also finished fabricating a strap stay for the bikini top out of a cut-down decking bracket and bolted that into place, as well as replaced six of the original grade 5 bolts holding the rollbar down with grade 8 hardware. I still have to drill four holes for bolts at the feet of the rollbar, which were never installed (there are only two on each side).
Finally, I’m going to order a ThermoQuad rebuild kit today. Wish me luck!
Last night I had about a half an hour to myself, so I went out to the garage and shot the drivers’ door mechanism with some white lithium grease to see if it would help smooth things out. Overall, it is much better, but there still seems to be someplace internally where it’s catching—it could be the lever arm getting caught on the inside of the door somewhere. I’m going to break the passenger door down this weekend (hopefully) and replace that regulator with the one I cleaned up this past winter.
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.
I took a little time off on Sunday and cruised over the Bay Bridge to help Mr. Scout work on Chewbacca. He’s getting down to the final details, having been out on the road for the first test run, so he’s got a long list of small items to knock off: glass, lighting, seatbelts, dashboard, etc. He and Alan and I set right to work after a delicious eclair from the bakery in Chestertown. I started by looking over the door regulators and doing a test fitting inside the old steel doors to make sure I had the right orientation, then got to work on the passenger side. After an hour or so of fooling with it I’d figured out how to mount it correctly, set the glass in place, and put the wing window in. We pulled it all out to press new felt into the door, and then bolted everything permanently in place. The only thing left to do will be to buy some longer bolts and fabricate a backing plate for the door handle as well as the latch plate, because it’s all bolting into fiberglas at this point.
He had this stuff called white lithium grease, which sprayed out of a can, and which worked incredibly well to lubricate the regulator mechanism. I’m going to go look for some this week so that I can tear both my doors down and get the windows working correctly. It made a huge difference rolling the window up and down. I was also very impressed with his PT cruiser seats, which are incredibly comfortable, and which I’m now considering for Peer Pressure. As I documented here, though, there are a few caveats to this upgrade:
After some lunch, I busied myself by helping to install his Tuffy console between the seats. We scribed out an arc in the rear mount to clear the transmission tunnel (something I’m also considering for mine) and set it in place with two bolts we had on hand. Meanwhile, Alan sorted out a bunch of electrical gremlins under the hood and helped get the license plate holder we scavenged from the brown donor scout mounted and lit.
Before I had to hit the road, we fired her up and Brian let me take her for a spin around the block. She purrs like a kitten, and with a little adjustment in the clutch and carb she’ll be a very enjoyable driver. It felt good to take her out again, even if she’s 3/4 new fabrication!
This to-do list is going to make more sense to me than to anyone else, but I’d like to get it out of my sketch book and up here where I can actually find it. It’s in rough order of importance for the year; I expect only to get about 1/5 of it done, but a guy can dream, right?
Install Holley 2300
buy rebuild kit – $60+
buy 2bbl. intake – $50
Rebuild the Thermoquad
buy Thermoquad rebuild kit – $50
Finish sanding and painting the seat bases, weld in some support on the bottom
Sand the bed and floors – buy stripper & discs
Fix the driver’s window scissors – It’s binding when pressure is first applied to the crank.
Clean sand & paint
Inner fenders
Windshields
Travel Top
Dogleg
Fix the rear bench seat – I’d like to replace the upholstery with something cleaner. The replacement bench seat I have doesn’t fit correctly (the latch doesn’t meet the striker on the wheel wells).
Fix the brake light indicator – the switch on the pedal is bent.
I have just identified the source of the donor bucket seats in Peer Pressure, compliments of Jalopnik.com and a weekly feature run there called Down In The Junkyard. It seems they were originally in a mid-80′s Dodge Shelby Charger, a vehicle produced during the Malaise era of Detroit, where turbocharging a 2.2 liter, 106-hp engine was considered “fast”. The telltale sign: The Shelby logo embroidered on the seats, something I’d never recognized until now. Woof, what a pig. And to think I’ve been seriously considering replacing them with the original seats from Chewbacca (or even a set of donor seats from a PT Cruiser)!
In brighter news, the top is off and stored in the basement for the summer, and the bikini top has returned!
I think I may bite the bullet and order one of these mirrors from SSS to replace the lousy plastic junk that’s hung on my door. I like the look of these, and I’d rather have metal screwed to something sturdy than the wobbly crap I have now.
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