Without Darth in the driveway, I’ve been tackling some small things on the Scout that have been bugging me. The biggest of these was the exhaust donut leak, which was not remedied a couple of weeks ago. Looking around the interwebs I found a two-piece flange replacement available locally, and set about to installing it. Getting the original flange off was easy enough, but getting the new one on was trickier. Because it’s heavier and thicker, it sits lower on the exhaust pipe and thus requires a longer bolt. And its location next to the frame meant that there was a lot of wiggling and some hammering involved to get it in the right place before I could tighten it up. But after a brief test ride Saturday and a longer 50-mile drive on Sunday, there’s no leak, and I think I can call this fixed.
While I was under the truck I tightened up the emergency brake cable, which has been loose for months, and checked that off the list.
Sunday I met up with Bennett, Brian and a couple of other folks up at Dan’s place to show our friend Brendan the whole stash in the woods; he’d be the guy most interested in clearing a path and hauling out all the trucks. I prepared better this time, bringing a can of 40% DEET, duct-taping my ankles, and generally insuring that the ticks couldn’t get to me.
We started in the garage and looked over all the stuff in there, and then walked back through the field to the trucks in the woods. The underbrush has grown a lot in two months. Brendan looked over things carefully and then we walked back to the garage, discussing what he’d be interested in and what he wasn’t.
While that was happening, I dug out a trio of good hubcaps from the huge stash in the garage and made a good deal on them. Brian made a deal on a rusty Scout 800 tailgate, which he had to go back into the woods for.
While he and Bennett did that, I cleared off one of the better Scout 800s closer to the house, which was covered in vines, and got a better look at it. I’ve been thinking about a test vehicle for Brian’s electrification project, and that truck looks like an excellent candidate. I think I’ve talked him into taking advantage of the sale. If he had the space I’d recommend grabbing it and the blue 80 to be able to account for all of the changes between early and late production models.
Back home in the garage, I was looking a little closer at the gauge set Tyler handed off to me, and rubbed off some of the dirt to reveal the serial numbers. I was surprised to see the initials SW, which almost certainly stands for Stewart Warner, and started looking up the serials. It turns out they are Stewart-Warner, and they look pretty cool. So, I’ll have to consider if I want to swap those in.