Bill’s House of Internationals

Sunday morning update: the Danscout is out of the backyard and safely tucked in the garage! I spent the bulk of yesterday replacing the wheel cylinders, soft lines, and cleaning out the roached pads and drums, capping off the rear brakes, and bleeding the system. I had to spend more time than I wanted futzing with one of the brake cylinders for a while. The threads hadn’t been cut deep enough to make a solid connection with the flare, so I had to double-flare it to make it thicker, and that finally worked. After capping off the rears, I had my daughter help me bleed it out enough to engage the fronts, which was all I needed to move it around the house without fear of driving through the neighbors’ fence. (That drunk fence in the background of my pictures is theirs, but whoever installed it only poured the footers about 4″ deep, so they’ve heaved over the years and come out. I’ve straightened it twice with the Scout and some chains but finally gave up.)

Then I mixed up some antifreeze and topped off the radiator, glad to see it held liquid and didn’t pee out all over everything. After moving all of my tools out of the way, I fired it up and eased it into gear. I think the clutch is pretty well roached, because it only engages at the very end of the pedal throw, but it does engage. I got it around the house, down onto the driveway, and backed it down to the front of the garage for a quick pressure-wash. Most of the dirt, mold, and at least 1/4 of the paint came off pretty easily. I still can’t tell what color this thing was originally, but I believe it was Light Yellow, and then someone hand-brushed another similar coat of yellow over that. The pressure wash blew a lot of the yellow off to reveal gray primer (or perhaps Aspen Green Metallic?) underneath.

With the dirt on the outside cleaned off, I let it dry out and then backed it into the garage. The plan now is to store Peer Pressure in my friend Brian’s spare garage bay for a while as I get the 800 sorted, and swap the Travelall in and out of there to keep both trucks lubricated and running. I’m going to rob the battery from PP to run the 800 for now with the intention of working on it while spending as little as possible.

Before closing up for the night I cut some scrap 14 ga. steel down and made a fuel pump blockoff plate after noticing I’d puked a bunch of oil out of the open hole. This coming week I’m going to drain the remaining oil out and send some away to Blackstone for analysis—I’m curious to see what they can tell me about the health of this engine. I will say that it’s strong and happy to idle, in spite of the fact that I’ve done absolutely no adjustments to the carb or distributor since re-stabbing it. One thing that does need adjustment is the amount of fuel pressure; I’ve got it closed down to 2psi through the regulator, but every time I got on the gas it felt like it was draining the bowl and I’d have to wait until it refilled to be able to get the RPMs up again.

One other funny thing I noticed after I’d pressure-washed it was that the license plate light was actually on! None of the other lights seem to be working, but apparently my daughter was fooling with the knobs and left it pulled out when I was bleeding the brakes. I don’t currently have the brake lights hooked up, but that will be a fun exercise to see if anything else comes to life.

So, the next tasks in line are:

• Clean out the engine bay. This is going to take several cans of oven cleaner and a long afternoon with the pressure washer.
• Change the oil. It’s black and looks original from 1967.
• Hang the doors properly. Both of the striker mechanisms need to be pulled off, disassembled, lubricated, and replaced.
• Clean out the interior. It’s dirty and needs a good hose-down.
• Pull the cabtop off and pressure-wash the inside. It’s got a 2″ layer of dirt on the bottom edge and I’d like to blast all that off to see what condition the metal is in.
• Pull the driver’s side gas tank out. The passenger side has two big rust holes on each side; maybe the driver’s side will be in better shape. Oh, wait, was that a pig flying by my window?
• Install a new mechanical fuel pump. The original is soaking in spare gas to see if I can get the diaphragm to come alive again, but I don’t hold out much hope. And all of the extra vacuum lines on that unit are just annoying.

Total costs to date: