I got my oil report on the 800 back from Blackstone Labs and the news is…not good. All of the ferrous metal percentages are WAY higher than they should be. As the report says, the oil shows a ton of wear in important surfaces like the pistons, cylinders, and bearings. I can’t say I’m that surprised; the anecdotal stories I’ve heard about Dan are that he tended to buy toys, use them hard, and do minimal maintenance. And I have no idea what life this truck had before it made its way East from California.
Looking at the left column and comparing it to the one on the far right, the important metals are at an average of 300 times more than they should be. Ouch!
On the positive side, I got a new coil the other day and dropped that in, but was still not getting any spark to the distributor. The trigger wire connecting the two was frayed at the exit point from the distributor, so I pulled out my wiring kit and made a new one, which finally yielded spark to the plugs. But the engine still isn’t catching. I’ve got spark, gas, and air; the only thing I can figure is that she’s not making compression. A test of the cylinders showed that #1 is still down at 50psi while the other three are at ~100. So the plan for the weekend is to pull it out of the garage with Peer Pressure, squirt a little oil in the cylinders to bring up the compression, and see if I can get her running. Then I’m going to let her idle for a while to try to free up the rings.
When I was out at Brian’s last weekend working on Slowflake (more info on that to come), we stopped at a local scrapyard near his house. They’ve got a ton of stuff there, including an area full of older vehicles, and in that fleet I spied an old CJ-5 with a pair of low-back bucket seats. I asked the front desk what they’d charge for those, and when I got a nice low number, we returned with some tools and pulled them out. They’ve been sitting out in the open for years so the vinyl is brittle but still holding together, but with some basic repairs they should be good for the time being—and much easier to get into and out of than the plastic buckets. I’d already pulled the passenger side seat out to hand off to Brian, and it only took a half an hour to pull the driver’s side out, remove the rusted Jeep tracks, and mount the seat to the Scout base. I’ll have to fabricate a base for the passenger side, as that one had been removed long ago, but that’ll be a fun metal-bending project for the future.
I also spent a grand total of $15 on two tubes of Tank-Weld and over four leak tests, sealed up the driver’s side gas tank. It looks like it lost a fight with a gallon of Play-Doh, but it holds liquid and it’s $250 cheaper than a new tank, and that is the guiding principle of this truck. I will, however, have to shell out ~$70 for a new rubber filler hose; for now the boat tank will do nicely.
Finally, I talked with Brendan, who bought the rest of the trucks up at Dan’s place, and he’s going to give me the rollbar from the blue Scout. He’s resigned himself to the fact that he’s not going to do much with the truck (it’s actually in worse shape than this Scout) so he’s cool with letting that part go. So I’m going to drive out there and cut that out of the truck, as well as pick up a spare 16″ wheel for the Travelall.