Helpful Info – Scout

Lineset

I got a nice email from a lady named Sally in Wisconsin this afternoon asking me for patience, as she’s a one-woman band handling all of the lineset requests from the Historical Society. I sent her my payment with a nice note and was immediately rewarded with a pair of lineset scans for the 800.

Archaeology on trucks this old can always be a bit of a toss-up, so I worked with the most obvious visual reference: the body color. A little digging decodes the last full line on the list to 4353YL, or Tahitian Yellow according to the paint chart I’ve got here. The second bit of info confirms it: This truck was ordered by Allied Equipment Co. in Madera, CA on September 1, 1966.

Using some helpful lists to decode the rest of the info, I learned it was built with a IH 196 V4 Canada Export Low Compression engine, T90 Borg Warner 3sp transmission, DANA 27 Power-Lok front axle, Dana 44 Power-Lok rear axle, 10″ clutch, Dana 20 transfer case, cab top, cigar lighter, left armrest, and floor mats. And that was it! This truck was optioned even simpler than the Travelall was.

This also makes my tribulations with starting the engine begin to make a little more sense; if it was designed with low compression to start and Dan blew out the rings, this thing is going to be lots of fun to get (and keep) running.

Posted on May 18, 2026 | by bill | Leave a Comment | Posted in Helpful Info, Scout 800

Dana 20 Rebuild

Bookmarked for later, because I now own three Dana 20 transfer cases (one in each Scout and a spare on the floor): Dan Hayes goes over how to break down and rebuild a tranfer case. I got off my ass last week and contributed to his Patreon account—if you like Scouts and appreciate good work, I recommend throwing some cash his way.

Posted on April 9, 2026 | by bill | Leave a Comment | Posted in Future Plans, Helpful Info, Repairs

Metal Shaping With a Scout 800

I’ve seen Wray Schelin’s channel in passing before but I didn’t realize they’d done a series on metalwork featuring a Scout 800. The first three or four are pretty basic but they go into fabrication and TIG butt-welding later in the series, and I always like to watch and listen to pick up whatever new info I can.

Posted on January 18, 2026 | by bill | 2 Comments | Posted in Helpful Info, Scout 800

Carburetor 101

I’m spending a lot of time going back and refreshing my carburetor knowledge, which means I’m reading a lot of articles and watching a bunch of videos. I’m going to do a link dump here so I can close a bunch of browser tabs.

Holley has a good video on how to correctly set timing on a distributor, which is where I’m beginning with the Travelall.
This Binder Planet thread goes over some trials and tribulations with setting timing on a SV engine; from what the people in the know say, 8-15 BTDC is where I want to be.
Here’s a basic checklist for how to tune a carb from The Drive, which is a great place to start.
Thunderhead289 is a YouTube channel where the host focuses primarily on how to run and tune carburetors properly. He’s a friend of another channel I follow and recently introduced a product called the Carb Cheater, which is a bolt-on digital monitor and tuner for standard carburetors. Were I to remove the Sniper and go back to the original carb in the long term, I’d definitely buy one of these to keep an eye on things.

Posted on September 4, 2025 | by bill | Leave a Comment | Posted in Carburetor, Helpful Info

Inspiration and Education

I’ve found a new ASMR mechanic fix-it YouTube channel that does away with a lot of the stuff that annoys me about most of the other channels out there. Like podcasts, the channels I follow are graded by the content, the presentation, and narration. The last one can be a make or break for me: if the narrator is annoying or has a terrible voice, I’m usually out. There’s a ton of content out there that fit into my areas of interest but which I can’t stand due to failures in the categories above.

Simon Fordman hosts a channel where all he does is fix cars. There’s no audio narration, which demands close attention because he puts it in the closed captioning—so if you want to follow along you’ve got to keep a close eye on things. Watching his latest video, he fixes a formerly abandoned AMC Javelin with starting, idling and brake issues, and just by watching I realized there are three things I need to investigate on Darth Haul: the choppy idle could be a fuel issue or it could be that the points are corroded. He does a simple test at idle to figure out which plugs aren’t firing, checks the gap on the points, and adjusts the timing at the distributor to smooth the engine out.

The car cover I’ve been using tends to trap moisture inside when it’s on the truck. I’ve noticed dampness in the engine bay immediately after removing it, and I’ll bet that’s had some effect on the electronics under the hood. So I’ve got a game plan for my next workday:

Replace the fuel filter and see if that solves the delivery issue.
Pull the plugs one by one to see which cylinders aren’t firing.
Adjust the gap in the points to (hopefully) solve that issue. If not, try another compression test.
Adjust the timing again to smooth out the idle.

Posted on March 4, 2025 | by bill | Leave a Comment | Posted in Helpful Info, Inspiration, Travelall