Electrical – Scout

Re-Ignition

Good news: the Travelall is running again. I did a quick inventory to see how many ignition switches I’ve got, and it turned out I have five. One from the original truck, one from the replacement harness, one from the green truck, one from the Scout 800, and one NIB unit. The switch I was using was the one from the replacement harness, which had worked fine up until this problem. When I pulled it out the other day, the lock barrel was spinning freely inside the switch, which meant that nothing was making a connection inside the switch to send signals to the truck. Last weekend I went over to the 800 in storage, pulled the NIB lock barrel I’d put in that, and brought it back to the bench to swap in the lock barrel I have a key for. Putting it in the truck, it started, but something inside was sticking, keeping the starter grinding, and pulling the key back killed the engine.

So I went through the other switches. I cleaned rust off the connection blades off the Scout 800 switch, scrubbed it with electrical degreaser, and shot it full of WD-40. The barrel went in perfectly, and the truck fired up and ran without a hitch. This switch is probably the original USA-made unit from 1967, was sitting out in a field for 15+ years, and worked flawlessly. The new unit I bought seems to be faulty, which tracks with a lot of comments I’ve been hearing about the quality of new parts lately.

Out on the road, the truck ran fine—she was upset because she hadn’t been run up in two weeks, so I had to warm her up—but once we were moving she was fine. I’m still getting a ferocious wobble at about 55mph, which I haven’t tracked down yet. I put a camera on the passenger rear tire, which looked pretty steady; I’m going to put cameras on the other three tires this weekend to see if I can pin down the source.

This weekend I’m going to pull the rear wheel off the Scout and see if I can sort out the evap/emissions gear in the rear passenger fender; I’d pulled it all out when we swapped the poly tank in 15 years ago like a dummy, but looking it over on the bench and comparing to the service manual, it’s clear some yee-haw got in there and butchered the original connections. I bought some new fittings and fuel hose from ACE last weekend, and I’m going to attempt to re-install the system the way the manual specifies. I’m actually considering dropping the tank completely to re-install the sender gasket; we’ll see how ambitious I feel tomorrow.

I’m also going to shoot the entire steering box/pump with oven cleaner to degrease the entire unit so that I can figure out where it’s leaking from—and pin down my next steps for that issue. New boxes are $600 before shipping, so if it’s something simpler than that, I’d be very happy. But I doubt it. Thankfully I’ve got a spare in the garage for the core charge.

Posted on July 10, 2026 | by bill | Leave a Comment | Posted in Electrical, Future Plans

12 Volts

The fuel gauge on the Scout has been annoying me since I bought the truck seventeen years ago. I took some time last weekend to jump the connection from the sender directly to the gauge, bypassing the voltage regulator, and found that the gauge does work correctly—which means the issue is behind the dashboard somewhere. Next, I tested the voltage regulators on all of my spare oil/temp gauges, and as far as I can tell they’re working correctly. Tracing the wire from the gauge back to its next stop at the harness, I pulled the bulkhead connector off the firewall and found that it was full of garbage—tar and rust, which had made its way inside from the ‘sealing’ job the previous owner did at some point. So I cleaned all the contacts. With a new fuel/amp gauge installed (this one with bright orange needles and UNLEADED FUEL ONLY added under the other text) I turned the key and got….nothing.

So I figure there’s a break in the wire somewhere between the sender and the gauge, or a bad connection in the bulkhead connector. My next move will be to test continuity between the endpoints and see where the break is, then try to fix that issue.

While I had the dash broken down, I cleaned all the contact areas on the circuit boards I could reach, and replaced the bluish LED bulbs I originally installed with newer, whiter bulbs. After buttoning the dash back up I was rewarded with a fully lighted set of gauges—before this I only had two bulbs working on the speedo cluster, and a left turn signal indicator. Now I’ve got everything back, which is a relief—including my right turn signal indicator! (now I just have to break the wheel down and fix the canceling cam).

And while I was messing around under the dash, I spied pigtails coming out of the courtesy light harnesses and decided to test one with the existing door light switch on the passenger side. I put a test wire on it and when that actually worked, I decided to fix both sides. Someone had swapped in light harnesses with pole-style connectors, so I snipped those off and added blades to fit the ends of the main wiring harness. The driver’s door switch had been mangled long ago so I drilled and tapped a new hole for a used switch from the green truck and wired it in. And as mentioned earlier, I assembled a dome light for the rollbar from a new LED light, a length of wire, and a special automotive pigtail sourced at Nats. Feeding the wire down the rollbar, through the speaker hole, over the wheel well and into the rear taillight housing, I connected it to the factory dome light lead. Now, opening either door turns on the two under-dash courtesy lights and the dome light, which makes getting in and out of the truck in the dark much easier.

I swapped the second of the two LED dome lights I bought in at the back of the Travelall, and that brightened the area up by a factor of five. I’ve got some switches coming to replace the ancient ones that came in the truck, and I’m going to design some new 3D-printed housings for each light to clean things up.

Posted on July 1, 2026 | by bill | Leave a Comment | Posted in Electrical

Re-Organization

Memorial Weekend was damp and rainy, so I wasn’t able to do much outside, but I did take advantage of the time to re-re-re-organize in the garage. After erecting a set of racks for my Home Depot totes and immediately filling them all a few months ago, I quickly realized I needed another stack. So I cobbled together the rest of my spare lumber and put a second stack together, which required moving a bunch of other crap out of the way. By the end of Saturday I’d built and filled the new stack, raised the old kitchen cabinets on the back wall higher, moved the fridge underneath that, moved the second pair of spare Scout doors out under the back porch, and shifted a bunch of other stuff around to make more room. Then I consolidated some of the parts in the tubs and updated my parts spreadsheet so more common items are together. There’s still a long way to go, but I can get to it all much easier.

On the trucks, I did dumb puttery stuff like install the V7 cupholder (verdict: perfect!), swap the refinished passenger fender onto the truck to church it up for Nats, and tightened both fenders down securely. I pulled a bunch of parts down out of the attic to see if there’s any interest in Ohio—this is stuff they’re not currently reproducing—and stuffed them into a bin for the trip. And the floor is bolted down with more hardware.

I’ve been chasing the issue with the fuel gauge for a couple of weeks now. I tested the sender and found that it was sending, as well as the gauge behind the dashboard. Doing some more digging, I realized there’s another thing I hadn’t considered: I most likely fried the voltage regulator when I was welding on the truck in the fall of 2024—the same thing that fried the condenser on the distributor. I pulled the original off the truck and swapped in a used spare from the green truck, but that did nothing. The Jungle site overnighted me a new one, and after swapping it and the original blackface gauge back in, I was rewarded with a working unit again! Now I just have to drive it around for awhile with a jerry can in the back until I understand what it considers empty and full.

Friday evening I got a message on the Binder Planet from a guy in South Carolina who read the site here and was wondering if I still had any spare Kayline hardware in my collection. After trading some messages and an email, I sent him pictures of what I had and we struck up a deal. He’s one of the rare examples of someone who has an intact canvas top but only some of the mounting gear—I’ve come across piles of hardware made obsolete because the canvas was shredded. Along the way I’ve rescued a number of these spares, and I was happy to pass them along to him. I made a sturdy box out of some spare cardboard and shipped it off to him Tuesday afternoon.

Posted on May 27, 2026 | by bill | Leave a Comment | Posted in Electrical, Future Plans, Travelall

Lit, Part One

I snuck out to the garage after doing the dishes last night and messed around with some of the electrics, inspired by the fact that the license plate light actually worked. Within about a half an hour, I pulled both of the taillight buckets, swapped them out for some better examples in my spares, cleaned the wiring contacts, and got them both working. The front running lights are in worse shape. I had to pull the front bumper off to access them, and found that it weighs a metric ton. It’s made out of 1/2″ thick C-channel and I would hate to be the car on the other side of it in an accident. One of the buckets came out easily but the other is held in with a rusted screw which needs to be extracted.

Finally, now that I can open the driver’s door all the way, I hit all of the retaining screws with penetrant, pulled them out, propped the door up, and screwed it in tight. It now closes almost cleanly, but the door striker needs to be taken apart and lubricated.

Posted on March 17, 2026 | by bill | Leave a Comment | Posted in Electrical, Scout 800

Cold-Weather Updates

Taking full advantage of another day off, I returned to the garage and plugged in the space heater, for as much as that’s going to heat an uninsulated shack put up in the 1920s. Regardless, three layers of winter clothes helped cut the chill back and I found that when I kept moving, I stayed plenty warm. The first order of business was to move a bunch of large body panels and other spare parts into the greenhouse. I desperately need more room in the garage, especially in the winter months, and so moving a bunch of big bulky body panels out there really freed up a bunch of space. And, having the other panels that were stacked behind the garage now under cover helps me sleep a little better. All of the shelves and bins got reorganized, and I finally unboxed my new TIG welder, which is smaller than I thought it would be. I can’t wait to get a bottle of argon and start noodling with that.

With that done I warmed up Peer Pressure in the driveway and pulled the battery out of the Travelall to do some more electrical testing in the 800. I wanted to trace the wiring back into the dash to find the fuse panel, so I started at the bulkhead connector in the engine bay, isolating the two 14ga. blue wires that carry the main power to and from the ammeter on the dash. The connector was covered in grime and dirt, but a shot of electrical cleaner got rid of most of it. I unscrewed the two leads, wirebrushed everything, and connected it back up.

Inside the cab I pulled the glove box out after cutting the rusted screws off to allow better access to the wiring, and hosed more of the bolts down with penetrant. After I got a constant 12V there with the key on, I pulled the dash panel back off and looked for power there. I got nothing at the ammeter, the next link in the chain, so I pulled a replacement from my spares and put that in. The original unit in this truck was an aftermarket Stewart-Warner so something had happened with the original one at some point.

It took a while to get the new one on (25˚ with no gloves on cold metal makes for fumbly fingers) but after I cleaned all the other connectors, I connected the battery back up, waited for any visible smoke, and turned the key to ACC. I still got nothing on the panel, but I turned it off and back on and accidentally went past ACC and felt the starter bump! Elated, I tried it one more time, heard the starter catch, and saw the ammeter move, which means the broken link is now fixed. I’m still not getting any other electrics—the light switch isn’t working, for example—but if the starter is working, that’s a huge win.

Under the truck, I could only move the crank bolt a little bit, so I got under the transmission and pulled the flywheel cover off. It’s much easier to access than on Peer Pressure which is a good thing—I can get a flywheel wrench on it with no problem.

Saturday morning I drove the rear leaf springs from the Travelall down to a very sketchy industrial section of Baltimore to be worked on. The guys there told me the best thing to do is add two helper leaves instead of trying to re-arch them, so they’ll go from 7 leaves to 9 if I’m understanding them right. They’re going to replace all of the bushings and provide me with four new U-bolts to mount the springs back up to the axles. I have to go and source four bushing bolts for the body, even though the ones I pulled off look to be in good shape.

Posted on January 4, 2026 | by bill | Leave a Comment | Posted in Electrical, Scout 800

Crossed Wires

The good news is that I installed a brand new starter on the Travelall this weekend. The bad news is that the battery might be screwed. Let me explain:

I’ve known the starter that came with the truck was going to need to be replaced since I bought the truck. It’s made a funny noise at the end of the start cycle the entire time I’ve had it, and lately it’s been showing its damage by heating up the battery cables after just a few uses. So I bought a new one on RockAuto and made plans to swap it out. I put the canopy over the front of the truck, jacked it up onto stands, and started the difficult task of removing the old one. It’s in an impossible location: between the frame rail and the engine, and directly over both the front axle and Y-pipe from the manifold.

Once I’d gotten that out, I bench-tested the new one to verify it was working correctly, then hefted it up into place to bolt it up to the truck. When that was done and I was reasonably sure I had all the connections correct, I moved forward, pulled the mechanical fuel pump off the truck, and replaced it with a steel block-off plate I made last weekend. There’s no reason to have a useless pump leaking oil everywhere.

I had to mess with the electrical connections a couple of times to get the truck to wake up, and I got it to start quickly and easily twice before trying to bump the transmission free, with no success. But then the truck refused to start—the electrical system refused to do anything at all, actually. I went out and found that the battery was hot to the touch, so I pulled it out and set it on the ground. It remained hot for hours afterwards, which leads me to believe I crossed wires on the starter somehow.

Update: verified. I pulled the battery out of the Scout, dropped it in place, hooked up the ground, and touched the hot lead to the battery: the starter immediately tried to engage, which means something is screwed up with the wiring. I did verify that the two extra wires are going to the right poles on the solenoid: the 12-12 wire goes to the R terminal, and the 14-12 wire goes to the S terminal. So I’ll have to get back under the truck, take the wires off, verify they’re all clean and not shorting on each other, and re-install.

Bench-testing the old starter confirmed my suspicions: it still works, but there’s a terrible noise at the end of the cycle when the gear retracts back into place—it sounds like the unit is grinding as it spins down.

In better news, I sprayed the two hubcaps I got at Nats with oven cleaner to remove the red paint; as it turns out there was a layer of red over black over white, but it all came off easily, and with a detailed scrub with some OOO steel wool I got both of them sparkling again. They look so good I’m kicking myself for not having bought four.

Finally, I took advantage of a coupon code and bought an EFI tuner training course so that I can properly tune the Sniper on the Travelall. I asked the IT guys at work if they had any decommissioned laptops I could buy, and they just gave me one they were going to e-cycle. It’s a 2021 Dell that’s got plenty of horsepower to run the Sniper software; it was gratifying to load the config file and see it in full color on the machine. From what I’ve seen in the videos so far, I’m probably going to have to spring for an extra cable to connect the laptop directly to the carb in order to make tweaks in real time.

Posted on June 23, 2025 | by bill | Leave a Comment | Posted in Electrical, Fuel Injection, Repairs, Travelall

Sparky

Update 5.24: I’m trying to come up with a plan for the Sniper kit to work out the bugs. From a lot of the other posts and videos I’ve seen, guys with International engines have been able to hook everything up and just go, but as I recall there was something off with the timing on my truck before I installed it. Fixing it is going to require some more experienced help, so I’m going to call upon Bennett to give me a hand. I’m also looking at being able to view the data logs from the Sniper, which is only available through software that runs on a PC. Refurbished PCs are pretty cheap these days, so I could probably find something for 100 bucks—but I’d like to avoid that if possible. I want to talk to Holley support and send them the datalogs, but I have a sneaking suspicion their first question for me is going to be whether or not I verified the distributor is in the right position. So I’m in a bit of a holding pattern here.

The other thing I’m aware of is that in order for the system to use the self learning feature, the engine needs to be warmed up to 160° or higher. I have never looked at the thermostat in this truck, and I’d like to swap in a known good one just to be safe. That should be a relatively easy thing to do this weekend.

Update 5.16: With a new condenser/points unit installed, IT RUNS. The idle is super choppy and it dies after about 10 seconds, which means the timing is completely off, but it starts right up as advertised. Now I have to sort out the timing issues and figure out where it’s happy. I had the timing dialed in pretty well with the carburetor last fall before I started welding on the truck and burned the condenser out, so I think it’s a matter of finding where the sweet spot is in the sniper settings to make the engine happy. I’ve got a bunch of reading to do today, and I’m going to spend tomorrow (Saturday) working to get it smoothed out.

Update 5.14: I have a new points/condenser unit on order, and I’ll swap that in tomorrow. The thinking here is that the condenser (essentially a capacitor) isn’t storing a charge in between the points opening and closing, which means there’s no spark making its way to the plugs. In the Delco distributor I have the points/condenser are an integrated unit so it’s not a simple matter of unscrewing just the condenser and swapping in a new one.

Update 5.11: I bought a new spark tester from H-F and verified it was working on the Scout. There’s no spark at the coil when I put it there; this verifies what I suspected. Next I’ve got to use a test light to see if I’ve got power going to the coil with the key on at both sides of the poles, then see if there’s power in the distributor.

I got really discouraged yesterday and let my anger get the better of me; instead of taking a step back and researching next steps, I let my ADHD run wild and dicked around in the garage for the rest of the day.

***

I’m in a holding pattern on the fuel injection project until some parts come in. The big holdup is getting a new set of spark plug wires after the number four wire snapped off in my hand. I thought I had kept my old set from the Scout in the spares bin, but apparently I tossed them—all I have is a coil wire in the parts bag. As I write this, it occurs to me that I can pull one of the wires off the Scout and use that to test the ignition system (duh). Basically, the plan looks like this:

Pull the #8 plug (International SV-series engines time off of the number eight cylinder)
Spin the engine until # is at TDC, replace the plug
Make sure the rotor is aligned correctly, pointing at the #8 wire
Make sure the spark plug wires are routed in the correct order – CHECK
Check for spark at the coil – NONE
Check for spark at the plugs – NONE

If all of those things check out, and the engine still won’t start, then I’m at a complete loss. I know I’m getting fuel, and the EFI system should be metering air, so the only thing remaining would be spark. I did fool around a little bit with timing last fall, but the truck ran after I adjusted that. So I’m thinking it’s got to be an issue with the ignition system. I do still think the starter needs to be replaced, but I want to sort out all of this other stuff before I start throwing more money at parts.

Posted on May 7, 2025 | by bill | Leave a Comment | Posted in Electrical, Fuel Injection

Halfway There

Super-sketchy temporary wiring proof of concept

A new 30amp relay came via Amazon this afternoon, and I did a quick and dirty wiring job to get it connected to constant power, a ground, the ignition circuit, and the carburetor. It wasn’t pretty but the truck turned over, and more importantly, the Sniper unit stayed on. The engine didn’t catch, however, which is getting really fucking frustrating.

So next up, I’m going to pull the mounting plate I used to organize the auxiliary fuse panel, add the second relay alongside the first, and use that as my mounting point. Then I can run clean wiring from there.

Posted on April 23, 2025 | by bill | Leave a Comment | Posted in Electrical, Fuel Injection

Switch

Monday evening, I swapped the best of the two spare lock barrels onto the Travelall to test out the theory that the continuity problem might be an issue with the lock. Comparing the connections on the back, I swapped the wiring as it was on the current assembly and sadly, I got the same result—the Sniper head unit rebooted itself. Upon further investigation, I looked over the diagram from the service manual and identified the main circuits going to each of the poles on the back of the assembly. From what I could tell it was mostly connected right, but my 27 wire (going to the speedometer, and then on to the fuel gauge) wasn’t on the right circuit, I needed to verify that the white wire in the center was the 14 wire (going to the starter), and verify the black wire on the ignition pole was the 12 wire (going to the coil).

Disconnecting the battery and checking things out, I put the 27 wire on the right side and verified the 11 wire was correct. The wire to the starter was not an original IH wire and covered with electrical tape, but I’m guessing it’s the right one in the right place. I ordered a Bosch relay, which should be here tomorrow, and I’ll wire that up to troubleshoot the Sniper this week.

I do have to say, it’s very nice to be able to unlock the door and start the truck with one key.

Later, I pulled three starters from the Heavy Spare Parts Pile to test them out, figuring I might eventually have to swap one of them in for the one on the Travelall. I’ve got a 12 volt bench tester, which makes this kind of thing very easy, so I just lined them up on the bench and connected the positive lead to the main connection and grounded the chassis. With a short length of copper romex I jumped the power to the start terminal on each one, and found that one was completely dead, one didn’t move but made an alarming buzzing noise, and one (that came to me with the solenoid cover off) punched the starter gear forward but didn’t spin the motor. So I’ve got two good cores and a third that might work in a pinch. I forgot to whack on the buzzing unit with a hammer to see if I can wake it up, but that will be a tomorrow test. And as I recall, there might be a fourth still attached to the spare motor in the garage…

Posted on April 22, 2025 | by bill | Leave a Comment | Posted in Electrical

Radio, Radio

Looking ahead to the days when Darth is actually on the road, I was eyeballing the empty hole in the dashboard where a radio once lived, especially now that I’ve got a good power source. As mentioned before I think I threw out the old radio that was with the truck, but I’ve still got a period correct radio from the green Travelall. At first, I thought it was a Ford or Chevy unit based on some very quick research but doing deeper digging led me to a very thorough website with actual pictures and I was actually able to identify it as a Motorola 7SMI, which was standard for Internationals of that year.

This particular unit only had three wires coming out of the back: a black wire ending at one side of a fusible link and two green wires that ended in a terminal connector labeled 22. It stands to reason the black wire was power and I guessed the green wires were for speakers. Much like everything else in the truck, I assumed the whole thing was grounded by the chassis, but none of the service manual diagrams I have for any year showed wiring for a radio at all.

These units were developed at a turning point for car electronics, when things were moving from tubes to transistors and circuit boards, so they are a mixture of the old and the new. This one is filled with old capacitors and sported a phenolic-based circuit board, which was the industry’s first material of choice before they realized it wasn’t resistant to wild swings in temperature and switched to silicon. The 60-year-old capacitors were almost surely fried at this point. On top of all that, it’s only an AM radio.

So the question was: what do I do with this thing? Should I spend hours poring over electrical diagrams, a hundred dollars for fiddly electronic parts, and even more time attempting to desolder and resolder scores of capacitors just to succeed and have a scratchy AM radio that only pulled in rambling religious sermons from Alabama? I think you might know the answer already.

I stumbled upon a YouTube video where a guy gutted an old AM radio and installed a $15 Bluetooth amplifier board on one side, using the knob to act as a stealth controller. This meant disassembling the unit, of course, which bothered the traditionalist in me, but I decided I had nothing to lose.

The electronics on the left side came out relatively easily once I’d cut a bunch of the wires, and I kept all of the stuff I pulled out. Assembling the bluetooth receiver, I bench-tested it and found it paired with my phone almost immediately. So I used some of the leftover metal bracing to bend a new cage for the receiver, widened a hole for the stalk, and mounted it back on the chassis in the empty spot, lined up with the stalk hole. Then I pulled the old stalk pot apart to get the brass rod itself, and machined one side down with a Dremel to fit into the slot on the receiver stalk. With that extra length, the knobs mounted on the front as they did from the factory. Cleaning the whole thing up with some 409 and 0000 steel wool, I made the chrome shine again. Finally, I ganged the power lead to the receiver up with the dial bulb so that the dial will light up when the receiver is turned on.

The only drawback I see is that it’s not very powerful. I’ve spent enough time in 60-year-old trucks to know that you need volume to overcome the road noise, and this unit won’t cut it. So if I want to use it, I’ll have to find an amp of some kind to go between the receiver and the speakers.

The one issue I’ve got is that the faceplate that came on the truck doesn’t fit this radio. The knobs are spaced a little too widely for the existing holes. I could use the faceplate from the green truck but that had a Deluxe dashboard and was covered in black vinyl from the factory. So I could remove that, clean up the faceplate and use it instead. And of course I can find other faceplates at Nationals this year as a longer-term solution.

Update: here are some photos of the cage I build from leftover parts. I widened out one of the existing holes with a Christmas tree bit to accept the stalk of the bluetooth receiver.

Posted on February 21, 2025 | by bill | 5 Comments | Posted in Electrical, Travelall