Next week, it’s back to Chestertown for a fabrication party.
Also, I think I solved the issue of the chattering transfer case: Some genius (not me) spun the front hubs to 4×4. On a hunch the other day, I hopped out, spun them back to 4×2, and did another lap around the block: the chattering was gone.
Last week was a good one for Peer Pressure. She spent Monday to Thursday on the road with the top down and I had a smile on my face all week.
This Saturday she hauled 60 cubic feet of mulch from the Middle School to our lawn with no complaints. Finn spent half the afternoon playing in the driver’s seat while I raked and mulched next to the driveway. Finn has declared the rear bed is her dance party room.
I got a call late Sunday from a guy I’ve bought parts from before; he needs a pair of Terra windows for his son’s project and it just so happens I’ve got a pair sitting in the garage. His son is going to convert a full travel top Scout to a Terra, will most likely be getting rid of his top, and would I be interested in it if he does?
Sure, I would.
This morning I packed up the Scout and drove over to Brian H’s house to help him drop the transmission out of his Wagonmaster along with a bunch of other IH friends. Mr. Scout brought his new Rough Country springs to install on Chewbacca, so he pulled it into the driveway next to the other truck and we commenced to getting dirty.
By the time I’d gotten there, a lot of the hard work on the Wagonmaster had been done, so I focused mainly on helping with the springs and staying out of the way. Getting the old springs off was relatively easy minus one finicky shackle bolt, and I concentrated on replacing his shocks with new ones from the kit. Getting the new springs on went well, but the centering pin for the U-bolt bracket seemed to be too big and wouldn’t seat properly. Air tools were produced, the pin was shaved down, and things seemed to go into place pretty quickly after that.
Over on the Wagonmaster, I helped brace the transmission and ease it down between exhaust pipes to the ground. After laying a steel bar over the bay, we circled it with a ratchet strap and secured it in place. Then we jacked the front of the truck up from the pumpkin and slid the transmission out on a piece of cardboard.
Alan brought along an entire emergency brake assembly to replace mine, which has been useless since I broke the handle off last year. It was a pretty simple procedure to unbolt the bad unit, disconnect the wire, and bolt the good one back in. It looks like the handle on the this unit is cracked, so I’ll have to source a new one, but at least it works without a pair of pliers. Knowing how easy it was to pull off, I’m going to add it to the list of parts that will get removed, wire-wheeled, painted, and replaced.
Brian’s truck looks much better now that it’s riding at a reasonable height.
So, Mr. Scout tells me the individual bumper parts are welded and waiting for us. The next steps are to bring the Scout to the welder so he can add gussets to the outside ends of the frame and then we can mount the whole assembly to test-fit. While he’s doing that, we have to drill holes in the spare plate to accept three bolts to mount the spare tire and two holes through the bumper to mount the Hi-Lift jack. These bolts will then be welded in place and the assembly should be finished.
Then, I’ll take it home, buy a box of grinding discs, clean up the welds and edges, and prep it for some kind of paint. I called a local powder-coating company and got a ballpark figure of $300 for a basic color (black), which is a little too rich for my blood. I think I’ll stick with rattle-can black for now.
In the meantime, I bought the wrong bolts for mounting the bumper online from Fastenal, so I have to return the ones I have (they’re huge and I’ll never use them for anything else) and buy new ones.
So this was the original plan, laid out sometime early last year:
And here’s the new plan, based on lots of mocking up and thinking and head-scratching and more than a little beer-drinking:
I was back in Chestertown today to work on the bumper with Mr. Scout after a holiday hiatus. When last we left, I decided to ditch the hinge we originally bought and ordered a new top-mount spindle design, which we planned to adapt and fit to the bumper face. The first thing we did was bolt the new one on and do some test-fitting to see how things will line up.
Allowing for the height of the spindle, we decided to move it outboard of the tailgate by 1/2″ and scoot it down as much as possible. This means the swingarm no longer sits on the face of the bumper. Now, when it’s closed, the bottom of the swingarm aligns roughly with the top of the bumper. (We couldn’t simply mount the spindle through the top of the bumper, because the spindle is only 4″ tall and the bumper is 6″).
With that in mind, we trimmed the end of the swingarm to fit the round weldable sleeve of the hinge and tacked it into place. Then we pulled the bumper off and mocked it up on the garage floor to eyeball everything.
What we found was that moving the hinge further outboard moved the swingarm offcenter by about 1″, so we pondered this over a delicious steak lunch (thanks, Mr. Scout!) and glass of IPA, and then got to grinding the swingarm triangle off the bar. After we cleaned up the edges, we moved it 1″ and tacked it back together then mocked it up again to check the fit.
One surprise benefit to the new design is that it frees up the face of the bumper to mount a Hi-Lift directly under the swingarm, as opposed to the swingarm itself. So we tacked in two square rests and made provisions to drill holes for mounting bolts through the bumper.
So the plan from here is that Mr. Scout is going to take the two parts to his welder and have him burn everything together. Then we’ll bring the Scout and the parts, mount the bumper, and get the swingarm just the way we want it before welding it on for good.
* * *
Today also marks the first time Peer Pressure has run out of gas. I was about a mile outside of Centerville when I lost all power at the pedal and she slowly coasted to the side of the road. Thank GOD I wasn’t on the bridge when that happened. I emptied my 1-gallon jerry can into the tank, primed the carb, and she fired right back up again.
I put 5 gallons in as I was leaving home, and PP made it 54+ miles to Centerville before running out. It was extremely windy today, and I had my foot in the gas the whole way over (60 indicated, which equates to about 68MPH) but 11MPG sucks balls.
So thinking about some of the issues we’ve seen with Brian’s bumper and the sag in the hinge has us thinking. In my post on the Binder Planet, I put out the call for other hinge alternatives, and we got some information about this hinge setup. It’s meant for a top-mount system, but Brian and I talked over an alternative that would work if we can find someone with a metal brake to fab it up for us:
It’s a C-shaped piece with two holes drilled for the hinge sleeve, and a third tab added in the center for extra rigidity. It gets mounted to the face of the bumper, then the sleeve is welded inside the holes, and none of the geometry of the bumper needs to be altered.
Sunday morning I returned to the Eastern Shore for day two of building my rear bumper for the Scout. While this was my second day, technically it was Brian’s third or fourth, because he had worked hard to get his ready for our trip to Hatteras back in September. Here’s a picture of what his looks like, completed:
Now, a little history: We built the design around a hinge we found online, which was rated for 3000 pounds and built for hanging fence doors. With that in mind, we decided to mount the hinge to the face of the bumper and have the swingarm come off the front, vs. a pole hinge on top. The reason for this was to keep the pivot of the arm closer to the middle of the bumper instead of the top of the far corner, and to allow for more clearance between a lowered tailgate and the top of the bumper.
What wound up happening was that there is a lot more vertical play in the hinge than we’d anticipated—it looks like it was designed to carry a heavy vertical load in tandem with one or more identical hinges, but never to deal with shear loads by itself. When it’s pulled free from the receiver, it immediately droops by about 1.5″ under the weight of itself, a Hi-Lift, and spare tire. This is, as you might imagine, not optimal. We decided to move forward with the design and materials we have, and if we come up with a better solution, grind it off and replace it.
On the other side, we cut down a section of 2.5″ box tube and added a trailer pin to close the swingarm.
To mount to the body, there are two standoffs of 2.5″ box mounted to plate, using the four holes from the OEM standoffs. We also welded angle support to the backside of the frame to beef up the mount point.
Provisions for a Hi-Lift are on the swingarm; Brian drilled bolt holes and welded two supports to the underside for the jack to rest on. I’m going to swap ends with my mount so that the foot of the Hi-Lift is on the hinge side.
So. Yesterday’s labor started with two angle grinders and a lot of noise. With three people working, we had all outside surfaces clean, deburred, and straight in about an hour.
It was during the grinding portion that I discovered the main tube is tuned to a high A#, according to the app on my iPhone.
The first things we did were to tack in the endcaps on the main tube, then put the Hi-Lift notches in place. We’re having a pro lay in the full welds; this is all just for placement and transport.
We moved on to the top swingarm, measuring and correcting for clean 90° angles. Once we’d straightened it out, it got tacked into place. Then we measured and tacked in the side supports to brace everything together.
Once the arms were in place, we measured (again) for the diameter of the spare tire (mine is 32″, Brian’s is a 31″) and added a few inches for clearance, then welded a mounting plate to the standoff, tacked that to the vertical arm, and added a 45° gusset directly below.
After taking a break, we cleaned up a little bit and got things ready for mockup. First, my OEM bumper had to come off, which took some PBBlaster and air tools. Then, we clamped the OEM standoffs to ours and drilled out the holes. Next, we mounted the new standoffs temporarily and then lifted the new bumper into place, supported by a single 2×4″. After careful measurement, marking with a sharpie, location of a fire extinguisher, and a few Hail Marys, we tacked the standoffs to the back of the bumper tube.
Looks good!
By this time, we were pretty tired, I was facing an hour and a half ride home over the bridge, and anything else we wanted to do would take some serious consideration. The hinge is the big question; we’re thinking about alternatives to the mechanical problem, or changes in the geometry (angling the hinge slightly upward to account for droop).
And, on the plus side: the manifold replacement surgery is holding strong, quiet, and smooth. It no longer sounds like a thundering herd of doom, and the cabin doesn’t stink of exhaust anymore.
Thanks to some 11th-hour help from Mr. Scout, I got the second bolt off the exhaust manifold and a new gasket installed, along with two shiny copper bolts of the correct length and diameter. It was tricky work by myself trying to hold a wrench on the top nut while torquing the bottom bolt enough to make things turn; as it worked out, I snapped the bolt in half. Whatever works.
Peer Pressure is quiet again. There’s no backfire coming off a heavy foot in the gas, and exhaust fumes in the cabin are all but gone.
I grabbed about 15 minutes while I was on grill duty this evening to pull the faceplate off the dashboard and swap out the amp/gas gauge with the spare I’ve got in my bins. Unfortunately, it didn’t read anything from the tank. The backlight and amp gauge work in both units, so I’m going to officially say it’s the wiring, which means I’ve got to run a new hot wire from the tank up to the bulkhead.
Meanwhile, Brian H. took delivery of his Wagonmaster today, and will be selling his red Scout to make room for the new acquisition. Pretty, isn’t it?
I also got an email from my friend in Wheaton, who mentioned he’d been up to Crazy Ray’s in Mt. Airy to look around, and found a Scout II that hadn’t been picked over much. Because they were already in the area, I let Brian and Bennett know, and they made a trip up to look it over. Apparently there wasn’t much left of the body, but they pulled some engine parts and left the rest for the crusher.