The Maryland MVA is not open on weekends for titling or tags, despite what it says on their website, so I will be forced to sit in their waiting room at 8:30 in the morning sometime this week in the hopes that I can be out by 9:15. Ha, ha.
Category: Progress
IT LIVES!
After a long wait and many rainy weekends, I finally got some time yesterday to put some doors in on my garage and pull the Scout out into the sunlight where I could crank it over without asphyxiating myself.
Mr. Scout stopped over to pick up parts he’s been storing (his Scout is moving this weekend to get serious bodywork started, but I’ll let him tell his own story) and helped me hang two rough doors that are wide enough to accommodate.
The good news is that she fired right up after some fussing with the battery connections and a squirt of gas down the carb. I pulled her out and let her warm up, and expected to see coolant dripping from the water pump like we’d seen in February, but after 20 minutes at idle without a fan shroud, there was no sign of leakage. I’ll have to pull the fan and pump off anyway to put a new shroud on, but knowing the pump itself seems to be OK is a fantastic break. Which means there is no bad news!
So, the next steps are:
Insurance and registration
Fabricate new mounts and get the spare fan shroud installed (and replace the water pump gasket while we’re at it)
Put the top down
Enjoy!
Painting, take 1
I took a little time this morning—now that it’s not pouring rain and below 50°—to get some black paint on my spare dashboard. The glovebox door also has two coats, and they’re beginning to look really good.
Sunday In the Garage.
I got a little time to work on Scout-related stuff this weekend, and it felt good to make some progress. Because I couldn’t leave the house on Saturday, I worked on the spare dash in the basement. I got the entire thing disassembled except for the washer control and spent an hour cleaning about a pound of swamp mud from the backside of the sheet metal.
When it was dry, it didn’t look like it was in bad shape at all. There was some surface rust and some corrosion on all surfaces, though, so I went at it with some fine-grit sandpaper and a lot of elbow grease.
When it was cleaned up enough for my liking, I hit it with some automotive primer to see if I’d missed anything; it turned out much better than I’d expected. I have to wet sand it down before I hit it with the finish coat of satin black, but I’m really pleased with the results. I can’t wait to put it all back together.
Out in the garage on Sunday, I started pulling the old fan shroud off to get a better look at the fan assembly, and one half of it fell off. From what it looks like, after the PO added a 2″ body lift, the radiator moved in relation to the fan—and the coolant hose on top. In order to fit the shroud under the hose and over the fan blades, he chopped the bottom half off and then must have snapped the shroud in two to fit underneath. Or, perhaps the shroud came into contact with the heat from the hose and snapped on its own. Either way, it’s off now; I’ll use it as a template for the new shroud mounts and then toss the pieces.
It turns out the dead headlight was only playing dead; I fooled with the connector a while and found that there’s a dead spot on the female side. I’ll have to read up on how to clean the contact inside the plastic housing.
Finally, I bought a 25′ length of flexible HVAC hose and hooked it to the second tailpipe, primed the carb and turned her over for about 5 minutes, long enough to get some water out of the tailpipes and scoot her back a foot or so. I have to tighten up the hose so the exhaust doesn’t blow it off and open the other windows, but it sure felt good to hear that thing turn over again.
Parts is Parts.
After a long while away from working on my Scout, I was able to break away for a few hours yesterday to visit Mr. Soundman and pick over the carcass of his parts truck. He’s got this one down to the bare bones now, so that makes two rolling frames-with-engines parked in his driveway, and he’s getting nervous about getting it out of there.
I immediately set to work on the dashboard, because I knew it would take the longest amount of time to remove. Little did I understand just how complicated it actually would be. Apart from the retaining screws he’d already removed, there are a million electrical connections and a handful of mechanical controls to disconnect, which take a ton of time to figure out. We wound up separating the wiring from the dashboard altogether just so that we could get it out, which ordinarily would have given me heart attacks—now that it’s out, how do I put everything back together?!?
But I’ve got an ace up my sleeve: Mr. Scout and his father took the dash out of Chewbacca a lot slower and more deliberately than we did, and it’s currently being stored in my garage, so I can take copious notes and photos of what an unmolested dash with intact wiring should look like.
Upon closer inspection, this dash is in reasonably good shape, although it’s covered in mud, faded from sun exposure, and surface rusting in places. The whole thing needs a wash, then sanding, priming and paint. Retaining the stock green is not going to happen, so I’m going to have to go with black instead—along with the two metal door panels I’ve got. The included hardware looks like it’s recoverable, although the more complex light and wiper assemblies need to be cleaned and tested.
The loom is in good shape as well, although I need to compare it closely to Chewbacca’s loom to be sure. I didn’t see any backwoods splicing or creative uses of romex, which leaves me hopeful but cautious. I’m currently debating buying a new wiring harness for the whole thing or just using what I’ve got, but common sense is pointing towards the cheaper of the two options.
Another big score was the water pump. After removing four bolts, Mr. Soundman handed me the entire assembly from the pump forward, which means I’ve got a non-clutch fan as well. The pump blades were covered in rust and scale, so I went at everything with a scraper last night to clean up the housing, as well as remove the ancient paper gasket. I’ve got a new gasket waiting at the parts store down the street, so at some point this week, I’ll get to work on removing the existing pump.
Finally, the other big score was a new fan shroud to replace the hack-job I’ve got: the PO did a body and suspension lift, which moved the fan blades up in relation to the body (and therefore the radiator). So, he did what countless other Scout owners have done in the past: he chopped the lower half of the shroud completely off, making the airflow to the coolant substantially less focused. I’m going to fabricate up some spacers for the new shroud and mount it properly to the radiator so that the engine doesn’t run excessively hot—and, thankfully, I’m already removing the fan to replace the water pump.
Weekend Tinkering.
This weekend was in the low 70’s, and between spending time with my daughter and doing a ton of overdue yardwork, I took some time to fool around in the garage. The first order of business was to clean out the space and organize everything better; the back half of the garage has been used for a no-man’s land for years, and thus was piled randomly with junk. I’m also storing a bunch of parts for Mr. Scout, which demanded better accommodations, so I swept, organized, and cleaned up the entire bay.
Next, I wanted to pull the panels off my donor doors and see what shape they were in. It looks like they’re reasonably clean, although everything suffers from light surface rust and needs a good wash. The door pulls and window cranks are both clean, but one foam armrest is toast and the other is marginal. I also pulled what looks to be an original rearview off the driver’s door and took steel wool to the grime covering the chrome; it cleaned up better than I hoped it might.
On the sad side, the liftgate is rusted out beyond economical repair; every time I moved it I left piles of rust in my wake, so I’ll just strip the parts off and ditch the frame.
Finally, I got a strange urge to pull the dashpad off for examination. Someone paid a good deal of money to cover a cracked green foam pad with blue vinyl, ruining the foam with staples and glue. Hopefully the pad Mr. Soundman’s offered me is in better shape than this one.
Measurable Progress.
This afternoon, after some particularly uncomfortable time spent in the eaves of my porch installing another layer of insulation, I decided to reward myself by dropping the donor battery (Thanks, Mr. Soundman!) into the Scout and running up the engine. After attaching two 10′ lengths of dryer hose to each exhaust and venting them out the windows, I put a little gas in the carb and it cranked right over. I also replaced the nasty gas-soaked air filter with the spare Mr. Scout gave me (he went to a K&N).
While it was running, I installed two scavenged flourescent lights on the ceiling so that I can see what I’m doing in the dark—the garage has been without power or lights since we moved in in 2004.
Finally, I wanted to positively identify the transmission from the top of the casing, so I removed the nautical cupholder from the center console (it was ugly anyway), pulled the screws from the trans cover, and found the letters “T19 148″ stamped across the iron casing, which makes it identical to the unit in Chewbacca. I’m not sure if this is close or wide (geared high for driving or low for crawling) based on the one test-drive I’ve had, but it felt like my old Scout, so wide is what I’m guessing.
So I’m up in the air as to what to tackle first; $30 at Harbor Freight could buy a nice electric angle grinder; $50 could get a new water pump, and $100 could buy all three plus a torque wrench. Decisions, decisions…
Progress on a Scout (not mine).
Sunday afternoon I joined a group of guys over at Mr. Scout’s house to help him get the new fiberglas tub he’s had tucked behind his garage onto the shiny chassis.
It went very smoothly, which was surprising. For something as big and bulky as it is, four guys can move one tub very easily. After situating bushings for a 1″ lift, the tub sat down on the frame just as pretty as a peach. There was some extra space between the bottom of the tub and the middle two pucks (under the seats) but that should be easily resolved with some spacers.
After multiple measurements, some confusion over the supplied bolts, and more measurements, the front inner fenders and core support got drilled and bolted in place, and as I was leaving the second of two holes for the rear supports was being drilled.
As the day progressed, all us steel-bodied Scout guys couldn’t help but drool at the pretty fiberglas parts Mr. Scout has standing by, ready to be fitted and installed.
I’d like to report progress on the Purple Beast, but aside from a lender battery, a new air filter, and 20′ of dryer hose, I didn’t get anything accomplished. With temperatures in the mid-50’s this week, I’m hoping to get up early one morning to add new gas in the tank, swap out batteries, drop the new air filter in, rig up externally-vented hose to each exhaust, and fire it up for a little while.
Cutting it Close.
Given the fact that it snowed today, I’d say Saturday’s project happened just in the nick of time.
Under Wraps.
My garage is the original, circa 1925, one-car structure that was built with the house, which means it was in rough shape to start with. When we moved into this house, we knew it would either need serious work or total demolition to be worth anything at all. It was originally wood with a dirt floor, and the previous owner added a raised wooden subfloor in order to use it as a hobby shed. He also removed the original barn doors and closed off the front with plywood, which made it worthless for anything other than storing lawnmowers and demolition refuse. When I wound up with this new rig, I asked my friends for a little help getting it under cover, using the best of what I had to work with.
True to his word, Mr. Scout appeared on the doorstep this morning at 8:45 bundled up in Carhartts against the 20° cold to help me haul out garbage, pull up the floor and figure out how to park indoors without collapsing the entire structure around us.
First, we had to get three months’ worth of demo rubble from the center of the floor.
After that was done and hauled away, we pulled up the floorboards to survey the structure. There was a poured concrete footer down the center of the floor with joists laid on top, making our job difficult. After some discussion, we came up with a plan: We’d park the Scout in the center of the floor, on top of  2″x12″x16’s anchored with short scrapwood arranged like railroad ties. This way the differentials would miss the footer and the truck would be up off the dirt.Â
First, we braced the joists with cinderblock and brick, then took a sawzall and cut them off to the width of the channel in the center. Then, we knocked out the plywood on the front of the garage, added new studs and a stronger header. Once that was ready, we dropped the rails in place and nailed them to the ties.
After having all day to charge the battery, a small shot of gas in the carb was all it took to get the truck running again. I turned her around and, with Mr. Scout directing, backed her in over top of the rails, and that was that. We surveyed our handiwork for a few short moments, then went about closing the front back up-it was too damn cold to stand around.
Once the front panel was back up, we loaded everything back in and put the cover over top. And so she’s indoors and out of the rain.
It looks like I’m going to have to buy a new battery, as well as replace the fuel pump-there’s a slow leak right below the pulley that hasn’t gone away since last week. But could I be happier this evening? No, I don’t think I could.