Peer Pressure is back on the road and running like a top. After a long three weeks at the mechanic, the carburetor problem was finally solved; the reason for the leakage was a set of tiny O-rings which were actually supposed to be X-rings. Once he’d torn it down for the fifth time and put them in, she buttoned up and ran like an excited puppy at the edge of an empty field. I’ve had her out on several junk runs, a trip to the Home Depot, a trip to Columbia, and into Baltimore City on a day with record-setting heat, and the temp gauge stays obediently on the left side of the indicator. She starts with one twist of the key and idles like a satisfied kitten. Best of all, the obnoxious stink of gasoline and rich exhaust is almost completely gone—there’s less exhaust backwash on this truck than there was on Chewbacca, as a matter of fact.

I finally broke down and bought a new battery for the Scout this weekend after the donor battery from the Jeep decided it couldn’t crank the engine over anymore. While I was dealing with that (crank engine, jump out, twist the terminals down, jump back in, crank engine, repeat, repeat), the driver’s door latch spun itself around 180 degrees so that the latch would just prang off the striker uselessly. So, I tore the driver’s door down again and got inside to see what was happening with the mechanism.

A little backstory: In order to get the latch body out, the window needs to come out, and then the guide track closest to the handle. One bolt on my track was pretty well frozen but a little PBBlaster made short work of the other three. Once I had the track pulled away from the edge, the latch came free, and I compared it with another one I had in my spares (it’s the one on the right). Somehow the cam had gotten completely turned around and jammed itself into place. It had been “repaired” at some point in order to fasten the main pivot arm into place with a flattened bolt and nut, and the clip holding the door release rod was long gone—so they replaced it with a locknut hastily threaded onto the end of the rod. Instead of wasting time trying to fix the original, I shot the spare up with plenty of white lithium and used that instead.

While the driver’s door bolts were soaking, I tore the passenger door down and pulled the original regulator in there out. It looks to be a replacement unit like the ones sold by LightLine dealers (some of the original paint is still evident under the rust). I dropped the new one in, greased it up, buttoned the door back up, and then remembered that I need to tighten the outer door handle. D’oh! Eventually the window will need to come out and be replaced, because there’s some serious rust happening at the bottom of the channel on the inboard side, but that’s why I’ve got spares.

I also finished fabricating a strap stay for the bikini top out of a cut-down decking bracket and bolted that into place, as well as replaced six of the original grade 5 bolts holding the rollbar down with grade 8 hardware. I still have to drill four holes for bolts at the feet of the rollbar, which were never installed (there are only two on each side).

Finally, I’m going to order a ThermoQuad rebuild kit today. Wish me luck!

A pressure test and one new water pump later, Peer Pressure is sitting in the driveway again (well, technically, it’s across the street so we can get the CR-V out). Turns out it was the shiny new water pump itself that was bad. It was more expensive to have it fixed professionally, but I was tired of fooling around with it here and there and still not getting answers. I bought the thing to drive, and now that the weather’s getting nice, I’d like to take advantage of that. Plus, we still have a ton of stuff around the house that needs to get hauled to the dump…

The mechanic also mentioned the leaky carb, and they tightened the bolts while they had the hood open, which was nice of them. The result of that is an excessively low idle, basically one step above stalling—but the carb isn’t leaking as much as it was. My next major outlay will be to have the carb rebuilt professionally, something I hope to have done in the next month or so.

My family was in town this past weekend, and I took the opportunity to have my dear sister help me with some exploratory surgery on the Scout. As you may have read, there’s a recurring leak coming from somewhere in the vicinity of the water pump that I haven’t been able to chase down. I decided I’d give it one last go and see if I could replace the current pump with a spare I’d gotten from KB last year.

As with most things, I plunged into it without really thinking the procedure through completely. My sister and I got the leaky pump off, and after much cursing, were able to lift it completely out with the fan shroud (The top filler neck was in the way, of course). Once I’d gotten it off completely, I noticed that it was three-pulley while the backup fan was a dual-pulley. Now, I could have run the engine without the AC compressor (which is what I believe the pump in the foreground of the picture below is), but I thought it would be better to leave everything the way I found it.

So, with some trepidation, I RTV’d the new gasket I had on the original pump and we settled it back into place. My plan for tonight is to tighten up the pump bolts, replace the upper hose clamps, tighten down the compressor and alternator brackets, make sure the distributor cap is tight, fill the radiator back up, and get it started. Tomorrow morning at dawn, I’m going to throw my bike in the back and haul ass down the street to Ridgeway Automotive in the hopes that the fine folks there can diagnose the problem once and for all.

In happier news, I think I’ve got the bolts I need for the Tuffy console–and they’re all stainless steel.