I stumbled upon some good advice while perusing the Binder Planet this afternoon: an inexpensive alternative to Dynamat, called Peel & Seal. The commenter claims it’s only about $20 at the Home Depot. I’ll have to pick some of this up next time I’m there.
Update 2.20.10: Struck out at Lowe’s. Doing some reading on the product, I don’t know if I’d want to use this stuff after all. I’m also not sure if the idea is to put this stuff on the inside of the cab or out.
I got a couple of small packages in the mail this week, one of which contains an OEM Robertshaw 180° thermostat and gasket. Along with some other small chores, my aim is to get it installed on Saturday and try to get the fan shroud mounted in order to run up the engine and test out the cooling system. The thermostat should be a quick job, but the fan shroud is still problematic for a guy who doesn’t have access to a metal shop. I’m going to have to buy some materials at the Home Depot and hope I can make them work.
My local friend Karl is selling his Scout in preparation for a move north into Pennsylvania, so I’m also stopping over to pick through his stash and see if there’s anything I’m interested in besides two clean seat bases—which will replace the ones I currently have installed. The plan is to clean these up, mount the old seats from Chewbacca, and replace the strange aftermarket seats it came with.
I ordered a new 180° thermostat and 7 lb. radiator cap from Super Scout Specialists this afternoon, in the hopes that I can get a day over 40° to install it. Then the fan shroud, and then we cross our fingers to see if she stays cool.
This is only peripherally related to my engine (I have a different carb setup) but the writeup is good so far: This gentleman is swapping a Holley 2100 for a new 2300 350CFM unit, which is the one I’d like to eventually have on my Scout.
I haven’t done much in the way of working or playing with the Scout, but I’ve been keeping my eyes open for future plans. Here are some links I’ve collected for possible future purchasing:
Heat Shield Mat – this will come in handy for next summer when there’s a ton of heat coming off the engine.
Door jamb switch – a possible replacement for the ones I’ve got.
Not a whole lot of time to play with the Scout this weekend, but I did a few things worth noting:
I picked up eight Autolite 303 plugs at the local NAPA. I wasn’t positive my distributor took female ended wires, so I held off on them (it does) as well as buying oil and a filter. I think I’ll wait until next week for that purchase. (I spent about $100 on wires and plugs for the other two cars, so I’m trying to stay on budget here). I have to preorder the wires, but that’s no big deal. I’ll preorder the oil filter while I’m at it. In the bad news department, the cap to the distributor is loose and comes off easily with a tug. That can’t be good.
Update: My friend Alan tells me Autolite 303s are no good and that I need 85’s, which is what the good BinderPlanet told me in the first place. Lesson learned: never believe the NAPA computer.
I then tore the dashboard down to swap out the fuel gauge out with another unit in order to see if it’s the gauge or the sender. It’s the sender. While I was in there, I looked at swapping out the nasty dash cover with a cleaner one—I have four spares in various conditions. It turns out I’ll have to cut one of the spares in order to fit a standard-size radio, or simply pull the radio out altogether and wait for a Tuffy console at a later date. There are no speakers in the rig right now, so I’m leaning towards pulling the radio, which would be one less thing to worry about when parking in public.
I also tried swapping the glovebox door with a spare I’ve got which has a better latch, but again, I was foiled. I couldn’t get the better latch to come apart, and subsequently off the door. So I pulled the original door and put the spare on: no dice. The catchplate on the inside of the glovebox doesn’t like the latch, and the sheetmetal is too small for the larger catchplate. Rats!
Finally, I returned to Wheaton to pick up the rest of the parts I’d left behind on my first trip, and in the interim, the seller had chopped the rest of the cancerous body from the frame and hauled it off for scrap.
However, he was kind enough to do a lot of saving for me, and thoughtful enough to set aside a bunch of items he thought I might like:
The regulators are in far worse shape than I’d hoped; I was going to refurb them and swap them in, but the bottoms are rusted pretty good. The dash is in good shape, as are the windows and mechanicals. The radiator is the worst part of the lot, though—the bottom panel has come loose from the main assembly, so I’ll have to see if that can be repaired at all.
Overall, for the amount of money I spent, I did exceptionally well. I’ve got a handful of hard-to-replace specialized parts stored away now, and spares of other things which may wear out or be damaged over time.
I had to replace the fuel filler hose this weekend, and made the mistake of stopping in an Advance auto parts store to get one. When I asked the two clerks behind the counter, both of them blinked and said they’d never heard of such a thing. I think I’d already turned to leave when one of them told me to look in the Home Depot, which was at least a helpful suggestion, if not ridiculous. Since it was Sunday and my time window was closing, I took a chance and found a NAPA hidden behind a car wash. Within a minute of entering the store, the clerk was fishing a length of tube off a wall rack.
Back at home, with the girl asleep, I commenced to removing the original hose, which may not ever have been rated to touch gasoline. The closer of the two hose clamps came right off, but the clamp closer to the tank was angled in a way which made it impossible to access. I wound up cutting the hose off, then using a screwdriver to push the clamped hose backwards so that there was some slack, then pulling the entire thing off the flange.
With that done, it took five minutes to replace with two new pipe clamps. One other thing I noticed for the first time while down under the chassis was the sticker on the spring pack: this rig has a brand-new Triangle spring lift.
After ensuring everything was snug and tight, I took her down to the gas station for a test fill and a short ride.
Super Scout Specialists now have handmade steel dogleg replacements (the steel curves at the bottom of the A and B pillars, which rust out at the wink of an eye). Seeing as my Scout has some rot on the inner doglegs, we’ll file this under “future purchasing”.
I stumbled across a used 48″ Hi-Lift jack on Craigslist yesterday for the low low price of $40, and couldn’t pass it up. The height of this Scout obviates any sort of bottle or floor jack, because they don’t allow enough height to get a 32″ wheel off the ground. I met the seller out in Highlandtown and the deal was quickly struck; this is an $80 jack new (not including shipping—it’s 30+ pounds).
It may be that I need to upgrade to a 60″ jack, depending on how hard it is to get my tires off the ground, but this is a good start (and I know a few guys who run/will run stock Scouts who might be interested in taking this off my hands in that case). Or, I could simply buy a 60″ steel bar and replace the 48″.
Saturday morning, with a mixture of anticipation and nervous fear, I pulled the beast out of the garage and filled the back with garbage from our basement, scrap lumber from the garage, and a year’s worth of dead branches shed from the yard, loaded in a toolbox, made sure I had a towing company number in my cellphone, and set out for the dump.
As it turned out, I had nothing to worry about. The Scout did fine. Even sitting in the line at the dump, the temp needle never went past the first line, the idle calmed down, and she behaved herself. I had to give her a lot of gas to get restarted, so there’s definitely a tune-up in the future, but overall I’m surprised and happy. And my fears for her road manners were unfounded; steering was straight and true at 65mph.
On the trip south, a guy in a Dodge dually honked and gave me a thumbs-up, which put a smile on my face for the next half-hour. After unloading everything (god it’s nice to have a true utility vehicle again) I put the top completely down and drive home in the sunshine.
Sunday morning I was finally able to meet up with the owner of a very dilapidated ’78 plow rig to begin parting out what’s left, after weeks of missed connections and unexpected rainshowers. He bought the truck in order to pull the axles for his ’59 Willys wagon and has no use for the rest of the carcass—although now he’s talking about using the frame and drivetrain for a T-bucket with a plow.
I was more interested in the hard-to-replace plastics and any sheetmetal that might be salvageable, so I brought the Jeep down with my tools and commenced to stripping. He’s a very nice guy, and within ten minutes offered me a cold beer and an air-powered impact wrench, which made life much easier. In fact, he helped me pull a lot of good parts off the truck while also taking out the brake and steering systems for his Jeep. At the end of a five-hour day, I drove home with:
I tried getting the door glass out of the driver’s door, but we ran out of time–the upper channel is most likely rusted to the lower. However, the regulators both seem to work better than the ones I’ve got, and also appear to be easier to get out, so I’ll go back for those. We didn’t have time to pull/cut off the passenger fender, which made getting the heater box out impossible, so I’ll go back for that as well. The radiator came out, but I didn’t have space for it in the Jeep, so he’s hanging onto that for me as well.
Overall, it was a great day, and I had a fantastic time getting grease up to my elbows and talking cars (he’s got a ’69 Mach 1 sitting behind the Willys waiting for its turn). I’m stacked for the next couple of weeks, but I hope to head back down and pick up the rest of the parts (and possibly a set of spare wheels) very soon.