ScoutParts Blog

I talked to a customer today that remembers being in the US army in 1967.  A new officer had been assigned to work with them in Utah.  The new officer had never been to the west and had lived all his life in New York.  All he knew about the west was that he might need a 4×4.  Living his whole life in NY he had never needed a drivers license.  So, in down town Manhattan he got his first drivers license.  Bought a brand new 1967 Scout 800 and drove it all the way to Utah.  Upon questioning about how the long drive was,  it was revealed that he had never realized that there were any other gears beyond 2nd gear.

The new officer had driven all the way from New York to Utah in 2nd gear!!

I wonder what kind of gas mileage he got?

1967 Scout 800

“Scout” has grown quite a bit recently. This photo is from earlier this afternoon, he was watching me measure some fuel tank straps for the 68′ Travelette. I guess I will leave my toolbox door open in case Scout wants to hide in there.

I restored my 1963 Scout 80 and looked everywhere for a new steering wheel.  I could not find one so I had to settle for a reconditioned one.   Still looks pretty darned good. Still looks and works great.  Really improves the look and feel of driving.

I finally figured out what was wrong with my T-handle, it was the latch.

There are plenty of folks on AM radio talking about the broken economy, or sports, or world events. Here in Portland, OR we need a few good AM music stations. If you have a 1979 International Scout as your car, and the original owner was a cheap skate, you might have an AM only radio too. One of these days the radio will break and I will swap it for a new one, but until then I will continue to learn more than I want to about the stock market.

The new winch bumpers have been fabricated and are ready to ship. This old Travelette looks much better with the new winch bumper installed:

Having acquired a low mileage inline 6 motor, my attention turned to finding a suitable truck to run it in. This morning I made an offer on a 1955 International Harvester pickup with a bad motor in it. If the gent selling it takes my horrible offer, the ambulance motor will have a new hood to live under. It would be great to find a truck that has a working 4 speed as the BD241 has a tail housing on it already. I have a feeling that a tune up and a fuel pump will be necessary in resurrecting this old motor.

The junkyard solution of the day is this Hi-Lift jack holder. In the back of a Scout II Terra there is no obvious place to mount your Hi-Lift jack. While using a speed bump like a ramp I noticed my jack bounced three feet off the cargo floor, so I decided to bolt it down. A rusty old alternator bracket, two zip ties, and a piece of some sort of hydraulic brake bracket bolted together to make a nice piece of junk jack mount.

One of my Scouts had an intermittent miss a couple of weeks ago, which tracked back to a burnt distributor cap. All of the 8 cylinder Scouts that have Holley distributors use the same cap, the predecessor to which can be used to hold some Ticonderogas.

The 1979 Scout II was delivered last month, and was purchased from a fellow in Eastern Oregon. On the East side of the Cascade mountains the Scouts have very little rust, and can be in restorable shape. Now that she is a Portland Scout, the very first upgrade must be new windshield wiper blades. The two main choices are heavy duty for snow protection (linked above) or standard Scout II wiper blades. For this Scout II I went with the heavy duty blades because of snowy conditions in elk and deer hunting areas.