'67 Scout Digger!

[zzchops]

Hi everyone :]

I bought a '67 Scout 800a for $1800 bucks that was supposedly the project vehicle of a guy who had one too may projects, who was suddenly in need of cash because he was moving out of state.



When I took it off his hands it was body on frame (rolling, had all 4 wheels (Chrome wheels off a Shadow ed.), brakes (all drums) and tires (all four of them are different), 266 cid V8 bolted to 3 speed Warner manual trans (installed on new motor mounts in the engine bay), no exhaust pipes after the exhaust manifolds, no wiring, no gauges, No front windshield, no doors, no tailgate, no top.



However the guy gave me 3 big plastic bins, 3 cardboard boxes, and a plastic bucket of all the parts that were removed from the vehicle when he supposedly tore it down to "resto" it from the frame up. Gave me the the doors (with glass and all hinges and bolts), the tailgate w hardware, the rear step up bumper, the original front bumper as he had replaced it with a rammer bar styled one.

What I found in the bins and boxes were the drive shafts, the gauges, all the wiring harness sections, basically all the decals and aluminum trim, a new electric fuel pump from summit, new Radiator hoses, new thermostat, new cap and rotor, new plug wires, the rear view mirrors, the fuel caps, the spare tire bracket that bolts to the tailgate, the glove box, the original single speaker and radio (lulz), all the dash knobs and switches, the heater core that bolts to the passenger side fender under the hood.

I pretty much bought a rolling puzzle ( lulz XD).

At this point I have painted the dash black, cleaned all the wiring harness contact points, I pulled every single pin out of each connector and power brushed them all. I installed the wiring (all green nightmare wires), the gauges (painted the gauge plate black), rebuilt and painted the steering column, installed a new battery and found out my starter solenoid had the "R" pin broken off so I retrofit a newer cap from a newer starter solenoid to make it all function correctly again. I can crank it and toss some gas in the carb and it fires up no problemo.



I basically just have to hook up the fuel lines, the rad hoses, the drive shafts (i found new drive shaft bearings in the bucket), inspect the whole braking system (its complete but who knows when this thing last stopped under its own power), hook up the E brake and get some exhaust pipes with a muffler or two on it and she'll be drivable.

The thing is . . . The guy sprayed the Scout w house of Kolor's "suede flat blue" (it looks like blue primer tbh), it's nice if you want to slap white walls on it and make it look like Norm Grabowski's T'bucket and give it a 50's look. I wanted to put the doors on but the doors and tailgate are stock brown :/. So I thought of simply getting more suede blue and making it an all around suede blue scout . . .simple right? . . but then , , , this idea came to me!

While looking around online I stumbled upon some pics of the Grave Digger monster truck! in that cluster of pics was . . what I can only describe as a Grave Digger fan vehicle? . . "Lil' Digger"! it's some kind of old 50's vehicle that looks closer to Grave digger 3 when they used production vehicles as their "base" vehicle and monster'd it out instead of building a tube frame purpose built monster truck with a fiberglass body on it as they do now a days. They painted it up real nice and it basically mimics the Grave Digger paint scheme and graphics to one degree or another.

With that in mind I thought . .. well if I'm going to paint my Scout myself and have to dish out the paint money anyway, I couuuld paint it exactly like Grave Digger! (or something close to it) but instead of it saying Grave Digger on the side . . . it would say "Scout Digger" !! (I think I'd put that on the tailgate also XD ).

So I traced out a scout from some kind of schematic of a Scout 800 online to get the body lines down on paper and then I broke out the color pencils and looked at a few ref pics of the o.g. Grave Digger and drew up what you see above and below this post. . . The "Scout Digger"!!

Just wanted to post what I dreamed up to share and maybe hear some feeback/thoughts from the community on it as a possible project :].

[zzchops]

This has to be the only Scout Oil Pan to be Checkered like this. I had painted my old '85 Toyota MR2 oil pan similarly and this is the only other oil pan I've done this way. It took about 2 weeks to do, The inner pan is Chrysler Red Engine Paint and the Checkers are Ford Red Engine Paint, here it is finished, enjoy :] .

[runnr]

Looks like a time consuming paint job, and I must say, the most unique oil pan that I have ever seen in my 30 yrs of automotive tinkering.

Good job!

[jeff campbell]

may i ask WHY ?

[oldblue72]

Originally Posted by jeff campbell

may i ask WHY ?

That is a fantastic question!

[db1115]

Thats really cool!

[Shawnee]

awesome

[Comanche Scott]

Yep, I'm diggin' it too!

Is it just me, or are the "Grave Digger" pictures not there? I like the idea, would be a lot of work, but could be pretty cool, and very unique.

[zzchops]

Originally Posted by jeff campbell

may i ask WHY ?

I was rebuilding my Mr2 engine in like 2002 and when I had painted the block black. I stood there thinking "geeze this sure is a whole lot of solid black", usually when one paints a a big muscle car the paint gets broken up somehow so its not just huge flat surfaces in one single color. So I dreamed up a multi-colored paint job for the block. In the same logic I later painted the oil pan in solid black, and of course, if the block paint was broken up, then the large black surfaces of the oil pan had to match XD. So that's when I sat there thinking, well what would look performance on this thing? scallops? no my car was an MR2 not a '32 deuce coupe , flames? same problem not a '57 chevy, and somehow it boiled down to checkers as being universal for performance or checker flag at the races. The only thing left to do was figure out what colors to paint it and how to go about doing it when there wasn't anything at all anywhere in the online universe on how to set that kind of thing up, so I just winged it to the best of my logic.

Once I decided to make the attempt, it was more about testing myself to see if I could actually do it.

I'll add some pics of the Mr2 Engine I built so you all will get where this came from.

[cAlvis165]

First, welcome aboard! I like that paint job! You have a lot of patience my friend. I'm going now to google the Grave Digger pics so I can visualize what you have in mind. Keep up the good work.

EDIT: O yeah, that one.