75 Scout II followed me home!

[Jeff Jamison]

I used white stuff used for shower walls that is also used as marker boards in the school in one,and in one I used fiberglass/plastic shower wall,its got a bummpy texture.Its easyer if you have a rool bar to help hold it up,slide the front up above the windsheild,let it droop while working from the front back.Or just take the top off and put it upside down on the ground
Jeff

[Dennis Bernth]

Originally Posted by Jeff Jamison

I used white stuff used for shower walls that is also used as marker boards in the school in one,and in one I used fiberglass/plastic shower wall,its got a bummpy texture.Its easyer if you have a rool bar to help hold it up,slide the front up above the windsheild,let it droop while working from the front back.Or just take the top off and put it upside down on the ground
Jeff

Unfortunately I'm restricted to working on this one with the top on; when it was repainted, the top was seam sealed to the rest of the tub and then painted over. It looks good, but trying to get the top off will for sure ruin the paint job, and that's not happening. I'm going to check out Lowe's and Menard's sites now to see what my options are, just a bump in the road. Oh, and for you guys that have done it, do you cut the width down, or just leave it 48" wide? I cut down this piece of hardboard, but it almost looked like it was going to be too small, and when I got looking at the 'fit lines' from the side panels on the mouse eaten headliner there was none too much material in excess there. Thanks!

[J.J.]

Dennis,
I have been kinda wondering what has been going on as it has been awful quiet here. Now we know

I hope that I will be able to see the truck in person with all of the great improvements that you have been working on.

JJ in TN

[Dennis Bernth]

Thanks JJ, it's coming. The problem is that I'm much more suited to stuff like doing the AC, or redoing the ignition system with the Mallory multi spark box, or swapping driveshafts, than I am messing with the interior For some reason I'm not a 'detail work' person, and stuff like that headliner just raises my blood pressure. I read posts on here from Darren, Jeff J, Bill USN1, about how they did their headliners in a half hour and slapped em in, and it makes me feel like I used to back in high school in the showers But I'll get it, I was looking on line last night and Menards' has some plastic type paneling that's supposed to be light weight, water proof, all of that. If it has any strength at all to hold it's shape I'm going to grab a sheet Tuesday morning, and then Wednesday is the day of truth. I have about decided that if I have any doubts about it at all, then it's going back in with short self drillers and fender washers, I'm not going to mess with the stock type pop in buttons and trying to line up those holes to get them in.

[sullyscout77]

Keep blazin' the trail Dennis and take some pics along the way. I'm takin notes as I have a certain T'All that has about 1/2 acre of headliner I'll be dealin with in the next year or so .

[Dennis Bernth]

FINALLY! Got a headliner in the Scout, and got some other stuff done, and it's as ready as it's going to get for Red Power.
The headliner I ended up using was supposedly 'fiberglass reinforced' pebble grained white wall paneling, like is used around tubs and such. About $30 for a sheet at Menard's, cut to length with a Stanley knife, stuck it up in with Tammy and the stepson holding it up and used 3/4" self drillers with white nylon 'body washers' to stick it up. It's not as rigid as hardboard, but it's in there for now and looks pretty good. We'll see how I like it long run, I can always do something different later if I decide I have to.
Went to put on the seatcovers, they were really nice seatcovers and would have fit great if the seats were about half again bigger. No problemo says I, I found another set I had bought years ago in the storage trailer last week, I'll use those! So I go fetch the second set, and lo and behold, the same dang mouse that ruined my headliner put about a silver dollar size hole in one seatcover. Worse yet, these fit perfectly....they're on there, it's better than sticking to the vinyl, but I'll have to hunt up a set like these that fit that are minus the mouse hole
So a quick fluids check (everything was fine) and it's ready to go. Hope to see some of you there!

[Jeff Jamison]

I was suppose to go with John ,but cant pull it off,what seats do you have in that scout
Jeff

[michigan scout]

Good work Dennis you for sure are a doer n not a talker..wish I could go to the Red Power. Have a great time!

[Dennis Bernth]

Originally Posted by Jeff Jamison

I was suppose to go with John ,but cant pull it off,what seats do you have in that scout
Jeff

The normal Scout II high back buckets, but these are in tan vinyl and in pretty rough shape.

Darren, don't feel like a 'doer' sometimes, but the Scout made it down with no problems. 65-70 mph most of the way, the only flies in the ointment were the AC wasn't working as well as it did on the Iowa trip (I think I may have used too much oil, which cuts the cooling capacity down, have to address that when I get home) and the cruise quit working last trip and I couldn't get it fixed in time for this one. I will have cruise before Nationals, you betcha....

[Dennis Bernth]

LOOOOONG time since an update, so here is the condensed version. On the way back from Red Power, we 'detoured' on mostly two lane roads in Eastern IL and met up with a guy who I was turned onto by Eric Bielke that had some Scout parts he wanted rid of. On the way there, and after we left, the Scout was running kind of rough; I thought maybe I had picked up some bad gas, so I tossed some carb cleaner in it at a gas stop with no noticeable result. The closer we got to home, the more pronounced the problem got, it was pretty evident that I had at least one cylinder missing and maybe two on occasion. I wrote it off to bad plug wires or cap and rotor, I had put in new plugs before the Iowa trip.

Last week I finally got a chance to tear into it (I've redone two trailers so far this summer plus used two weekends retrieving a Scout and parts that were 300 miles away) and found the problem. I pulled the cap first, it looked OK on the inside, rotor had a little tracking but not bad, but since I had new I replaced both. The wires on it were generic, no name 'mag core wire' plug wires; since I had a set of new Bosch mag core wires here, I figured I'd swap them out too. In the process of changing out the wires, on one of the wires with the 90 degree boot, the wire terminal instead of being vertical and sticking into the distributor cap was up top in the boot, at the horizontal. The Scout had a miss when I got it, new plugs and the Mallory and e-core coil cured that; well it cured it temporarily anyway. I grabbed the old cap and looked, and on that cylinder the spark had been jumping the gap from the brass contact in the cap to the plug wire terminal at the top of the wire boot, a good half inch! It ran that way, and ran pretty OK, until it ate up most of the brass terminal in the cap, that's when it started missing. Remind me not to yank a plug wire with that Mallory multi spark hooked up and test spark on my finger! Had one other wire that wasn't seated right and the terminal in the cap on that hole was burned too, the rest looked fine. After the new plug wires and new cap and rotor, my running problems were solved.

Today I dug into it and bolted and welded a receiver adapter onto the step bumper, and wired the trailer lights to the four flat connector I need for the trailer I'm pulling down. Also rerouted the drain hoses for the AC, evidently where I had run them didn't have enough 'pitch' in the hose to let the evaporator housing drain; now it steady runs water out of the drain hoses, and the evap housing doesn't 'sweat' up anymore, I'm pretty sure now that the water wasn't all getting out and the evap was freezing due to the excess water. We'll see, but it sure seems to cool better now also. I did dig into the cruise control today, but despite my promise, I will NOT have cruise control going to Nationals. I have no juice going to the cruise unit under the hood, the inline fuse under the dash is OK, I messed with the wiring a little bit but without an idea of what the wiring is and where it goes there wasn't a lot I could accomplish in the time I allotted myself to work on it. Winter project.....

Basically throw some paint on the bumper and receiver adaptor tomorrow, give it a bath and clean it up a little, load our junk and it's ready. The Scout has made two decent road trips so far, one to Midwest Classic (around 700 miles all told) and one to Red power Roundup in Southern Illinois (about another 900 miles total) and it has yet to use any oil or have any major hiccups. Drove it over to Tammy's mom and step dad's house yesterday afternoon for a fish fry with them (deep fried crappie and bass, mmmmm!), and Tam's sister and her husband, the Scout got a lot of comments and the men folks were properly impressed with how it looks and how it ran. Looking forward to Nationals, not looking forward to the right foot getting tired, but it's not as far as Red Power so it's all good.