Hokie Scout

[RangerDan]

So it all started 6 years ago when upon returning from a Deployment from Kuwait I started looking for a good 4X4 to buy. After much looking I got hooked on the idea of buying a scout. A local ebay bid later and I owned a scout II.

[RangerDan]

So I started cutting up the bed of my truck. I need to install inner and outer rocker panels on the driver side, replace floors on both sides, replace rear cab body mounts, front cab body mounts, rear bed body mounts, entire bed floor, outer quarter panels with fiberglass ones, replace passenger rocker panels....uhm what else... the inner fenders are a rusty swish cheese mess so will replace those, outer fenders...just because i have better ones, rebuild the 196, upgrade the dana 20 with the low gear set, uhm... put 1 ton CUCV axles underneath it with 39 inch tires....You know, run of the mill stuff. After buying the scout 6 years ago I have had to budget buying parts over the years till I amassed enough parts to do some major work. Problem is that over 6 years I got impatient and before I could implement one idea other ideas took over or I came across a deal I couldn't refuse, hence the cut and turned dana 44 I got sitting next to the dana 60 and 14 bolt axles. I went to do a spring over axle conversion and in my haste didn't take into account what would be involved in a front spring over with the stock dana 44, hence the spring over rear and 4 inch lift springs up front, yeah some where along the way I ended up with, counting the lift springs on the front, 2 full 4inch lift kits for my scout, can't even remember the reasoning for that purchase. Oh yeah I think i should up grade wiring, do some repair work on the hard top....

[RangerDan]

I have been looking through my files but can't seem to find all the pictures I have taken of my scout over the years, any way in the tradition of putting the horse before the carriage this is what I bought 6 years ago. 1977 scout II with a 196 4 cylinder, t-19 close ratio, dana20, black soft top with a decent white hard top, stock ride height, stock bumpers, 29 inch dry rotting tires, no driver side rocker panels, and a pissed off wife for buying the ScoutII without telling her. Well now she supports my scout habit seeing as how its my stress relief.

Whats been done to it to date: Rebuilt steering gear box ( seals all blew out on first 4x4 trip), Rebuilt dana 20 (after it started making terrible noise and found it had almost completely eaten an output bearing cage), Spring over axle rear and 4inch rough country front lift (then took it 4 wheelin at wind rock, tn on what was supposed to be an easy trail and turned out to be a moderately difficult) After market bumpers, mile marker winch, replaced everything in the fuel system except the tank and carb (went to pour gas in it one day and the gas was hitting the ground as fast as i was pooring it in), ...And now it has 33 inch tires on it and a bikini top or sometimes a hard top in the winter

[RangerDan]

So i bought a cut and turned dana 44 front axle housing and at the end of my welding class brought in the rear axle and the purchased front axle and used the schools equipment to weld and grind and put spring perches on top. I was very careful about the angle of the perches and got everything measured and lined up and all and ground down the housing for the front axle and ground out the perch some and then welded the perches on. I took everything home and hooked up the rear and then put the lift spring on the front axle and put the turned axle housing into storage so that ot at some later date i could do the spring over on the front and switch the gears out etc. Well it worked great except I got perches that were wider than stock...thats ok they still bolted up just fine... anyway some time later I looked at the passenger side spring perch on the turned axle tube for the front and realized that while I really paid attention to the angle matching the other spring perch I didn't make sure the grinding left me with a level perch left to right so that perch is just crooked enough that it not usable....

[RangerDan]

So i have this cut and turned dana 44 paperweight sitting in my garage for like the last 4 years maybe, anyway i was thinking some day I will cut the perch off and reweld it on or weld another one or something, and then maybe install this set of 4.88 thick gears...who knows. Well I have yet to get stuck in my scout but thats partly because I have been cautious. I don't want to be so cautious so I bought a lock right locker for the rear, because it was not expensive and required the least amount of technical skill to install, namely no ring and pinion adjustment , but still gives me road ability unlike a welded diff. Ever since I installed it I haven't even had a chance to go 4wheelin with the scout... well sorta. Anyway i had to rebuild my carb the other day and do a tune up. once that was done I took her for a spin and died on the side of the road. 5 minutes later she started up and i got to within a block of the house and she died again, 5 minutes later she started up and I started trouble shooting. I was about to decide that the fuel pump wasn't working when I remembered the last time I filled the tank was before a long trip...oh yeah almost none of my gauges work... so a little gas and I was good to go By now I had amassed a lot of sheet metal parts, but no welder hhhm gotta fix that. The other day My platoon SGT told me he had traded his brother for a scout and wanted me to see it.

[RangerDan]

So I bought a 1974 scout II with an AMC engine (268??) a 3speed trans for 500 that looks like its in better shape than my 77 scout. My wife drove me over and I drove it home, no seats with it so I sat on a milk crate and was driving it home *****ing about how slow it has going....Doah finally realized the different gear set up on the transfer and shifted out of 4x4 low So when I got home I went strait to the top of the hill with it behind my house and there it sat. Over the course of a year I stripped parts off of it to use on ...I don't know, just because it was there and I wanted to...never could figure out which scout was in better shape to fix up...was starting to think about fixning one up to keep nice and street looking and make the other one into a dedicated crawler. Went to fire it up the other day and had to replace the distributor with an electronic one, it fired right up then.

Did I ever mention I also have a 1993 civic hatchback that Imess around with some too, yeah so I am building up a collection of toys and don't have a garage to put them in, that where the Carolla and 4runner go.
So this brings us to around 2008 somewhere

[RangerDan]

So some where around the end of 2008 I find out that I will be deploying again to Iraq and this kinda puts a hold on all things Scout as I work to tie up any loose ends so my wife doesn't have to. Well some of it was scout stuff like making sure both scouts and the civic were in good enough condition that some one could start them and move them if need be while I am gone.

I am a recovery wrecker driver AKA tow truck driver/ mechanic for the Army reserves...upon deploying they pulled me from my guys and put me in the office as an OPS SGT or operations manager. Every 2 to 3 months I couldn't take it and would go out as a gunner on convoys for stress relief...if that gives you any indication as to how stressful it was in the office, No its not like i was traumatized from bad paper cuts of spilled hot coffee, but I had no idea what I was doing and was learning on the fly, and you have someone yelling at you everyday about how you are f***ing things up or how that crazy attendance roster you have to turn in was F*** up again and it wares on you.

[RangerDan]

So here I am about to go on my first mission as a gunner....lucky me the worst I ever had to do was shot a lazier pointer at some truckers when they approached our convoy, well I did go down route Irish one day, nothing happened but that was just crazy in general anyway I finally made it home.
As I read N2IHC posts I can empathize, It took a year before I realized I was suffering from depression and got some help. I had no idea why everything seemed boring. Messin with my scout n stuff just seemed lame....blah any way I was forced into messing with the 1974 scout due to TVA cutting down the trees in my back yard and tellin me I couldn't store the scout under the power lines because what if.... any way I towed the scout off the hill and much to my wife's relief sold it to a local guy that was planning on scrapping the body and rebuilding a new scout. Wish i had know his plans before he put it on the tow truck, I would have pulled a few more things off her b4 she left me

[RangerDan]

So with the money I had left over from deployment and a refinance of the house I bought a nice mig welder and was going to build s garage in the back yard...Oh wait did I mention TVA, turns out my deed was wrong and that TVA owns the rights to my entire back yard starting 5 feet from my porch, now what? well I took my son down to Lynchburg, TN to pick up a set of CUCV axles and we toured the distillery while down there. A few weeks later I mentioned the axles to a friend and he hooked me up with a buddy who sold me a set of 4 bead lock rims with 39s great tread for $900.

well Everything has come to a halt again, now that we can't build a garage for my toys we have bought a new house and are in the process of moving.

well 3 months after the move I finally got around to getting some lug nuts to put the tires on the axles....crud the rims are 16 inch rims, not big enough to fit around the calipers
hhmmm I seem to do a lot of 3 step forward 2 steps back.
Well this brings me to the present. Yesterday I started cutting into the bed of the Scout to start doing some body work.

Oh yeah by the way I have completely gotten over the depression...well ok like 95% but what's important is I am all stoked about working on my scout again and so I plan on doing short bursts of repairs this summer so that it is not done too much and then really taring into it this winter.

[RangerDan]

So have 3 issues I have run into.
1) other day went 4wheelin under power line rite of way and was driving at a severe side slope, after a few minutes engine started sputtering a bunch like it was gonna die. Stomping on the gas pedal did nothing, I managed to turn around and drive a couple minutes to a parking lot, popped the hood and check throttle linkage and started revving the carb and finally engine started revving. I am assuming this was fuel starvation from the severe angel i was driving at with only like a half full tank, but would love some input.

2) Any suggestions about how to solve the rim axle problem, would spacers work or maybe better to try and sell or trade tires and rims to get larger rims?

3) right now I am planning on replacing the rear cab mounts and front part of the bed. Having already cut into the front of the bed to remove the bench seat i remembered that the mounts have that part that sticks out to bolt onto the b-pillar. I am not sure I want to replace the quarter panels yet so was trying to figure out a way around taking them off now? I am trying to follow some advice I read here once about doing stuff in small sections so that my rig doesn't sit around undrivable for a long time I might just just cut what I have to off the quarters to access this area and then tack back on the section I cut.... will post pictures of this later today any suggestions would be nice