Recovery Efforts.

Today was a Scout day, even if I don’t have my Scout back yet.

My mechanic got back to me on Friday and asked for a little more time to work on her, which means Monday or Tuesday. The fact that I missed a week of almost perfect convertible weather has me bummed, but the payoff will be worth it when it’s back in the driveway and running well.

In the meantime, plans to recover the local Scout went off without much of a hitch at all. After Finn and I got some doughnuts down the street, Mr. Scout met us at the house and helped blow up her new inflatable pool while we waited for Alan and his friend to make it up with the trailer. After some jockeying around the narrow streets of the neighborhood, they got the tow rig pointed in the right direction and we headed over to the seller’s house.

At first, the Scout didn’t want to start. Gas down the carb made it fire up fine but there was no gas getting through the lines from the tank. After a quick trip to the gas station for a couple of gallons, the seller blew out the line and then the filter himself (can you say “motivated buyer?”) and we tried a few tests with everything disconnected. Once we made sure the fuel pump was working—squirting gas alarmingly all over the engine—we hooked everything back up and tried it again. It turned out that I was closest to the driver’s seat, so I fired it up and it finally stayed running, and everyone cleared a path out for me to crawl down the driveway and line up behind the trailer. This time I got up onto the trailer without doing any damage, put it in 4lo and shut everything down.

We ratcheted it down tight, closed the doors up good, and money exchanged hands. All was good!

The seller was very happy to have it out of his driveway, as was his wife.

Mr. Scout has a new steering wheel for his truck, which makes him happy. We weren’t able to pull it while we were there, so he and Alan will do the swap through the mail, most likely.

Meanwhile, I continued hoarding parts for Peer Pressure. The items above are the reason I organized the whole deal in the first place: a brand-new poly gas tank, unused, with a matching skidplate. I hosed the dust off the tank and looked it over; everything appears perfect. Score!

The next item is a passenger’s fender in excellent shape; this apparently came off a Terra donor rig. It’s in better shape than the fender I’ve already got, which makes me happy.

Side note: I’d say roughly 2/3 of the spare parts I have are or originally were Tahitian Red when they came from the factory—coincidence, or something more sinister? You decide.

I also took home a clean tailgate from the same rig, which is in excellent shape. It even sports a factory “Scout II” sticker.

From the same donor rig, there are two clean doors, which are in far better shape than the two spares I have. They still have Terra glass in them, which will get sold or scrapped. The rest of the chrome looks like it’s in excellent shape. There’s some slight rust on the underside of the interior, and some bubbles under the trim on the drivers door, but it’s definitely repairable.

Alan also brought me some gifts from the last set of scrapped vehicles we picked up: the first is a clean IH-serialed compressor for my AC setup.

The next is a used Holley 2300 carb, which will be my rebuild testbed. I don’t have an air cleaner housing to fit it, but I’m hoping the ThermoQuad air cleaner might.

Update: The serial number off the carb doesn’t match anything from a standard Light Line application, which means it’s not an exact match. I’ll have to find out exactly what I’ve got so that I can order the right replacement kit.

Following that is a Holley 2100 with a spreadbore adapter mounted to the bottom. I’m not as excited about this one, but I’m going to do some reading to learn more about it.

Finally, I took the crappier of the two windshields. I figure the wiper linkage and motor might be worthwhile to have, but the rest is definitely scrap metal.