The garage is currently empty, which is a strange feeling. I dropped the Scout off at a new garage to have the transmission looked over, after the drive back from Indiana coated the entire undercarriage with oil. It took a while to find someone who would work on the truck. My long-standing transmission shop, who had worked on it as recently as three years ago, isn’t servicing manual transmissions anymore, and the fellow who fixed the manifold for me last year didn’t want to deal with heavy stuff like that either. This new shop was recommended to me by a truck guy I’ve met at Cars & Coffee, and when I got the owner on the phone I got a good vibe from him. I drove it over on Wednesday and buttoned it up for possible rain; they told me they’d store it inside for me. So now we wait to have the problem diagnosed. If this works out, I’ll look into having the Travelall towed down there to sort out the transmission.
Speaking of that transmission, after researching it some more Sunday morning, I was surprised to find that I’ve been wrong this whole time about it. I’d thought it was a non-synchro manual like Brian has in his Scout. It’s actually a T-98A, which is synchronized in all but the first gear. I’d been thinking about how I’d have to find a more modern transmission to swap in, like the T-19 in the Scout, but maybe I won’t have to.
Meanwhile, the passenger firewall is 95% buttoned up; all that’s left is to weld the hose bracket back on to the angled face and paint the new metal. I can’t weld anything, though, because my welding gun isn’t advancing any wire. I disconnected it, put a new spool on, and checked the contacts but the wire won’t go. I called the Eastwood store on Saturday and after talking with the shop manager, he gave me the 800 number for tech support; tomorrow I’ll call them and walk through some diagnostics. The unit has a 3-year warranty so he told me they’ll send me new parts free of charge.
So, I focused on what I could Sunday afternoon by busting out the needle scaler and cleaning off the frame and underside of the passenger inner fender to prep things for encapsulator. The area under the rocker on that side got cleaned off, and the underside of the bed is curing to get ready for a layer of undercoating. I then installed weatherstripping on both of the front doors, finished painting the gas tank, and needle-scaled the frame on the driver’s side before it got dark.
Down in the basement I cut down a 12″ section of 1/4″ rod and threaded it with a 28-pitch die on both ends. The goal here is to fabricate a new rod for the mirror mount that I can swap out for the rusty one in the broken unit. Now I have to pop the endcap off of the spare mirror to test the method before I go banging on the good one.