Category: Friends

Mission: 800 Recovery

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Mission: Recover Dan’s 800 was successful. More successful than I had anticipated, actually. The Saturday-morning plan was for Brian to bring his fancy new aluminum trailer over from the Eastern Shore for its maiden recovery mission, which meant we needed to meet early so that he could get back home in the afternoon for an appointment. So Bennett and David and I met up before dawn in my driveway and we did a convoy of Hondas stuffed with recovery gear to Dan’s house, with a brief stop at Dunkin’ for fuel. The second-gen Honda CR-V is now the official chase car/recovery vehicle of the Old Line State Binders.

Brian pulled up shortly after we got there, and thankfully the field was dry and cold enough to be solid under the axles of the trailer. After walking the route, we found it clear and dry enough to drive on, so Bennett and I pulled as close as we could to the 800 and started unloading tools.

I gave the family cash and got a bill of sale for the truck, although there’s no VIN number I can find anywhere—on some trucks it was bolted to the firewall and on others it was bolted to the door. This truck has neither, so getting a title is going to be a challenge—but I have two good options there. Later on I’ll scrape the frame rail to find the true VIN and get a lineset ticket.

Brian is a pro at navigating through narrow corridors, and quickly had the trailer backed up to the truck. While he was doing that I started loosening lug nuts—and found out quickly that the driver’s side studs are reverse thread. I’d brought two spares for the front tires, and with an assist from Brian’s corded impact gun (run off the plug on the back of his Ford hybrid, very trick) and my Hi-Lift jack, we had the wheels swapped and the truck ready to roll very quickly. (Note to self: diagnose and repair the lowering linkage on the Hi-Lift). Running the line out from his winch, I hopped up into the Scout, put it in neutral, and we quickly had it up on the trailer. It went so smoothly, in fact, we had it strapped down and ready to move by 9AM. I threw the two bad tires in the back as well as an original skinny 7″ steel wheel and we strapped all of the loose parts down.

Then we went bushwhacking behind the garage and David and I walked the steel half-cab to the bed of Brian’s truck. With that in place, My task was done, but we wanted to stop back in the woods to see if we could get the visor off the junk Travelall for Bennett, as well as scope out the bed extensions on the other pickup. With a bunch of PBblaster, verious screwdrivers and a BFH we got the visor and the mounts off the truck, as well as some other doodads.

With that stuff secured, and a final survey of the remaining vehicles in the bushes, we checked the straps again and got on the road for home. Back at the house, my neighbor moved his second car out of the driveway so Brian could back the trailer up and straight into our yard. We dropped it in between the garage and the greenhouse with few problems, folded up all the straps, and cleared out.

With that done, I treated the guys to a hearty breakfast down the street, and we all marveled over how quickly the job went. Back at the house I handed off some tools and a vise to Brian, and a spare wheel and the manual shift column I’d collected to David, a nd everyone left for home around 1PM. I came inside and promptly fell asleep on the couch with a snoring dog, which was exactly what I needed.

On Sunday I took advantage of a free hour to pull the spark plugs and dump some Marvel Mystery Oil down to the pistons, as well as pull the carburetor to soak in cleaner. The plugs were fouled with carbon as was the carburetor, which means it was running too rich when it was parked. The whole truck is filthy, which is no surprise, so it’ll need a good pressure wash before I can really start tearing things apart. The plan is to move Peer Pressure up to Brian’s place, where he’s got a spare garage bay he can rent me in January with a plug for a trickle charger while the weather is salty. I’ll keep the 800 at the house where I can work on getting it moving, and leave the Travelall napping in the driveway.

I have a crap-ton of video to edit over the holiday break, including some drone footage I shot before I crashed it into a tree and broke one of the legs. So that repair job is also on the calendar. But stay tuned, it’ll be live soon!

Big thanks to Bennett, David, and Brian for all their help and another fun early-morning tetanus adventure!

Posted on   |   by bill   |   Leave a Comment on Mission: 800 Recovery  |  Posted in Friends, Purchasing, Trip Logs

Snowy Trucks

I had the Travelall out to run downtown to pick up some lunch before the County sprayed the roads down with salt. I have to admit, the electric fuel pump I installed has really spoiled me, because it only takes about 3 seconds to prime the carb and one pump of the pedal, and she fires right up. I do have to bleed the brake system again, and I suspect I’ll need to replace the last legacy line left (the one going down the driver’s side frame rail) to permanently fix some lingering sticky brake issues.

The Scout has always taken some more judicious stomping of the pedal and cranking to get fuel up to the bowl, but fires up and smooths out almost immediately. I let her idle for a good 15 minutes and used her toasty defroster to warm my fingers up before finishing the front walk. She’s back in the garage napping peacefully.

Meanwhile, I’m firming up the plans for a Scout recovery mission next weekend. Brian has volunteered his truck and trailer, Bennett is on board, and our friend David asked to come along as well. Provided the field isn’t a muddy swamp, it should be relatively straightforward to back the trailer in, swap some good wheels on for the bad ones, and winch it onto the trailer. With all of that in mind, I’ve got a recovery list started:

  • Ratchet straps
  • Two solid wheels (these are checked and ready to go)
  • Lug wrench
  • Hi-lift
  • Compressor and short hose with tire inflator
  • C-clamps for the top
  • 1/2 bolts for the top?
  • Snatch straps
  • Impact wrench/toolbox
  • PBblaster!
  • Come-along (I know we’ve got one; maybe Bennett has this?)

The only question mark is where the halfcab and rollbar will go. They’re not currently on the truck and the hardware is MIA, so we’ll have to ratchet them down to the truck in the worst case—I can always throw the doors in the back of my CR-V.

The dropoff plan is to back the trailer up the neighbors’ driveway and basically pull or push it down the hill across my backyard to sit between the garage and greenhouse. This way it’s out of eyesight from the street but close enough to the garage that I can throw an air hose or extension cord out the back window.

Posted on   |   by bill   |   Leave a Comment on Snowy Trucks  |  Posted in Friends, Future Plans

Recovery

Bennett sent the Old Line Mafia a bunch of pictures last night that he got from Brendan, showing the the trucks at Dan’s being pulled out of the woods. It looks like Brendan went in there with a bushhog and a dozer and cleared out a ton of the brush and trees. He’s now got all the trucks staged to where he can haul them out one at a time.

He also pulled the blue Scout 800 up to the front where Brian and I can haul it out. If Dan’s family can find the title, we are hoping to grab that and the tan 800 for scientific research and R&D on the EV project.

Posted on   |   by bill   |   Leave a Comment on Recovery  |  Posted in Friends, Future Plans

On Time

I bribed Bennett with a T-shirt. Well, a T-shirt and an R-series doorhandle. Actually, a T-shirt, doorhandle, and donuts.

Realizing I’m way over my head trying to sort out the timing issue on Darth Haul, I figured it was time to bring in the big guns. Bennett has years of experience with all manner of different vehicles, and I figured that knowledge was what I needed to figure out what the hell is happening. I got all of my tools prepared, pulled the Scout forward and was finishing up installing a replacement hydraulic line to the clutch when Bennett walked down the driveway. I already had the engine monitor and my timing light hooked up, and over our first donut I explained all of the symptoms and what I’d done to date. We puzzled over things for a bit, and he wisely suggested starting with the basics: verifying the #8 cylinder was at TDC, then making sure the rotor was pointed in the right direction. We used my compression tester to bump the engine, and then went to the old-school method where I laid underneath and turned the crank bolt by hand until we hit the compression stroke.

When we found that, we looked at the timing mark on the flywheel and found that where it should have been pointing at 0, it was actually somewhere past 25˚ advanced, which was….very wrong. We verified we were at TDC again, made sure to mark where the rotor was pointing, verified the plug wires were all in the right order, and scratched our heads a bit. Then we tried cranking the truck over to see where the timing was. It was, of course, very bad, and running choppier than it had been before, blowing clouds of white smoke.

Shutting it down, we considered pulling the distributor and moving it back a tooth, figuring maybe the balancer had slipped or the distributor had been stabbed erroneously, but Bennett scratched his head a little more and started looking at the carburetor. We verified all the connections were correct, put a hose on the EGR valve (which was plugged off, as was the port on the back of the carburetor) and started the truck again. This made it happier, and while it was still choppy, it ran a little better. Bennett messed with the distributor while I read out the RPM, but we couldn’t get it to smooth out or calm down.

We then started fooling with the metering jets on the carb, and Bennett was puzzled at the fact that they were only open a half a turn while the engine was obviously running very rich. He then asked me if I knew how much pressure the electric pump was putting out, which I didn’t. He thought about that for a minute and suggested that maybe the electric pump was overfilling the bowl, which was why the engine was running rough. He’d had this very problem in a Mustang years ago, and knew that the Holley 2300 doesn’t like anything above 4 lbs. of pressure. So we rigged up a vacuum feed to the carb with a squeeze bottle full of gas and used that to fill the bowl. That seemed to make a difference, and then we carefully started dialing in the proper metering and the idle circuit. In a couple of minutes, we had the RPM down to about 800 and the engine running smoothly. He put the timing light on it and found that it was only 15° advanced, which was a huge improvement over where it had been before. Letting it idle off the gravity feed, I was amazed at how much better it sounded and smoother it ran.

Grinning, we both stood back and let it run for a bit until it ran out of gas. He had work to do at home, so he took off at about 2 o’clock, and I got Finn to help me bleed the brake system one more time. Then I went to the basement, set up my tools on the workbench, and started rebuilding the Carter fuel pump. This is the original pump off the truck, and should allow for the proper fuel pressure going to the carb. I followed the directions in a YouTube video posted by the company who made the kit, and found it very easy—almost meditative. With the football game on over my workbench and a cold beer next to the toolbox, it was a nice way to spend a Sunday afternoon. The whole pump is now ready to go, minus a fuel filter, which is at the local Napa to pick up. Hopefully tomorrow afternoon it’ll dry out and I can stick it in place during my lunch break.

Posted on   |   by bill   |   2 Comments on On Time  |  Posted in Carburetor, Friends, Travelall

Project Slowflake: Day Five

Here’s the fifth video in the Project Slowflake series, where I went over to Brian’s for two days to hook up the battery to the power pack with the aftermarket wiring harness, and test it out to see if it would run. When we sorted that out, we cracked the battery pack open and pulled the wiring harness apart from there. With that done, we made a bunch of measurements and started planning out how to organize the batteries in the truck.

Posted on   |   by bill   |   Leave a Comment on Project Slowflake: Day Five  |  Posted in EV Swap, Friends

Braked

Well, this weekend was a journey. Mostly a good one; a lot of good stuff got accomplished, and I spent a bunch of time with friends, but it wasn’t without its challenges.

We had a workday scheduled at Brian’s place in the country to work on Heavy D, Bennett’s long-sidelined pickup waiting for welding repairs, a windshield install, and re-assembly of the front clip. The last time I was out there I’d bent and formed a complicated section of metal to weld to the front of the firewall but Brian’s commercial welder was too strong to work the sheet metal without blowing through it. We were also going to help Brian move his pickup around and place the bed on the frame to free up space, and see what other stuff we could get up to.

My plan was to drive Darth Haul out there for her first short-distance trip, so I worked on the engine timing and fuel system on Thursday. I was having issues with the fuel pump pulling debris from the saddle tank up into the pickup and clogging it, so I rigged the boat tank up with a length of hose and put it on the passenger floor. After loading up my tools, welder, and welding bin, I hit the road at about 9 and took my time getting out there. Brian’s place is about 20 miles away, and I took back roads to avoid any high-speed sections. The truck did very well! Shifting is smooth, the engine is strong, and the brakes worked well. I noticed a vibration at 40mph and heard some rubbing in back, which foreshadowed later events.

At Brian’s house, I helped he and Bennett to clean out Mr. Hanky, because our friends Chad and Liz were coming down from Pittsburgh to possibly buy it. Bennett has had it up for sale since Nats in order to free up cash and space for a cleaner Scout, and they’ve been in the market for another project for a while. They arrived at 11 and he showed Chad the truck while we caught up with Liz. By 1PM the deal was done, and we helped them load the trucks up with a pile of extra parts. It was bittersweet to see Hanky drive away, but it’s great to see him going to a good home—it reminds me so much of selling Chewbacca to Carolyn to give to Brian—I know they’re going to do a great job reviving him.

After moving Brian’s pickup and freeing up a bunch of floor space, we had pizza delivered for a late lunch and then set to work on Heavy D. The first big task was to re-install the windshield, and luckily the rubber was designed exactly like what I put in Peer Pressure, so I knew how to align it in the channel. Between the four of us and with judicious use of glass cleaner, we got it in place and then used plastic putty spreaders to guide the edges into the channels, then fold the locking flap over.

With that done, I set my welder up and put the patch in place, ground it down, and got it ready for paint while Brian and Bennett started hanging fenders. Within about an hour we had the truck put mostly back together and ready for a test fire. The carb was mad at being ignored for a year, and didn’t want to run properly, so Bennett will have to go back and diagnose that. By 5PM we wound down and set course for home. I took Bennett back to his place, but noticed the truck working harder as we drove. Stopping for gas I found all four wheels hot to the touch, which told us the brakes were dragging. By the time we got to his house the passenger rear was smoking slightly. We pulled the wheels off and cooled them down with a hose, then banged the drums off with a hammer. The pads were all the way extended, which meant that the system wasn’t releasing pressure. It was getting dark, so he gave me the keys to his CR-V and I drove that home after parking Darth in his driveway.

The next morning I got there at 9 with all of my brake tools and fluids, and we started troubleshooting the system. After tearing apart and rebuilding the rear drums three times, we tested the master cylinder upstream and verified it wasn’t the lines above either axle. So we disconnected and bench bled the master until it looked clear, then connected everything back up to test. It looked like the brakes were grabbing and releasing, and a test drive verified this. While under the truck I also noticed a huge dent in the driveshaft, which explains the vibrations above 40MPH.

I packed up my tools, extended my sincere gratitude for Bennett’s knowledge and time, and set course for home. She ran well and didn’t feel like she was struggling the farther we went. The brakes and clutch felt good, and I got her home with no problems. The wheels were hot when I checked them after parking it, but not scalding as they had been before. It may take another bench bleed to really kick the issue, but for now, I’m happy she’s back in the driveway.

Posted on   |   by bill   |   Leave a Comment on Braked  |  Posted in Brakes, Friends, Purchasing, Travelall, Trip Logs

Slowflake to EV, Part 1

I’m back at home after working on Brian’s EV project. We put in four solid 10 hour days, pulling the battery pack and power pack out of a Nissan Leaf and then pulling the front clip and 196 four-cylinder engine out of Slowflake, his Scout 800. Getting the major assemblies out of the Leaf was much easier than we both were expecting, apart from not having enough 18 mm wrenches. Working on an EV with only 36,000 miles means all of the bolts came out easily and there was no grease covering every surface. The Scout, on the other hand, was a different story. Slowflake is 100 times cleaner than Peer Pressure, being a relatively recent restomod, but the transfer case was leaking and the transmission was slick with a coating of dirt and oil.

This marks the first time I’ve taken an engine out without the help of veterans, so we were learning as we went. Originally thinking we would split the transmission from the engine and just pull that out, we quickly realized those bolts were inaccessible, and we would have to pull everything out as one unit. That meant we had to get very creative with the cherry picker to lift up and angle the engine under the transmission hump and over the front bumper to remove it.

This process took the better part of a day, and it seemed like every time we thought we’d disconnected all the wires we found one more that had to be removed. But on the evening of the second day, we had the engine out and sitting on some blocks of wood, waiting for the transmission to be split.

The third day started with separating the two and putting the truck back up on a lift to get the transmission reinstalled. That took some doing; we had to get it up off the ground and onto the transmission hoist, which was taller than the cherry picker’s reach. We looked around and Brian said, “why don’t we just use the lift?” Genius. We chained it to the lift and got it onto the hoist, then muscled it into place under the truck. With the crossmember reinstalled it still wanted to fall out, so we steadied it with a block of wood and hooked the rear driveshaft back up.

On the fourth day, we started with something easy and installed a rear disc brake kit Brian had purchased at Nats five years ago. This took two middle-aged men a couple of hours and a lot of head-scratching while we tried to follow lousy directions, but common sense and mechanical aptitude prevailed and we got everything hooked up—and we didn’t have to flare a single brake line, which was some kind of minor miracle. (Looking at this kit gives me an itch to buy and install the front kit on Darth).

Then we got the EV power pack back on the cherry picker and hoisted it into the Scout engine bay to look at the fitment. There’s plenty of room in there—enough that we could probably fit a stack of batteries in front of the motor, if we run out of space in other places.

We were running out of things we could tackle without input from the guy who built the replacement wire harness, which is the first part of the puzzle that needs to be solved. The next thing that we need to do is hook the battery pack up to the power unit to test them both outside the car and verify everything works. Then we separate the brain at the top of the power pack from the inverter/engine combo and have an aluminum plate laser-cut to offset the two so that it fits in the engine bay.

We also need to talk to the guy who manufactures the adapter for the EV engine to the original transmission to see how close they need to be.

After that, we have to crack open the battery pack to see what sizes the individual battery elements are and how many are in there, then figure out where we can tuck them into the nooks and crannies in the Scout. Then we fabricate some aluminum cradle/boxes (thus practicing our TIG welding) for each group, and figure out how to wire them up together.

I set up cameras everywhere and wound up having a ton of footage (338GB) to wade through for YouTube. I’m going to split each day up into its own individual video because Monday’s video timed out at 40 minutes.

I’ve been looking forward to this project for months now, ever since Brian dreamed it up, and it was exactly what I needed to clear my head during this sabbatical. Four solid days of hanging out with my friend, getting our hands dirty, solving problems, and coming up with solutions felt great. I was happy that the skills I’ve learned in the last three years working on Darth Haul have come in so clutch. It feels good to learn and grow and tackle new things that would have been inconceivable five years ago.

Posted on   |   by bill   |   2 Comments on Slowflake to EV, Part 1  |  Posted in EV Swap, Friends