Category: 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

Laboring

Labor Day weekend we had absolutely nothing planned, so I took advantage of free time and mild weather to focus on getting Darth Haul running reliably. Saturday morning, after walking the dog and having breakfast with the girls, I went out and set up all of the diagnostic equipment I’ve collected for carbureted engines: a vintage dwell/tach/volt gauge, a vacuum gauge, and a  timing light. I hooked the boat tank up to the engine and painted marks on the flywheel and timing marks with a white Sharpie, then ran it up to temperature. Messing around with the distributor, I found that it was happiest running at over 20˚ of advance, which is definitely not the way it should be. Anytime I brought the timing back down to a comfortable 10˚ the engine got choppy and began to die.

I put the light on the Scout just to see where the baseline for a smooth-running engine was, and verified that was at around 8˚, which is what I remembered from the service manual. No amount of distributor adjustment could get it to calm down. Puzzled, I zeroed out the carb and adjusted the mixture screws and the idle to get the engine to slow down, and was happy to find that the stumble at acceleration was gone. At idle I was pulling 20 inches of vacuum pressure. With the engine running better (but not timed correctly), I took it for a spin around the block and was happy to find it didn’t stall out once. I also noticed the speedometer isn’t working.

At around this point my Harbor Freight timing light died, so I had to run out and get a replacement. Strangely, it took a while to get the truck to start when I got back; I’d left it at 10˚ or so, and had to adjust it a bunch before it would catch again. I continued messing with the timing but couldn’t resolve the issue. Stumped, I stepped back and cleaned the truck up as much as possible for Cars & Coffee the next morning: I swapped out the old wood floor in the back for the new one, swept out the dust, and cleaned all the windows.

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Sunday morning I made some coffee and ran the truck up in the driveway before taking it for a spin down the road. I pulled in to C&C and parked it next to a sexy Morgan 8, and I was soon joined by Bennett in his Speedster.

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The Travelall was an immediate hit with the crowd; I got a lot of questions about what it is and where I got it, as well as whether I’d driven it a long ways with the boat tank. We had a good turnout, and at one point I was parked across from an Acura NSX and a McLaren.

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Back at the house I did a bunch of straightening up in the garage, and David stopped by to pick up a bunch of parts I’d sourced for him at Nats and elsewhere. I was able to pass along the passenger fender and 6-cylinder air cleaner from Ohio, as well as a set of metal door cards I got in Pittsburgh, a pair of escutcheons, and the two eyebrow sections I’d cut off the truck in New York. He was super-happy to take delivery, and headed back to his house to get his truck running after a long pause.

One thing he mentioned to me was that he’d talked to a local spring guy about rebuilding his spring packs, and was quoted a  reasonable price to do so. I was VERY intrigued to hear about this, as my springs are also as flat as a board. This would be an excellent fall-winter project, as it would require jacking the truck onto stands and pulling the springs off.

Sunday afternoon we ran a bunch of errands but after getting back home I put my spare door on the worktable and started breaking it down to pull the glass out. What I wound up having to do was take the black inner surround out, pop the clips holding the felt out, and prep the top half to be able to slide the rails and window out as a unit. Both of the screws holding the lower ends of the rails were, predictably, rusted solid, so I hit them with PBblaster but resolved to cut them out with a death wheel. The only angle grinder I’ve got that fits inside the door is the cheap pneumatic one I got from Harbor Freight, and here I was stopped dead by a leaking/broken moisture filter on the compressor. After picking up some new fittings I repaired that after dinner, and got things ready to start on Monday morning.

A few weeks ago, Bennett had gotten a call from a guy who had a mixture of old pickup parts and passed along his info to me. There were some pictures of C-series stuff that I was partially interested in, so after walking the dog and doing some chores around the house I drove a half an hour north to meet up with him. In his garage he had boxes of assorted parts, which I picked through carefully. I wound up going light: a reproduction MT-118 parts catalog for A, B and C-series trucks, a pair of beautiful black C-series sun visors, an ashtray in great shape, an NOS accelerator pedal, and one mirror assembly to pass on to Tyler out in Frederick.

Between odd jobs around the house, I fired up the compressor to notch the two screws at the bottom of the green door enough to turn with a screwdriver, then gently pulled the rails out to free up the glass. When that was done, it was easy to get the glass out. It’s in good shape, and after I wire-wheeled the metal bracket at the bottom, I taped it off and sprayed it with Rust-Stop. Getting the broken pane out of Darth is going to be a challenge, but now I know what I’m doing, and barring any major rust issues, it should be relatively straightforward to swap the glass in.

I also couldn’t help myself and swapped the black visors into the truck. They’re just a little bit longer than the gold ones that came out of the green truck, so they don’t fit into the clips next to the rearview easily. But they look great!

Posted on   |   by bill   |   1 Comment on Laboring  |  Posted in Carburetor, Friends, Purchasing, Travelall

Weekend Wandering

Without Darth in the driveway, I’ve been tackling some small things on the Scout that have been bugging me. The biggest of these was the exhaust donut leak, which was not remedied a couple of weeks ago. Looking around the interwebs I found a two-piece flange replacement available locally, and set about to installing it. Getting the original flange off was easy enough, but getting the new one on was trickier. Because it’s heavier and thicker, it sits lower on the exhaust pipe and thus requires a longer bolt. And its location next to the frame meant that there was a lot of wiggling and some hammering involved to get it in the right place before I could tighten it up. But after a brief test ride Saturday and a longer 50-mile drive on Sunday, there’s no leak, and I think I can call this fixed.

While I was under the truck I tightened up the emergency brake cable, which has been loose for months, and checked that off the list.

Sunday I met up with Bennett, Brian and a couple of other folks up at Dan’s place to show our friend Brendan the whole stash in the woods; he’d be the guy most interested in clearing a path and hauling out all the trucks. I prepared better this time, bringing a can of 40% DEET, duct-taping my ankles, and generally insuring that the ticks couldn’t get to me.

We started in the garage and looked over all the stuff in there, and then walked back through the field to the trucks in the woods. The underbrush has grown a lot in two months. Brendan looked over things carefully and then we walked back to the garage, discussing what he’d be interested in and what he wasn’t.

While that was happening, I dug out a trio of good hubcaps from the huge stash in the garage and made a good deal on them. Brian made a deal on a rusty Scout 800 tailgate, which he had to go back into the woods for.

While he and Bennett did that, I cleared off one of the better Scout 800s closer to the house, which was covered in vines, and got a better look at it. I’ve been thinking about a test vehicle for Brian’s electrification project, and that truck looks like an excellent candidate. I think I’ve talked him into taking advantage of the sale. If he had the space I’d recommend grabbing it and the blue 80 to be able to account for all of the changes between early and late production models.

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Back home in the garage, I was looking a little closer at the gauge set Tyler handed off to me, and rubbed off some of the dirt to reveal the serial numbers. I was surprised to see the initials SW, which almost certainly stands for Stewart Warner, and started looking up the serials. It turns out they are Stewart-Warner, and they look pretty cool. So, I’ll have to consider if I want to swap those in.

Posted on   |   by bill   |   Leave a Comment on Weekend Wandering  |  Posted in Friends, Junkyards, Trip Logs

Parts and Waits

No word on the Travelall this week. I was hopeful they might call me sometime Friday to pick it up, but I didn’t hear anything.

Meanwhile, I was out in Frederick shooting video for work, and when I was done with that, I texted my Travelall acquaintance Tyler, who’d told me a while back he had a bunch of parts left over from his project. We were only about five miles away so it was a short drive over to his house. He showed me the updates to his truck, which is now running and driving, and it is beautiful. He put a Crown Vic subframe under the front and a SBC in the engine bay, tubbed the rear wheels, and put the whole thing on bags. He fired it up and it sounds loud and mean. We looked over the other stuff he’s done, including installing an inexpensive headliner kit from Jegs, and traded some information on parts.

His headliner is a five-piece set, which might not work with the bows I’ve got, but I liked the look of it. I also looked carefully at the shoulder belts he put in, with nutserts on the B and C-pillars. I’ve been thinking about how I would add shoulder belts to my truck, and I like the way he put his in. So there’s some inspiration for a winter project there.

When I got back home, I went through the bin and catalogued it. There’s some stuff I was happy to find—things I’ve been looking for, and a couple of things I’d forgotten about:

    • An almost full set of original seatbelts in much better shape than the ones out of both of my trucks. The chrome buckles and metal mounting rings are all in excellent shape, as are the rubber protective covers.

  • Two round metal dishes with circles in the center, and threaded O rings. It took me a minute to identify these, but when I did I was thrilled: these are the countersunk rear seatbelt mounting points that are set into the wood floor. One of the seatbelts has a carabiner-style latch which is clearly meant to be removed when the rear seat is folded forward. I’ve been kicking myself for having junked the green truck with these still inside; this is a fantastic stroke of luck.

Also in the bin were

  • A late-model coolant overflow setup, which is basically a Scout-style container retrofitted to a metal panel.
  • a single rear tailgate pot in good shape
  • Four late-model IH hubcaps
  • A brake pedal lever assembly
  • A dual-chamber brake master cylinder and a clutch master cylinder, which would be an upgrade to my single-pot unit. I’ve got a set from the green truck along with the firewall mounting plate, which will be the firs things I try.
  • Two rear seat safety rods and latches; these are the pieces that hold the rear seat in place.
  • A rubber body mount that goes between the frame and the front clip, in excellent shape
  • Two suspension components from the front steering assembly
  • A bag of assorted bolts.

  • A full set of gauges in a style I’ve never seen before—I’m pretty positive these are all aftermarket, but they’re pretty cool, and definitely different.
  • Another working horn. Out of the four I have, only one works reliably, so I’m hopeful this one is the second of the two tones I need for a proper setup.

I know I can find a good home for a bunch of this stuff; I also sent him photos of my tailgate in the hopes that a guy he knows can use it for another project. So I owe him a trunkful of very good beer, or perhaps some good bourbon if he’s a cocktail sort of guy. We’ll see.

Posted on   |   by bill   |   Leave a Comment on Parts and Waits  |  Posted in Friends, Seat Belts, Travelall