Here’s a recently unearthed shot of Chewbacca on the beach in Nag’s Head in about 1999 or so. My friend James is flying my kite over on the right side. In retrospect I’m amazed at how naive and trusting I was to drive 300+ miles in a truck I’d only recently bought, but I’d already taken her across the Eastern Shore to Assateague (150 miles) with no problems. She ran like a top, and it was loads of fun to shift into 4-Lo and get her out on the beach. I think we probably drove 3-4 miles over the sand until we found a section we liked.
We lost one of our Scout friends a couple of years ago unexpectedly. A. was an encyclopedia of Scout and International knowledge. If you needed to know the size of a particular bolt on an engine or the diameter of a piece of hose, he knew exactly what it was. If you needed to know what carburetor came in a particular truck for a particular year, he knew. When I first got Peer Pressure, I was having problems diagnosing accelerator cable issues and shot a picture of what I was dealing with to the local Scout group. He reached out to me within a couple of hours, told me I had the wrong throttle cable mount, and offered to swap with me for the correct manual mount. He mailed me the part the next day and within a week I had the truck running much better than it had been before.
When he passed, his estate went to his sister, and he left behind a truck and a whole bunch of parts at his house. She’s been storing it ever since and reached out to Bennett to help her figure out what’s there and what it’s worth. So we’ve organized a scouting trip up there to survey and catalog everything, and figure out how we can help her sell it. Bennett and I are driving up next weekend and we have no idea what to expect. Part of our plan is going to be to getting the truck running. We are told it ran a couple of years ago, but we don’t know if he had done any extra work to it or what shape any of the major systems are in. So I’ve got a list of tools and parts for an engine revival ready to go.
We’re also told there’s a bunch of parts that he had collected over the years, but we don’t know if they’re organized, or for what vehicles they might be. His truck is an original scout 80 or 800, but from what we remember he had collected a bunch of Scout II parts. So it’s going to be a very interesting trip.
This is the spare steering wheel Tony got me last fall, completely restored with 2-part epoxy, a layer of adhesion promoter, high-quality enamel, and a top coat of UV protectant. I’m really happy with how this turned out and I can’t wait to put it on the truck.
I’ve had a set of Scout II wing window replacement gaskets on my bench since 2023, right before I bought the Travelall. Given the current temperatures and my desire to stay warm, I dug them off the bottom of the pile and decided it was time to get them installed. The kits come with two gaskets and a small bag of parts—a bunch of tiny screws and two rubber caps for the front of the window. The new rubber is beefy and strong.
The first thing to do is break down the old windows. If you’re like me, you’ve got several spares, and between all of them there might be one in good shape. They are 40+ years old at this point and have been mounted in a vehicle with a suspension designed for a covered wagon, so they’ve been shaken to pieces and baked by the sun. I’ve got four spare frames for each side, with two complete passenger frames (good hinge, good frame, solid pivot, intact latch) and one for the driver’s side. The rest have an assortment of problems: a broken hinge, broken frame, broken pivot, missing latch, or a mix-‘n-match assortment of the above. I gathered up the best of each and broke them down on the bench, starting with a driver’s assembly. The spring-loaded pivot was broken in half—a common problem—so after I disassembled it completely I welded two sections of 18 ga. steel to either side of the pivot.
Back on the workbench I installed the rubber gasket based on the instructions on Anything Scout’s video. I found the rubber pretty easy to work with, and after about ten minutes I had it installed inside the channel and ready for the next step. I fed the window back down through the pivot, making sure the washers were in place correctly, and lined it up with the outside hinge. Putting that back in place involves a pair of pop rivets on the outside front face of the frame. I stalled out two years ago because I didn’t have a rivet gun, but borrowed one from Bennett to finish this job out. The instructions say to hold the hinge as close to the frame as possible when you install, which I did.
Then I used an allen key to put four of the tiny screws into the backside of the vertical of the frame.
hard to really see it here, but the glass is cattywampus in the frame.
Opening and closing the window, I found that the top of the window wasn’t aligning with the top of the frame; the top section leans backwards by about an eighth of an inch which makes the whole thing hard to close. I figured I would try rebuilding the other side to see if I could replicate the problem and found that the same thing happened on that side too, this time to an even worse degree. It’s an easy thing to drill the pop rivets back out, so I tried that, put new ones in and got the same results. Doing this with a third test window also resulted in misaligned glass.
At this point I had two options. I tried using a wide-jawed pair of vice grips to get a solid hold on the outer bend of the hinge to try to move it outward in order to widen the gap at the top of the glass. This didn’t work; I couldn’t get enough purchase on the frame without bending the rivets to move the metal of the hinge. The next option is to buy a shoulder rivet kit from the original rubber supplier, pull both of the untouched windows out of the truck, drill the pin out of the hinges, swap the new rubber in place, and rebuild with new rivets.
My next step will be to break the spare driver’s window frame back down because the latch on the window is broken, and replacements are $100. The only good window/latch assembly I have for the driver’s side is actually on the truck, and that frame is broken at the pivot point, so it needs repairing in any case. So I’m really no further along than I was when I started.
I’ve embarked on a project to digitize all of of my old paper files after I found out that the big multifunction copiers at work are back online and are able to email again. They have batch scanners that will take a giant stack of papers and smash them into one PDF that I can then email myself. Going through my overstuffed file cabinet I found a long-lost folder of Scout documents. It’s all Chewbacca era stuff, including the original lineset ticket, most of the receipts for the registration, an April 1972 copy of Mechanix Illustrated with a review of the new Scout II, and a bunch of other assorted papers. I was happy to find pictures that I thought I’d lost as well as correspondence from the original owner I bought it from in 1997. I’ll start posting them here as I process all the files.
This is the original listing for Chewbacca from a nice man up in Lancaster, PA. I bought this truck the day before my birthday in 1998.
Saturday I had the afternoon to fiddle with the truck, so I focused on getting the clutch unstuck. First I stopped at Hobo Freight to pick up some long pry tools to separate the clutch plate from the flywheel. Later I climbed under the truck and tried to get the tools where they needed to be, but found that the angle required was too great—the bellhousing made it impossible to get the tools I had in the proper position.
The next possibility is to run the engine to temperature and heat soak the clutch, so I focused on getting her started. While I was able to get her to idle last weekend I couldn’t get her to catch at all with gas in the bowl.
Sunday morning I had a little time before a junkyard run to pull the plugs on Darth. All of them except #5 and 7 on the driver’s side were pretty fouled with gas and oil, so I cleaned them off and put them back in. I also checked the other wires for corrosion and re-routed them all above the water pump neck. With that done, I connected the boat tank behind the filter, powered the electric pump and tried cranking the truck over, but still couldn’t get it to catch. At this point I’m thinking the carburetor needs to be pulled off and cleaned out again, because I can get fuel to the bowl and I know I’m getting spark to the plugs.
At 11, Bennett pulled up to the house in his Scout. We transferred tools and drove Peer Pressure to a junkyard on the eastern side of Baltimore to pick parts off a Chrysler Crossfire they’ve had in their yard for two weeks. He’d already been over there once to get some stuff but wanted to return for some other things before it got scrapped. His Crossfire is almost 20 years old now and a lot of small things are breaking, so he had a long list of plastic parts and other fasteners to grab. The two big things on his list were an intact windshield and the corner of the rocker panel behind the driver side door. The car had been picked over pretty well, so we got what we could and he focused on cutting the rocker out with a Sawzall while I tried to cut away the glue around the windshield. He was stymied by a thick section of structural metal under the outer skin and a dying set of batteries, and I was stopped by rock-hard glue that prevented any blade I had from cutting.
The junkyard on this side of town has always been an interesting place to experience the wide spectrum of humanity; all the self-service yards around here have the same grubby, slightly institutional feel of a prison, but this one is the grubbiest. It always feels like one is visiting a shady uncle doing time for a meth bust. While we were pulling parts we had two different men stop by and ask to borrow our impact driver; both reeked of pot and could barely stand, let alone talk. I demurred, assuming I would never see my tool again—figuring the chances were equal they would either steal it or wander off, forget where they were, and fall asleep in one of the cars.
We then found a 2009 Nissan Versa and proceeded to demolish the plastic dashboard to expose the electric steering unit underneath. The one I’d disassembled last year had already been partially deconstructed due to a head-on collision, but this one was intact so we had to get physical with the plastics and fasteners. Once we’d cut away half the dashboard and wrapped it up over the passenger side, the guts were easier to reach and we got the unit out in one piece. Then we had to prop the column up over the wheelbarrow and remove the airbag, steering wheel, and control stalks so that he wouldn’t be charged for the extra elements. With those safely collected, I made a brief stop at a CR-V to pull the driver’s sunvisor and then we headed for home.
So there wasn’t much forward progress with the truck, which has me feeling blue. But here’s a recap video from the last two weeks:
While it may look from the outside like I go into every workday with a plan, the truth is that I rarely do unless I’ve got a clear plan mapped out. In the cases where there is no plan, I often spend the day bouncing from one small project to another letting my ADD get the better of me. So in the spirit of using this page both as a place to record what I’ve already done and keep a list of things I intend to do, here’s another list.
One of my main goals is to unstick the clutch in the driveway. The inspection cover is still off, and I’ve been squirting PBblaster between the flywheel and clutch disc every day, but I suspect I’ve got to do a couple of things to really make a difference:
Put it in neutral and bump the starter to spin the flywheel around.
Spray penetrant on this newly exposed area.
Prop the clutch pedal down so it’s mechanically disengaged.
Get underneath and, with a thin metal putty knife, and try to separate the clutch and flywheel.
Add more penetrant, bump the starter to spin the disc, and repeat.
If that doesn’t work, the next step will be to put it in high gear, hold down the brakes, and bump the starter. This might release the clutch.
If that fails, the next suggestion is to get the truck idling to temperature to let the heat expand the two surfaces and hopefully the combination of that and penetrant will help unstick the two.
I’ve got to pick up some new fuel filters and exchange my long battery cable for a shorter one first, so a trip to the auto parts store is the first order of business.
When MotorTrend was shut down earlier this year, the management offered first dibs on all of the project cars to each of the hosts. David Freiburger bought the International pickup he resurrected on an episode of Roadkill Garage and cleaned it up for resale.
I would love it if he’d kept this and kept working on it; it’s three years older than Darth Haul and has a straight six engine, but otherwise is a dead ringer: IH red, with 4 speed stick and no frills. $5K is a screaming good deal for this truck.
I’ve found a new ASMR mechanic fix-it YouTube channel that does away with a lot of the stuff that annoys me about most of the other channels out there. Like podcasts, the channels I follow are graded by the content, the presentation, and narration. The last one can be a make or break for me: if the narrator is annoying or has a terrible voice, I’m usually out. There’s a ton of content out there that fit into my areas of interest but which I can’t stand due to failures in the categories above.
Simon Fordman hosts a channel where all he does is fix cars. There’s no audio narration, which demands close attention because he puts it in the closed captioning—so if you want to follow along you’ve got to keep a close eye on things. Watching his latest video, he fixes a formerly abandoned AMC Javelin with starting, idling and brake issues, and just by watching I realized there are three things I need to investigate on Darth Haul: the choppy idle could be a fuel issue or it could be that the points are corroded. He does a simple test at idle to figure out which plugs aren’t firing, checks the gap on the points, and adjusts the timing at the distributor to smooth the engine out.
The car cover I’ve been using tends to trap moisture inside when it’s on the truck. I’ve noticed dampness in the engine bay immediately after removing it, and I’ll bet that’s had some effect on the electronics under the hood. So I’ve got a game plan for my next workday:
Replace the fuel filter and see if that solves the delivery issue.
Pull the plugs one by one to see which cylinders aren’t firing.
Adjust the gap in the points to (hopefully) solve that issue. If not, try another compression test.
