Well look at this luxurious new truck. Here’s a shot of the floor mats I ordered in the Scout from CocoMats; they are beautiful heavy-duty pieces that were cut perfectly. I couldn’t be happier with the fit and finish. They make the inside of the truck look 47% less redneck, which is to say they are magical. Hazel approves as well. I cannot recommend this company highly enough; the whole buying experience was what you hope every purchase might be like in this day and age of Amazon.
Updating previous posts about recorded mileage I’m getting in the Scout, I did some beginner math in Excel and then had to call in my sister, the logistics expert, to help me with a formula. The speedometer is original to the truck and to 28″ tires, which means a 4″ lift and 32″ tires throw off the odometer by a factor of 1.13 (88 miles indicated to 100 true). I figured out the calculation in Excel to take the base mileage number from 2014 and increase it exponentially to match that ratio, but I couldn’t find a way to modify that calculation to change the reference by one in each successive row. Renie unlocked the Excel formula which then made it easy to duplicate just by pulling the control corner down vs. copy/pasting the formula and updating the numbers by hand. Which sucked.
So there it is. The odometer says 48552, but the actual miles are 50342, or at least, starting from 2014. All of this work is purely academic; I have no idea when the lift was installed or what the true mileage on the engine is—I doubt this odometer was original to the drivetrain, being that it’s installed in a body tub from 1975—but these engines were made to last 300,000 miles in constant use by dump trucks and schoolbuses. This engine is running like a Swiss watch, so I’ll just keep the oil clean and make sure the important maintenance is covered.
Here’s the video wrap-up from our trip west to Harvester Homecoming.
Thursday morning I got up early, put the dog out, and got a quick shower. Brian was due to arrive at 7:30 so I made coffee and threw my gear in the truck. After swapping his truck for mine in the driveway I kissed the girls and we hit the road by 8:30.
The drive out was uneventful. Brian and I swapped out turns behind the wheel every 100 miles or so, whenever we were stopping for gas. It added time to the trip but it was also key to staying loose after being in the truck for so long. I still can’t get over 15 or so gallons in the tank without it backing up and overflowing (I filled it up two days before we left and it stank of gas the entire time it sat in the driveway), and haven’t been able to fix that issue, so we just put 10 gallons in every 100 indicated miles—which is actually 113 due to the speedo not being calibrated. Siri directed us north to Pittsburgh and then over to Cleveland, and from there we curved down into Indiana and then to Fort Wayne.
The total trip was probably about 9 hours in total including stops. Aside from the road noise, the Scout is a very comfortable long-distance traveler, all things considered. With modern seats and power steering she’ll do 70mph all day, and the seating position is upright enough that you don’t feel like you want to fall asleep after an hour’s drive.
We got in around 6PM and after checking in the hotel, we found a brewpub nearby for some dinner, then stopped at a DIY carwash to scrub dirt off the truck—the first time I’ve ever washed it before a show—and picked up some beer and supplies for the weekend.
The show details weren’t explained very clearly on the website, so we had to ask some other IH folks at the hotel what time to arrive. On Friday morning we got a free lobby breakfast and made it to the grounds at about 9:30, and by then a lot of vehicles had already arrived. We were put at the end of a mixed line of trucks facing a wall of IH road tractors from the ’80’s and settled in to our camp. The nice gentleman who parked us told us we weren’t supposed to put up a tent but we waited until he was gone and did it anyway; the sky was dark and cloudy and the forecast showed a lot of rain for later in the day.
This show has a different vibe from Nationals. The volunteers were out in force and were very helpful; many of them were retired IH workers who were happy to see all the trucks. There was no real organization for vehicles so we were next to a couple of Scouts, a big A-series pickup, and backed up against a D-series pickup. Across from us sat a Scout 800 and a tractor. The variety made for an interesting walk around the show; there was something new on every row. A giant tractor, then a Scout, then a fire truck, then a couple more Scouts, then set of Cub Cadets on the back of a flatbed. We got out and walked the side we were on, then did a loop around the back to see the vendor booths.
There weren’t as many used parts vendors as Nats. Coonrod’s had a big trailer full of goodies, and there was another guy with a Scout, a C-series pickup, and a trailer full of parts for sale. Most of the Light Line vendors were there, but some of them had clearly scaled back their displays. In all, it felt smaller than Nats.
I was hoping we’d be able to drive through the Engineering Center like they did for the first couple of Homecoming events, but it turns out the building has just been sold and will likely be torn down for something else. The museum where they were displaying the older trucks had to be moved from that building to storage, their fate unknown.
In the afternoon it started to sprinkle, so we re-adjusted our tent and moved it over the truck. Soon, it was raining more heavily, and we realized we were stuck in the middle of a circling derecho directly over Fort Wayne. We held the sides of the tent down while the wind gusted and it downpoured, waiting for a lull, and when that came we quickly broke the awning down, shoved it in the truck, and hightailed out of the show. Luckily the wipers were functional, and the Rain-X on the windshield did its work, so we were able to make it to the hotel drenched, but with no problems. After a soak in the pool we got showered and waited for the rain to taper off so we could get some dinner. We found a nice brewpub down the street and settled in for a beer and some pizza. On the way back it started raining again after some shakes at the local ZESTOS! and didn’t let up until 9PM that evening.
Saturday morning we got up and out the door earlier, aiming to get a better spot in the rows. We stopped off at a little bakery we’d spied for coffee and donuts, avoiding the hotel lobby food, and drove the long way around the factory to the main entrance where the International tower stands for a photo opp.
It’s looking run-down and sad over there. It would have been amazing to see the place in the ’60’s when it was going full-steam and was being cared for. We shot a bunch of photos and I set up the tripod for some timer shots. That was worth the time and effort.
Then we drove in the back way to the show and got a great spot next to our new friends from Pittsburgh. This time nobody warned us against the awning, so we set up camp and made ourselves comfortable. The second day was much busier than the first, because more people could show up on Saturday—so we were pleased we’d gotten there when we did.
I made a beeline over to the used parts guy to haggle for two things I’d seen on Friday: the first was a C-series instrument panel with later-style indicator lights on the outside. My panel is OK but I really like having indicators I can actually see; the early-style panels had a very small horizontal slit through which the lights are barely visible during the day. As a bonus, the gauges are all matching with black faces. As I mentioned in a video last month, the ones I’ve got in the Red Bus are three different colors: silver, black, and gold, having been swapped out at different times. So wiring this one up and making things match will be an improvement.
The second thing I found were a set of C-series reverse lights: glass lenses with heavy chrome bezels. I don’t have reverse lights on the red bus—it came with a giant spotlight on the roof which may have been a reverse light, but I tore that off with all of the other junk lights up there, so this sets up a future upgrade after I get her on the road.
Phil Coonrod had a set of pretty black Scout II door cards at his booth—patterned vinyl stretched over masonite board—that I considered briefly, but wisely decided I didn’t need. There was another used parts vendor on the backside who had a bunch of C-series metal laid out on the grass; one thing that was very tempting was a complete front cowl in better shape than the two I’ve got for $200, which was a screaming good deal. I hemmed and hawed over it for a while but noticed the shape of the grille opening is a later style; mine is concave on the sides to fit my grille while this one was straight. My cowl needs serious help, and this would have been an easy swap, but I’d like to keep the truck as close to a ’63 as I can. So I passed on that too. In hindsight I could have kept it and resold it later, but decided against dragging more parts home.
The sun was much stronger on Saturday so we spent a lot of time under the awning in the shade. That being said, we also spent a lot of time walking through the rows and checking out the trucks. Being further west geographically, there were more trucks we hadn’t seen Nats or other shows, which was refreshing. We met a bunch of new people, including the couple from Pittsburgh who were showing a freshly restored Scout II in a mint green color. He was already talking about his second truck and eyeing the lift on Peer Pressure.
At 4PM we’d had enough of the heat and broke down the awning; by that time several of the long-distance vendors had already left and the rows were thinning. We headed back to the hotel to load in the gear, take a shower, and find another place to eat. This time we found a brewpub closer in to the center of Fort Wayne and had sandwiches and cold beer in the air-conditioning. While we ate, we talked over plans for engineering and producing a DIY electric steering kit for the Scout 80/800, which several people at the show had expressed an interest in. I’m also interested in doing this for C-series trucks, with mine as the prototype.
Sunday morning we checked out early, topped off the fluids in the truck, grabbed a McDonald’s breakfast, and hit the road. The first couple of hours through Indiana and all of Ohio were temperate, even comfortable in the sunlight. Pennsylvania up through the hills was cool and dry. But as we descended towards the Maryland state line it got hot and sticky, and then we hit the only traffic on the whole trip on Rt. 70. Thankfully these slowdowns were only for ten minutes at a time, so we avoided sitting still. And I’m happy to report that as hot as the engine got, the needle on the gauge never climbed above its normal spot on the left side. I did smell oil on heavy acceleration, so I’m going to have to track down where that leak might be coming from—my guess is the valve covers are weeping somewhere.
We finally rolled into Catonsville at about 6:30 and I sent Brian on his way home with a couple of cold seltzers; his fancy Ford has A/C so I’m sure he cooled off quickly. I dragged my basic gear inside and left the rest of it in the back of the truck to worry about later.
The final mileage tally was 1041 indicated on the gauge, which works out to 1182 miles true, which checks out (Siri pegged the trip from home to the hotel at 548 miles one-way).
We had a great time, mostly because Brian and I got to hang out together for the whole weekend; but it’s a different vibe than Nats. I think the big thing missing from this show is the feeling of community; every year in Ohio there’s a huge party in the parking lot at the hotel each night, and on Saturday there’s a barbecue and food and an auction with all kinds of things donated to raise money for charity. It goes from 6PM until whenever and it’s a really warm, cooperative experience. In some ways it’s better than the show; last year Brian and I stood out late with a group of people, including the owners of three of the better-known Scout shops in the country, just shooting the shit over beers and laughing. That’s really hard to replicate. This is a good show but it’s over at 4PM every day and it felt like everyone just went their separate ways. So we’re both thinking we’ll go back to Nats next year and maybe Harvesters in the Holler if we can work out the timing; the former is in June and the latter in September—but right around Finn’s birthday. We’ll see how it shakes out next year.
I’ll write more about the trip later, but our journey to Indiana went off without a hitch.
I’m continuing to make slow progress on the electrical system in the truck. At first all I had was a starting truck with most of the panel lights working. After replacing more of the connectors, I was able to get headlights and taillights working, as well as the right rear blinker. There’s some kind of short in the left side preventing it from blinking—indeed, using the blinker on that side kills the light completely. And screwing the dash panel into the dash itself killed one of the dash lightbulbs that originally was working.
I pulled a front marker pot from the green truck stash and another from a pile of cheap parts I got at Nats, and tested them out on the bench. The grimy unit from the green truck worked so I hooked that to the truck and tried it out, with no success. I’m going to have to pull the circuit tester out next to see if there’s any power getting out there at all.
I’m still waiting on the firewall grommets, so I switched to doing some light bodywork on the driver’s door, grinding a bunch of rusty spots out and cleaning all of the residual holes left from various mirrors. I put the copper magnet behind the largest of the holes and welded them all up. After a coat of body filler, I sanded them smooth and got them covered with rattle-can IH red.
Meanwhile, I got the Scout ready for our trip west. I stocked up on consumables—oil, coolant, various fluids, belts, and other stuff. I pulled out my milspec snap kit and added a pair of snaps to each side of the door bar flaps on my original Kayline top to keep it from flying away on the highway. With a quick wash and topoff on fluids, we’re ready to hit the road on Thursday.
We’re headed west into the heart of America next week in a truck only slightly younger than me, which means I have to pack just as many tools and medications for it as I do myself. I did a quick inventory today and made a list of stuff I’ll need:
In the ammo can, I’ve already got a bunch of other spare parts and tools—a fuel pump, coil, points and condenser, plug wire, bulbs, fuses, and electrical gear, plugs, assorted fasteners and zip ties. She’s running well right now, so the goal will be to get her cleaned up inside and top off the fluids to be ready to hit the road on Thursday.
I saw some trick floor mats on a build thread a few weeks ago and decided to pull the trigger on a set, figuring they would come in handy for heat abatement on this trip. They’re called CocoMats and they’re handmade and heavy-duty for cars like Porsches, but what I saw in the thread really impressed me. I ordered a set and they sent me a set of paper templates to lay in the truck and form to my specifications, which I did the night I got the package.
Looking for maximum coverage, I added material to the sides and brought them up to the edge of the vertical part of the firewall, and made a notch for the ramp under the gas pedal. The sample they sent is thick and beefy and the rubber on the bottom is covered in 1/8″ nubs that should keep it up off the metal where moisture collects. I sent the patterns back with a note and a sticker, and they’ve been super communicative with me the whole time. (The day after I placed the order I noticed they’d put an ad in my Hagerty magazine with a discount code, so I emailed them to ask if it was too late to apply that. They cheerfully sent an affirmative reply in less than an hour and refunded me the 10%. That’s some great customer service).
Unfortunately, they won’t be here in time for the trip, so we’ll just have to sweat it out like we normally do.
The other thing I did was take one of the spare horns from the green ’67 and swap it into the Scout in place of the Mercedes horn I put in a couple of years ago. I just didn’t like the half American/European sound of the two horns together and wanted to get the truck back to a true ‘Murican sound. Much better now. (fun fact: many cars use two horns tuned slightly differently, because the dissonance of two frequencies is easier to hear in high ambient noise situations).
I thought I recognized this old girl when it popped up on Marketplace, minus the bed topper: it’s the Camper Special I looked at in New Jersey a year and a half ago before I bought the red bus. The new owner has gotten it running and listed it for an extra $700, which is still a fair price—but it would still need a lot of work for the reasons I mentioned in the video.
This is just a test of the system; I don’t have the dash officially installed (still waiting on rubber firewall grommets) but I got a package of replacement connectors for the last two firewall plugs and swapped out the old brittle ones. Because I couldn’t help myself, I hooked things up and tried it out. The turn signals trigger the dash lights, so there’s clearly something not connected correctly, but the truck starts off a new ignition barrel, and none of the fuses blew!