The Scout is Gone

After 8 years or so I’ve finally sold my Scout. I didn’t plan on writing anything about it but recently got asked a question here on Word Press and discovered that people are still reading some of this so I thought I would post a final update to give closure to anyone actually following the trials and tribulations of my International Scout II. (that is a long sentence, i’m sorry.) I had real problems with the cooling. The Scout uses a precooling technique in which water is piped directly from the water pump to the heads, bypassing the thermostat completely. This takes the form of two press fit pipes that plug directly into the heads. There is a tab on each head that bolts over a flange on the pipes but otherwise the pipes are held in by the friction of an o-ring on each end. After steam cleaning the engine at work I discovered on the drive home that the only thing keeping the coolant in was the grime that had caked up around those pipes. After being cleaned the coolant poured out faster than I could pour it in. The drive home is only 3 miles but I still had to stop 4 times to let it cool down before trying to continue. I thought at the time that I probably blown a head gasket but was unable to keep enough coolant in the engine to test that. Because of the nature of the pipes the coolant just poured out before any of it could get to the engine. I had previously replaced the radiator but now I needed to replace one coolant pipe and all of the o-rings. It turns out that it costs over $100 for a small pipe about one foot long. Getting those pipes to seal after getting everything i needed was a complete pain in the ass. I can’t tell you how many times I had to remove the radiator and fan to fight with those pipes. They do not want to stay in and really have to get in perfectly because of the complete lack of meaningful mechanical connectors. After getting the engine to finally hold it’s coolant I started working on getting the carb tuned and the timing dialed. In the midst of this I discovered I had some vacuum leaks and spent some time replacing all of the vacuum lines and making sure all of the bolts were torqued down correctly. I felt I had fixed everything and the engine ran great but I could not keep it running at a low enough idle to actually get past emissions. All the signs were that I still had a vacuum leak somewhere but I just could not find it. I gave up for long time. The truck just sat there and my cat took it over as the worlds largest cat bed. At least she kept the rodents from moving in. During this pandemic thing I finally got bored enough to bang my head against the Scout some more. I went to start it and discovered that I had left the battery hooked up and it was dead. After hooking it up to the charger I decided I may as well check all of the fluids. I discovered that the radiator was full of oily foam. The good news is that I had found my vacuum leak. The head gasket was well and truly blown. The engine still ran and there was no white smoke so oil was getting into the coolant but no coolant was getting into the engine. I think that the engine is still probably just fine. But to fix the head gasket I will need to take the coolant pipes off once again and the thought of that was enough for me to decide I was done. I’ve never had a garage I could work on the Scout in and so I’ve always had to work on it in the gravel or the driveway or the side of the road. The clamshell hood is complete pain in the ass and the truck is lifted just enough that reaching anything in it is difficult (and I’m 6’2″). If this wasn’t California and I could license the truck and run around in it once in while working on it then I would have kept it. But I have put less than 50 miles on the thing in 8 years despite the fact that it was drive-able for almost all of that time. That just kills motivation. If I had local friends that enjoyed working on cars and would come around on the weekend for a beer and help me plug away at it than i would have kept it. Unfortunately I do live in Cali and my closest “car” friend lives about 3 hours away and the next is 5 hours in another direction. So considering that I am on unemployment right now due to school closures I decided that I need a couple bucks more than I need a giant red cat bed in the driveway. It hurts. I know that I Scout prices were already climbing to the point where I probably won’t be able to afford one in the future and the release of the new Bronco has forced Scout and Bronco prices even higher. But I was done with the lonely frustration of working on the Scout and having to source parts that are 4 or 5 times more expensive than they are for any other truck. So it’s gone. I’m down to a motorcycle that I bought new and a Mercedes that I bought recently. Two vehicles is the least I’ve had in a good long while and neither of them need any sort of work from me. There might very well be another project vehicle in my future but it will be something with better aftermarket and oem support and if I keep living in California it needs to be older than 1975.

This is the scout running on the day I sold it. Sounds good, runs fine. But under the surface it needs some work.