Hi all.
New member and wanted to say thanks for all of the great information here. I was able to get most of my questions answered using the magic search feature before joining.
I am an auto "hobbyist" with too many projects and generally not enough time. For me, the best part about working on old cars is the actual work.
I ended up with my 76 traveler because I was thinking about what to do for our second family ride. We have a newer Chevy crew cab truck as our primary driver. I had been driving a 96 4runner and we simply outgrew it. (the wife gets the newer ride as a rule) we live at the foot of the mountains in montana and 4 wheel drive with decent clearance is a must. Piling the wife and I, plus two kids, dogs, and gear became an impossible task in the toyota.
My first requirement in a vehicle is that it has to be stone cold reliable. You can get there by building it or buying it. In my neck of the woods, a full sized 4wd vehicle is $20k for anything less than 100k miles and you end up with what everyone else is driving.
I came into the Scout knowing I was going to throw some (ok, a lot) of time and money at it.
Familiar story, it had been sitting for almost 10 years. I got it running to assess the drivetrain. The 345 sounds great, and nothing in the drivetrain made any oh **** noises. It is in the garage now and getting the work over. I think the po stopped driving it due to carb issues from what I could tell. They had had it for something like 20 years before that and I think they parked it one day after it wouldn't start in the montana cold and never got back to it. It was pretty unmolested. In fact, this May be one of the few cars this old that I have ever dug into where the only wiring hacks were for a trailer pigtail. Absolutely stock under the hood.
New 2300 w/electric choke. New throttle and kickdown cables. Kwikwire 14 and gauge kit. Dui. All the usual gaskets. Fuel tank was too furry with rust for a boil out so I have a new poly tank and sending unit on its way. New body bushings.
Had some rust in the bed so I cut it out and I'm fabbing up the replacement now. There is a bit of rot above the rear wheel arches that I'll deal with. That's about it for rust, amazingly enough. No problems anywhere else except for some surface scaling under the carpet in the front. I May have a few small patches to weld in but nothing more than an afternoon's worth of work.
By the time everything above is wrapped up, I'll move to suspension and brakes. And finally paint. Last step will be the soft top and cage. I'll need the cage to mount modern 3 point seat belts. This is another must have item.
At the end of the process, I'll have a nice reliable ride that will see 75% of its' time on two lane roads, a lot of gravel county roads, and hauling a boat. The other 25% will be forest service and blm roads. This will actually be used as a sport utility vehicle. Hunting, fishing, camping, skiing. Etc. No big lifts, no crawling. I will likely go with a 2.5" lift but nothing more.
Whew...long intro. Once I pull some pictures together in the next week or two, I'll start a build thread.
Thanks again ya'll. Glad to be here.
