76 Scout Slow Build

[Casey Scogin]

So I am finally getting pictures up of my new toy. The back story is I have been working for International for the last 10 years. Been the parts manager here in denver for the last 3 years. Before that I lived in southern California for 26 years. I had always talked about getting a Scout but living in the city in so cal I never really had a use for a 4x4. Living in denver now with all awesome stuff to do outdoors I started looking seriously. Well, the soon to be wife decided to surprise me and find one as my groom's gift. (yeah, I think I might keep her around for a while)

 

[Casey Scogin]

So from what I can tell so far the po took pretty damn good care of this thing. There is hardly any rust on this. He apparently coated the underside of every panel with the same sealant they use on the oil pipeline in alaska. Needless to say that there is some dang good goo. He also gave me his pile of spare parts which included 2-490561c91 4 barrel carbs, a 465663c91 2 barrel carb, a 4 barrel manifold, spare rear bench seat, and a fiberglass hood. I was told it has a 4" lift with triangle springs and 33" tires.
Now the real project begins. I tried making a list of all the things I want to do to it and I have come to the conclusion I need to quit my job so I have more time, and I need to start robbing banks so I have enough money.

 

[Casey Scogin]

Pulled the top off over the weekend and took the wife for a ride. She could not believe the number people checking us out. Also pulled the front hubs to check and regrease the bearings. Noticed I have two different warn locking hubs. The one on the driver side is a short warn unit with a spacer before the wheel hub. The passenger looks like a standard warn unit without the spacer. Not sure what that is about.

 

[Casey Scogin]

So I took her out for the first real wheelin run over the weekend. We were running pretty fast and hard. Flying off of any kind of jump we could find and burning through every mud hole around. Also making the occasional stop to shoot at stuff. All in all, being pretty awesome. Might have had something to do with drinking jerry's and coke all day. Pretty sure that makes everything awesome.
So we are on our way back to camp, running through a bit of mud probably about two feet deep when my left front tire hits something solid that sure as hell wasn't mud. Managed to push the tire back far enough that it was rubbing the inner fender pretty bad. By the time I back it out of the mud and get onto dry ground to look at the damage it also blew a 12 inch hole in the sidewall of the tire.
At this point I am not happy with myself. I am thinking I bent the axle and am now screwed in the middle of no where. We crawl under her and realize all I did was break the center bolt in the leaf spring and slide the axle back. We loosened all the u-bolts, slid the axle back, tightened everything super tight and limped her back to civilization. When we pulled the spring off to replace the center bolt we found that all of the bolts up front were worn half way through. I guess I will be replacing all of the hardware up front soon.
I feel pretty lucky it wasn't something worse that broke, and it pointed out an area that is in need of some lovin. The only real damage was blowin up the tire.
Damn good weekend.