A Little Info and Opinions About a Scout 80

Blue Beard

Blue Beard

New member
I currently have a Scout II. Guy up the street has a Scout 80, all stock that he is looking to sell for a fairly cheap price. It's an old fire department vehicle. Needs to be cleaned up, but in decent shape. I have owned three Scout II's, but never and 80 or 800. What kind of mileage do the little 4 cylinders get. I was thinking of purchasing, cleaning up, and keeping stock to use for driving around town. Keeping my Scout II as more of a an off-road rig since it now serves as my daily driver too. After all, a man can never have too many scouts, right?
 
Depends a bit on axle ratio and transmission but... My Scout 80 152/3 speed warn overdrive and 4.88 gears and 32"tall tires, will get 16 mpg highway cruising at 65-70. This Scout would get 13-14 with the stock 29" tires and no od at 60-65(turning 3800 rpm).. Now it turns 2650 @ 65.

If the Scout has the more typical 4.27 gears and only a 3 speed it will do about the same on 30-31" tires.

If you decide to pass on it can you post up pix? Maybe it can find a new home here.
 
Scout 80 and Scout 800 rigs are where the real investment value in these rigs is right now in my opinion, interest is greatly increasing in 'em and not from IH enthusiasts, but from collectors of old iron in general.

And if the rig you can access is truly set up as a fire dept. Rig, then it May be even more special, depending upon how hacked it is.

Scout II units are a dime a dozen, but decent Scout 80/800 are disappearing from the marketplace rapidly.

Fuel mileage??? Regarding any IH product??? Is this a joke??? No IH vehicle will get any kind of "mileage" if you are comparing to a four cylinder import built from the mid-70's on. These motors will struggle for maybe 15mpg due to extreme vehicle weight, stoopid transmission gearing, and the fact these are truck/industrial engines with no comparison between toyhondasans!

All the same issues with rot, long-term inactivity, etc. Pertain to s80/800 as well as any IH light line vehicle. The Scout 80 was very crudely engineered using many off-the-shelf components, and as such you simply have to understand going in they were not engineered/built to even the level of the Scout II, which have their own design issues, particularly pertaining to poor body system drainage and rot. They are what they are, you can easily improve upon some aspects, but overall they are a vehicle frozen in time to was brought to market very quickly back in the day!
 
Thanks for the input so far. I was not expecting anything great in mileage. Driving a Scout II with a 345 (as you all know) makes 10 mpg sometimes seem like an econo car. More just curious since they have the smaller motors.
 
Like I posted before mayben spread all of the doom and gloom :icon_rolleyes: I get 16 at 65 - 70mph but it gets better at a stern 65. Keep it in tune and let it get up to speed in it's own good time and it will do fairly good on gas.
 
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