JMiller's 77' Scout II

[JMiller]

Hello all,

I want to thank the people involved with this forum. If it were not for them, I would still be standing in the shop staring at this thing they call an International. Special thanks to m. Mayben for all the 1-on-1 sessions spent with this newbie to master the art of "how 2's on a Scout II".

My build is in it's end stages but I am just now finally finding time to post about it. I know how everyone likes to see pics of other peoples scouts so I took plenty as the build progressed.

I am not new to scouts but I am new to working on them. This is the first one I have ever attempted to bring back to life. I aquired this Scout in March from a guy in central texas who used it only for hunting purposes. He bought it from a military guy who had it some other state. And that guy bought it from someone who had it in alaska. It still has an electric cord tapped into the oil pan I guess to keep the oil from freezing so I know it has been some place cold. It was pretty rusty before I started. So bad that when I tried to pull it on the trailer I sat on bench seat and it fell right through the floor!

Luckily I was between construction projects so I jumped right in. My primary direction for this was a weekend run-about and a hunting buggy during season. Once again, this is my first build so please forgive me for doing things a little backwards.

This is how the Scout looked before I started...

 

[JMiller]

I have not quite figured out how to put the picture in the actual post instead of having to click on it. Will work on that.

First order of business was to get the top off so to better assess the inside of the Scout's damage...

 

[JMiller]

I just realized I am going to have to re-size every pic I have taken so this thread May be slow on updates.

After I got the top off, I had to get all the carpet and sound dampner off the floor to check everything out. The Scout had a top on it with a homemade moonroof that obviously leaked because the carpet and sound dampner was soaking wet which I'm sure contributed to rust factor.

Had to do a little grinding on the outside to fully see the extent of bondo this thing had...

 

[JMiller]

I had not found (searched) any International Harvester websites at this point in time to figure out how to do this right so I opted to just cut the bad rust out and later go over the floors with new plate.

 

[JMiller]

So with me knowing very little about scouts, I thought it ran fine and started on body work by grinding the whole outside of the body down to bare metal...

 

[JMiller]

So I bought some 14ga plate and proceeded to fix the floors up front. I obviously got in a bit of a hurry because I didn't take very many pics. Most of this stuff was done well into the night with a few alcoholic beverages attached. Tried to get some pics at the end of everyday but often did not work out.







On the two rear quarter panels I also opted to just go over the bad stuff with 16ga metal. There were some bad dents and massive rust holes and this was cheaper than buying new fenders and fitting them.

I used some thick rolled cardboard and made some templates on the Scout and then transfered them to the sheetmetal. I positioned the new metal in place and tack welded a few spots and then used a small torch to heat up and roll the bottoms of the metal to where they needed to be. Drilled a few holes and tack welded where ever I could.

 

[JMiller]

Then I moved on to doing some bondo work and prepping for primer. Quickly found out that bondo is not exactly like doing some mud-work on sheetrock...took quite a bit of practice and still never got the hang of it...to show car quality anyways. But once again it is not a show Scout due to my budget.


























A friend of mine helping out...

 

[JMiller]

For my first trip with a cup gun without stained wood clear coat in it, the primer turned out pretty good. Had to sand a few spots out and re-spray. And next time I will most definately spray in a booth. Little fibers of something kept showing up.

I actually ran out of the black sandable buildable primer while spraying and had to run to town and all I could find was gray sandable buildable primer.


Me getting ready 2 make a mess...

 

[JMiller]

I let the primer sit a couple days before I started paint. I wanted to go solid flat black but instead chose sunset orange so I wouldn't lose my Scout in the woods at night.

I did not paint all the way down to the bottom of the body panels because the bottom 12" and inside of the Scout are getting spray on bedliner which requires you to sand glossy areas.

I went with a single stage paint because of price and ease of use. Next time I will go with 2 stage so I can fix any issues. This was my first auto paint job and I got a lot of orange peel because of being scared of runs. So it kinda looks like textured paint...and turns out it helped hide a few blemishes and looks pretty cool.

 

[JMiller]

I had to let the paint cure for a full 2 weeks before doing anything with it. I then started prepping it for exterior and interior spray-on bedliner.

 

[JMiller]

I chose 2 go with the duplicolor truck bed coating for 2 reasons: 1) the gun to spray it was cheap. 2) the day I went in to buy the stuff from autozone, they had discontinued it that day and the remainder of stock was only $0.01 a gallon and $0.01 a quart. So after running all over town to our 3 local autozones, I headed back to the shop with 10.5 gallons for less than a quarter!!!

 

[JMiller]

The day after spraying the truck bed coating, I kind of pieced her back together to get it rolling again.

I had also lined the small dash cover.

And in the meantime, I had bought a set of bucket seats from the junkyard out of a camry and built seat brackets in the Scout to do away with the bench seat.

Sorry for the crappy pics...

 

[Scoutboy74]

Lookin' good dude! I like the liner on the lower body panels. You've got a nice shop for doing that kind of work.

 

[JMiller]

For mainly being a hunting buggy, I wanted some sort of door but not the original ones. I ended up building some suicide 1 1/2" pipe doors. Made for quick exits due to the windshield not being able to lay down.









These get sprayed with the truck bed coating later when the bumpers get sprayed...

 

[JMiller]

Thanks scoutboy74. I am a project super. For a commercial contracting company so during down time we turn the shop into hobby central. Would be nice if we could now find the time to get some of the junk out of there so I can get more of my toys in there at one time to work on...

 

[JMiller]

After finishing the pipe doors, I decided I needed a front bumper that would hold a winch when I get the money to buy it and also the 4 kc lights that originally came on the top of the Scout.

So I really tested my newbie fab skills here by making the outside egdes angle up from the bottom and in from the front. It turned out ok but I think it still sticks out to far...even for a winch.

 

[JMiller]

Here is the front bumper in a test fit...

 

[JMiller]

Here I just slapped the lights on it because I still wasn't sure if I liked the overall profile of the bumper...







And as you can tell by now...I am by no means a professional photographer...

 

[JMiller]

I decided that the front bumper would grow on me or I would mow down a few trees and see how it looked then...

Moving on to the rear bumper build. I kept with the same theme of 3/16 wall 3x3 square tubing turned like a diamond and angled up on the ends. I also wanted a swing-away spare tire carrier stout enough to eventually carry a 36" tire...

 

[JMiller]

The people at the steel supply house assured me that hinge I used would support 2000lbs...

they were wrong. Or my fab work was wrong. I even alotted 1.5" for sagging purposes.

I did get 1 pic of it all installed before I attempted swinging away the swing-away tire carrier...not a good one either...



Shortly after the pic was taken, I took the metabo to the tire carrier and hacked it off. I am in the process of researching a different type of hinge so I can weld it back on.