I’ve always been a fan of the styling of the 1959 Buick Skylark Electra; It’s a rare example of how diagonally staggered headlights can actually look great. The way the headlight eyebrow is molded into the side of the car, flowing back to the side of the car below the wing, is a high point of late ’50’s design before things got square and boxy as a response. I saw an absolutely gorgeous example at Jalopyrama back in 2016 and fell in love with it in person. So this example on Curbside Classic checks all the boxes: sitting on a comfortable (but not egregious) lift, BFG All-Terrains, with a tough-looking roof rack holding a spare tire and other equipment.
I’ve been scouring the classifieds for the last six months, looking for some kind of a project vehicle to work on. Peer Pressure has been running smoothly all summer, and I’ve been hesitant to mess with anything (the First Rule of driving an antique vehicle: if it’s running, don’t fiddle with it) but I’m looking for a project I can tackle on the side to scratch a couple of different itches. It’s gotten to the point where there are some nights that I wake up and spend an hour going over the details of a project I don’t even own.
The current market reflects a wide range of options and prices. There are factory-fresh trailer queens available for high five figures, as well as piles of rust for scrap value; and then there are people who think a clapped-out shitbox buried in a field is suddenly worth thousands.
I started obsessing about pickup trucks last year when I was working on the schoolbus, and that kicked back in when I was doing a lot of hauling at my FIL’s house. A pickup would solve a lot of problems: all of the debris and crap is contained outside the cab of the vehicle; the bed is larger and can hold more stuff than the Scout. Several pickups have come and gone, but the right truck within the right distance and right price range hasn’t appeared yet.
Ideally, I’m looking for something in the ~$2K range. I don’t need for it to run (I’d actually prefer it didn’t) and I don’t need for it to be complete. If it’s a pickup, I’d like for the body to be in decent shape, the glass to be present, and the hidden sections of the cab to be solid. If I’m looking at a Scout, I’d like to see the outer body in decent shape, but if the floors are crusty, I can deal with that—I’d actually like to practice welding using that as the project.
There’s a guy who listed a Scout 800 on Marketplace about three weeks ago. He posted pictures of a topless, doorless blue Scout sitting in a forest with plants growing in the rear bed. It looks mostly complete otherwise, and it would be the perfect project vehicle—at least through the photos presented—if only the seller would respond to me. I’ve messaged him about eight times since he posted it, but it’s not been taken down and I’ve heard nothing from him. It’s only miles from here and it’s something I could tow home with a dolly trailer; the price is perfect. It looks exactly the way I want it to; I’m not interested in perfect paint and laser-straight panels.
I guess what I’m looking for is something I can tear down (within reason) and not worry about having to get it back on the road by the end of the weekend; I’d love to practice welding skills on the floor of that ratty Scout and get it sturdy enough to drive, then take it over to Brian’s and use it as a testbed for an EV conversion. I really want to buy some metal and bend it and start shaping things with it.
→ This is a syndicated post from my Scout weblog. More info here.
Gas is still $5 a gallon, but that didn’t stop me from taking the Scout over the bridge to Chestertown to pick up a day’s work on the schoolbus. The forecast for the weekend was a beautiful 81˚ so I couldn’t pass up the opportunity. Brian has gotten a ton of work done since I saw it last—we put the battery box in all the way back in April—as Robbi and Matthew make firm travel plans for the fall. I pulled into the driveway to find a completely painted bus with scenes of kids and animals reading books from the headlights to the rear bumper.
The roof tent had also come in, and they’d put a platform down, screwed it into place, and hooked up the electrical system for the motor lifts. Inside, Brian had roughed in cabinets around the sink area and opposite the aisle for the locker fronts. Instead of using the locker cubbies they asked him to seal the doors and use the locker fronts as two swinging doors to conceal a set of sliding drawers.
We got to work trying to diagnose a faulty electrical motor on the roof tent, then moved inside to work out cabinetry. I cleaned, painted and installed a floor baffle for the heating hoses directly under the kids’ seats, and when that was done we set up an assembly line to cut and build the shelves and drawers. By 5:30 we had those in place and then installed a shelf cubby over the captain’s chair on the passenger side, which will be mirrored on the driver’s side over the kids’ seats.
I hit the road for home at about 7, driving into a beautiful setting sun over the Bay, feeling very fortunate for the ability to work with my hands and make visible progress on a project with a clear end goal.
On Sunday we packed the CR-V and headed down to Bob’s house to continue sorting things out. After eating lunch I headed out into the garage to continue working on the Chrysler. When I was there last, there was no spark at the plugs and I didn’t know why. I’d bought a $9 tool to test it conclusively, and my suspicions were correct. The next point of failure were the points and condenser inside the distributor, so I swapped those out with some new parts in about 10 minutes. With Bob behind the wheel, we tested for spark again, and there was success!
I squirted some gas down the carb and had him fire it off, and it caught and turned over for a few seconds until the gas evaporated. A couple more tries, some more gas, and she caught and ran—loudly and choppily, but she ran! The smile on Bob’s face was huge.
The next steps are to buy a boat tank—basically a small jerry can designed for a motorboat with a built in float and pump—and hook that directly to the carburetor. That will take care of providing fuel. If I can keep her running from the carb, we can test the transmission to see if she’ll pull out of the garage, and I can pull the drums off the rear wheels to diagnose the brake system. I’m sure that will be a leaky nightmare.
I’ve already cleaned the front seats off with 50/50 water and vinegar to kill the mildew growing there, but the back seats need extra love and attention. Getting it out into the driveway will also let us wash off 40 years of dust and grime and really assess the condition of the paint. There are a thousand little dings and chips from being a shelf in the garage for years, so I know it’s not going to be perfect, but I bet we can cut and buff a shine back into the paint with some work. I also want to use some engine degreaser and the pressure washer to shine up the engine bay.
If I’m completely honest, a part of me didn’t believe I would be able to pull this off; I’m mechanically adept but this project is a lot more than I’ve ever attempted, and there were many places I could have screwed it up. I like to think I’ve learned to be patient and careful as I’ve gotten older, and that approach paid off with every obstacle the car threw at me. The next couple of months will prove out the theory, I guess.
I had Monday off, so we all enjoyed sleeping in. Jen took care of some work in the morning while I pressure washed the front stairs and fooled around in the garage, and in the early afternoon we drove out to Frederick to spend a little family time together. We got some lunch at the Tasting Room, which was about ten steps up from where we took Bob for dinner (the Cracker Barrel was the only place open without a half an hour wait) where we sipped fancy coctails and ate a delicious late lunch.
From there we walked through the town, stopping in various stores for Finn to shop through. I found a cheap Django Reinhart LP at the used record store and Finn found some inexpensive jewelry. We stopped and met several dogs who all put Hazel to shame for their calm and relaxed natures. She was our alarm clock, so at about the four hour mark we headed for home. We all spent the evening quietly doing our own things, enjoying the cool breeze, happy to be together.
The weather is getting warmer, which means it’s not quite as painful to stand outside and bang knuckles against cold steel, which is everyone’s favorite winter pasttime. I woke early on Sunday to drive over the bridge to Chestertown and pick up work on the schoolbus, something we haven’t done since early December when we put the seats in.
The first order of business was to get it started. It’s been sitting in the shed for months, so we put a trickle charger on the battery and futzed around with the windows inside. Testing out the theory that the windows are easily interchanged, we moved one of the emergency exit windows forward so that it sits directly between the passenger seats and is easy to get to.
Once we got it running and pulled out of the garage, we decided it would be much easier to work in Brian’s driveway where power and tools were easily accessible. We caravaned back to his house and then had to jockey trailers and tools and building materials around to make room in between the house and his new garage footer.
With that done, we got to work disconnecting the engine and storage batteries, pulling the wires, and disassembling the battery box. It took a while to get the box itself out, because they’d welded the back corner of it to the frame and spot-welded the edges to structural supports on the side. We wound up having to step on the edge to push it downward, shove a prybar between it and the frame, and whack it with a sledge to start separating the materials. Several sawblades, a trip to Ace Hardware, more pounding, and some specialized curse words later, we released it from the underside of the bus and dragged it away.
The plan was to replace it with a newer, bigger box where more batteries will fit and be be easily accessible. But now that the box was gone, we could also mount the passenger seat base permanently, which went relatively easily. Putting the new box in was more of a challenge; we realized early on that we were going to have to drop the other box we’d labored over in September. With that out of the way we got the mounting bolts in place and roughed in the battery box. By 7PM we were beat, the boxes were cattywampus, and the sun was down behind the trees. We called it a night and went in for a cold beer. I laid down on Brian’s spare bed at 9:30 and was fast asleep fifteen minutes later.
Monday morning I made sure my automatic replies were set correctly and we got back at it. Dropping the box, we found a couple of reasons why the box was hanging incorrectly and beat them into shape with a hammer. With that box hung, we put the longer box next to it in place and I set to work fastening both boxes to each other and to the stair wall.
Now that the box was in, we had to sort out how to put a set of industrial ball bearing rollers in and fabricate a shelf. The rollers were pretty easy to mock up, and I figured out a way to reuse the shelf from the original box with some new angle iron. Another trip to the Ace scored us the hardware we needed, and by about 5PM we had the shelf in place, the batteries mounted, the wires rerouted, and everything reconnected. Brian turned the key and the bus roared back to life.
We had a new power awning ready to be hung, but found quickly that the arms were too long, so we packed everything in and I hit the road for home.
Today most of my joints are sore, I’ve got gouges in three of my ten fingers, and I feel like I could fall asleep as I write this. But I’m happy with the results, and we’re that much closer to the interior work.
In 2021, I did a lot of things I wasn’t planning on, but needed to get done, like rebuilding the front bearings, replacing the front brakes, installing a cool bumper and then adding fog lights. Okay, maybe the bumper and fog lights didn’t need to happen, but it sure looks better. Reviewing the T0-Do list from 2021, there are some big things I thought I might be able to accomplish and some that were blue-sky goals; there will be some things that carry over to next year. And I’ve got some new goals for 2022, in order of importance and realistic accomplishment:
- Replace the windshield. (2016) I pulled a good clear windshield from a Scout this summer, cleaned it up and made it ready to put in. I’ll need to order a new windshield gasket from Super Scouts, do some practice runs on the spare frames I’ve got, and then take a deep breath before I remove the old glass.
- Fix the goddamn wipers. (2019) I still don’t know what the deal is with the wipers or why the motor works but the switch doesn’t, but I’ve now got a third switch to swap in and see if I can get things to work behind the dashboard. If it’s not that, there has to be a melted wire somewhere that I’ll have to chase down in the rat’s nest back there.
- Fix the turn signal cam on the steering wheel. I’m 3/4 of the way into the teardown on my spare wheel, and it all seems to make sense so far. Sure would be nice to have functional cancelling turn signals.
- Rotate the tires. This is pretty self-explanatory, and should be easy once I get a decent floor jack. One thing I’d like to do while I have the tires off is measure the backspacing on the spare tire to see if it’s anywhere near the aftermarket wheels I’m running on the truck. This way I’ll know if I can use the spare on the front wheels without rubbing.
- Pull the spacer on the starter. I’ve come to find out the spacer in between my starter and the engine block is meant for automatic transmissions, so it needs to come out. I’m a pro at swapping starters at this point, so this should be a 30-minute fix, tops. Humorously, in going through my parts bins this week, I found a second spacer.
- Fix the battery tray. (2021) Super Scout Specialists has new trays in stock, and I’d like to get rid of the ghetto bungee cord I’ve been using for 11 years.
- Swap the gas tanks. I have the original steel tank Peer Pressure came with, and I’ve heard from several places that poly tanks will never seal at the sender properly. I’m inclined to believe this after eight years of suffering through gas fumes and leaks. The plan is to build a quick cradle/turntable out of wood, mount the tank on that, and dump some gravel inside. A half an hour of turning it like a cement mixer should remove any rust or scale inside, and then I can test it for leaks. When that’s done I’ll spray it with undercoating, test the sender, and put it in. I’m going to dig out the original evaporator linkage I stored away to aid in venting it properly. But the first thing I have to do is get the existing sender off the tank; it’s on there tight and not coming off.
- Get the spare engine on a proper engine stand. The problem isn’t the stand, but how I can lift the engine up onto it. My garage is in no shape to support a chain hoist or any kind of overhead block and tackle, so I’ll have to borrow an engine hoist from somewhere for a 15-minute operation.
- Buy a Scout Shed. My garage is pretty full, and I spend a lot of time reorganizing stuff just to move around in there. I’ve been considering a premade shed to store all of the parts I’ve got squirreled away, which would free up a lot of space in there. I’m earning some scratch on the side working on the schoolbus, and if I’m careful I could pay for this with a couple of weekends’ work.
→ This is a syndicated post from my Scout weblog. More info here.
Last week I discovered that the gas strut holding up the hood on the Scout had ungassed itself, and set about looking to replace it. Looking over the manufacturer’s plate I found the company online and sourced a replacement in about five minutes. Because they are a volume distributor, their online presence is geared towards large companies doing bulk purchases, and their form would not allow for the fact that I am a consumer and only buying two items; it required a company name. I quickly chose something that described my ever-expanding manufacturing empire perfectly: Dugan Heavy Industries. When I got to the shipping section of the checkout, it timed out without letting me go any further, so I had to call to place the order. When the CSR took my order, she looked up my information and chuckled at the name I’d chosen; this was after I told her I only needed two pieces. (I ordered two because the minimum order fee was $50, one strut was $30, and I figured it was better to spend a little extra to have a backup on hand).
I think I might whip up a design and have some shirts made.
* * *
Plans are made for a return to Chestertown next weekend to resume work on the schoolbus. I’m working 9-hour days this week and the next to be able to leave Thursday night. Friday we’ll be putting in the floor and Saturday we’re installing the seats! They came in last week and are waiting for us to get cracking again. I’m excited to make some more progress and move the interior further along, even if it means we’ll be working in 50˚ weather in a shed (hopefully Brian has a portable heater). When that’s done we can start blocking out space for the cabinetry and built-ins, and that will make a huge difference in the visible progress to date.
On Monday, Brian and I finished making a platform for the tent that will go on the schoolbus roof. This involved a lot of wire wheeling, welding, grinding, finishing, measuring, more welding, and painting. I got to his house at noon, and we finished up at about 6:30 with no breaks.
But that meant all we had to do Tuesday morning was throw it on his truck and head to Rock Hall; we pulled his truck up next to the bus and carefully hoisted it on to the roof.
It fits perfectly. We drilled holes for the legs directly into the support hoops built into the bus, which will keep things from taking flight unexpectedly. The hatch lines up perfectly with the cutout we built. The legs are +/- 2 degrees but mostly sit flush with the slope of the roof; a set of rubber gaskets help with the fit.
This morning I drove over the Bay Bridge to meet up with my friend Brian at his new house, and from there we drove to a field behind an abandoned house to look at a short gray schoolbus that’s going to be the focus of much of my September. We crawled in, on top of, and underneath the whole thing, looking at what’s there and talking over what needs to happen in the next couple of weeks.
The first thing that needs to happen is a lot of demolition; the previous owner had done some modifications to the interior that aren’t going to stay—a janky bed frame in the back, a sink and cabinet made from 2×4’s, a set of seats cobbled together from a couple of minivans and the original bus seats, etc. When that’s all out, I’m going to rip up the hastily installed laminate flooring and the rubber bus matting underneath until we get to the marine plywood at the base. When the interior is gutted, we need to build a rack for the roof from box steel to hold a platform for a 4-person tent made by a guy in Colorado who doesn’t return phone calls, install a rooftop A/C unit, mount a portable diesel generator behind the rear wheels, and source and mount three underside storage boxes around the chassis. I have no idea how we’re going to do half of this, but we’re going to have fun making it work.
* * *
For a good portion of the day yesterday, this site and my other two were down due to some form of DNS failure at my web host. I don’t know what happened but it all came back up sometime this afternoon. That’s the first hiccup I’ve experienced in the last ten years or so; I wonder what happened.
I’ve been at WRI for almost eight years—the longest I’ve ever been at any job in my life—and I’m about to take advantage of one of the excellent perqs of the job: a sabbatical. It’s offered after the fifth and tenth years of employment as a way to recharge, and I’ve been looking forward to taking advantage of it for a long time.
It’s been a sort of circuitous route to get to this point; my fifth year was cancer, my sixth year was recovery from cancer, and we all know what happened last year. I was lucky the HR people let me take this one before I became ineligible and had to wait for the 10-year. We had discussed going to Europe as a family in 2020, but it was difficult getting the finances organized to do so and in hindsight I’m so very glad we didn’t prepay for a bunch of tickets and hotels we wouldn’t have been able to stay at anyway. We were lucky enough to sneak down to Harry Potter minutes before they shut everything down for COVID—it’s a miracle we didn’t come home with anything worse than Finley’s flu—and counted our blessings during the lockdown.
Looking forward into 2021, all hope of a family vacation was again out the window; there was no point spending cash we don’t have on the chance things might open up in the future. When Brian asked me to help with the schoolbus, it sounded like a great idea; I’d be away from a computer, working with my hands, solving different problems, and learning some new skills.
Problem is, there are several huge projects happening at WRI that come to a head in September, and they involve my skillset and input. I’ll be checking in occasionally on some things and putting in a couple days’ work on a big report because I am responsible to my team to finish it.
And most importantly, we’re not getting away to anywhere to recharge as a family. Finley will be 15 when I’m eligible for my next sabbatical, and if I’m still at WRI we can take advantage of it with some more careful planning—and refundable tickets.
A plan is hatching for the late summertime with Brian, who has asked me for some help with a project he’s got on his plate: he’s overhauling and outfitting a 25′ schoolbus for a family of six to drive across the country, and wanted to know if I could help him with the job. This is part of a larger plan he has to shift his business from home renovation to custom camper outfitting, and he’s asked me to join him.
There are a lot of considerations to be weighed here, and I’m taking none of them lightly. By nature and experience I’m extremely conservative when it comes to my career—having been laid off twice, I don’t like the feeling of operating without a safety net. I’m finally in a place where I’ve been able to put away solid retirement money year over year (and have it matched, no small benefit) but of course, I’d like to have more set aside. The idea of getting out from behind a computer and working with my hands and my head is extremely tempting, especially after having been stuck in one long Zoom call since last March. There are so many pros and cons to this idea that I can’t sort them all out right now, so we’re doing the smart thing: we’re going to tackle this first project, see how it goes, and reassess from that point. The basic plan is to use a bunch of my unpaid sabbatical during the month of September to work on the bus full time with Brian to see how far we can get, and surround that time with paid sabbatical vacation so I’m not wrung out when I go back to work. I’m upset our original plan to travel got completely torpedoed by COVID, but maybe we can make something good out of this.
It’s all very preliminary right now, but it should be a lot of fun, and I’m looking forward to a break from my desk.
When I was a sophomore in college, my parents sent me back to school in a silver Mazda pickup. They’d obviously considered the choice, and now that I look back at it, they were smart: I could move all my crap with it, I couldn’t put more than two other people in the cab with me (although I did haul quite a few people around in the back, in less-than-optimal comfort) and I made a pretty good second income moving people around the neighborhood between semesters. My father was kind enough to give it to me as a graduation present after college, and I think he knew that it would come in handy.
I had to sell it sometime around 1997 or so when the amount of oil I was adding each week eclipsed the amount of gas. Two little men showed up in a lowered teal Nissan and drove my little truck away to be chopped, bondoed, and painted primer gray. Since then, I’ve forced the cars that followed to fit the mold of all-purpose utility vehicle: I stuffed four sheets of plywood into the hatch of my CRX with four bags of ready-mix cement—you’d be surprised how much a Honda will hold. The year I bought the Scout, I hauled the debris of my basement demolition project to the dump in multiple pre-dawn trips. I think the Tortoise probably bore the brunt of my ambitions, though: hauling recycled brick in the trunk across Canton, sheets of drywall on the roof rack—hell, every stick of wood that went into my rowhome, and every bag of cement.
The Jeep has been great for moving building materials around, but where things like yard waste and carpeting are concerned, it’s not big enough and I can’t wash it out with a hose. And given the amount of garbage we’ve generated since we’ve been in this house, I think I’d be broke if I tried to haul it all myself. Our good friend Dave finally got tired of being shanghaiied into helping us haul trash for the umpteenth time, so he lent us Clifford the Big Red Truck on Wednesday.
When switching to a vehicle the length of a schoolbus, the technique of pre-visualization comes in real handy. Simple operations like navigating a parking lot take planning and nerves of steel. One doesn’t simply make a lane change, especially with a bedful of yard waste flapping around by the tailgate. Turning a corner brings one much closer to the folks in the opposite lane than they’re usually comfortable with (however, the look of terror on their faces is always good for a laugh.) The amount of respect one commands while driving such a truck at the rental office, though, makes up for any inconvenience. We rented the largest tiller at the garage, a 14-horsepower hydraulically powered beast, and within 15 minutes had turned over a 10’x20′ patch of grass into arable dirt.
After four trips to the local dump, the piles of leaf bags, small brush, elm bark, and construction debris all disappeared, and our yard began to look presentable again. In a final trip to the Lowe’s we picked up a shiny new grill to replace the hand-me-down that fell apart last year and assembled it in time to cook three filets to perfection last night.
This afternoon, I reluctantly turned the keys back over to Dave and we said our goodbyes to the Big Red Truck. I think after the Jeep’s time is up we’ll have to look into a pickup of our own, but I have to thank Dave again for letting me dream for a few brief, wonderful days.