Michelle had been asking (insisting?) on air conditioning for a few years, but I never got around to installing AC in the Travelette. As RMIHR approached, we made the decision to just drive the Green '73, leaving the Travelette at home. The advantage was 15mpg compared with ~7mpg, so our fuel costs were half.

Of course, the Scout didn't have air conditioning either, and Scouts get kinda hot inside, too.

So, with $1000 or so from the income tax refund, I placed an order with Arizona Mobile Air / ACKITS.com for a Scout II AC kit.



Photo Gallery

The input on my steering box was leaking a bit, and since I was changing out the tie-rod and draglink anyhow.. why not fix the leaking seal.

Pictures of the seal replacement for a Scout II with power steering.

I didn't want to do a cut n' turn on a Dana 30, didn't want to upgrade to a Dana 44, couldn't put spring shims in because this Scout has a 4" Triangle lift, but I wanted to add a little caster for highway manners.

Thus, I tracked down the parts through NAPA for the upper balljoint eccentric.



IIRC it was $60-ish for both sides.

The stock rear bumper on the '73 was bent, and among other things dented the tailgate a little by having the tailgate rest on rubber bumpers on the bumper when opened.

Since I had to remove the bumper anyhow to install a receiver hitch I acquired from Mark Young (EagleMark) while at the BinderBash a year before, I thought it was time to whip up another rear bumper.

One of the easiest things for the Green Scout was to add some insulation and a headliner to the bare steel interior.

Some Reflectix was cut and installed in the ceiling and behind the fiberglass side panels, then a $10 sheet of hardboard was cut to Bill USN1's specs, then $27 of headliner material was spray-adhesived to the hardboard.

For a little extra bling, I cut out some IH logos out of cardboard and glued them down under the headliner material.

One of the other items I needed to address early on was the drum brakes, particularly after I found a worn out wheel hub with a spun race in the front drums.

Thus, in August of 2005, the disc brake swap started..

I decided to convert using the F150/Chevy hybrid parts I've used in the past, which let me retain the stock Dana 30 6-stud knuckles. This is NOT my wheeling Scout, and hopefully keeping the Dana 30 (for 4x4 on poor roads, not for off-road) will help deter me from wanting to wheel it.

One of the first things to really bother me about the '73 was the Holley 2210 without a working choke. I replaced it with a 2300, but even the 2300 irritated me to no end.

It was always my intention to fuel inject this automatic Scout for fuel economy, reliability, and the option of installing the keyless entry / remote starter.

So I didn't waste much time with the carb, and started collecting parts for the fuel injection swap.

I finally killed a set of balljoints in Tigger with the 36s, so it was time to R&R the passenger side balljoints.

The Image Gallery pretty much walks you through the process, if you ever wanted to see what was involved.

Just a reminder, press the balljoints OUT the top, and IN from the top.. I bent the knuckle a bit by forgetting to RTFM and trying to press 'em out the wrong way. D'oh.

-Tom

Years ago, I discovered the frame cracking at the weld seam near the bottom of the outboard rail near the steering box on Tigger.

I had reason to examine the steering system again, and found the crack was still there, bigger, and the plate steel I had used to help out the situation had been bent.



In addition, the bolt holes were now cracked out, too.

I grew tired of my OBA hoses failing every other trail ride because of the high heat and the age of the hoses (and even the replaced hoses kept popping off).

I had been using a barb-style fitting on the compressor output, but finally ponied up for this 1/2" NPT fitting from Kilby.



I reworked the piping to use metal pipe as much as possible, and as close to the compressor as possible, to give the compressed air a chance to cool down before hitting the hoses.