Scout

[MDEnvEngr]

Sounds about right. I'm curious about what kind of mpg gains you can get with the Megasquirt. I've got an old Chrysler with a 2-bbl Stromberg and the Megasquirt might address some of the driveability problems that come with the Stromberg.

Lumpy, you could find a throttle body to replace the 2bbl and then use the "microsquirt" because the TBI is very simple. But, I'd just go with the Holley Sniper bbl conversion - I hear great things about the snipers. Ready to go for your type of an application. Good luck! Bob

[MDEnvEngr]

So work has started on the Ford. I have let Finn take the lead on this project. We got it dis-assembled and really started taking assessment regarding what needed to be cut out and replaced. Some of the things that looked ok to us, really weren't: those dang farmers just welded new patch panels in over the old rusted metal. Understandable - they weren't interested in restoring the truck, they just wanted to keep the mud out. So we ended up with the need to replace the floors and body mounts front and rear on both sides; replace the lower steps both sides; A-pillar repairs both sides, etc, etc. Still not nearly the mess we were faced with on the Scout.

We were really impressed with the hardware used on this truck. The bolts are all 5/16X fine thread bolts, still mostly in good shape after 60+ years. The sheet metal is stout.

Pulling the cab off the chassis:

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And there it sits:

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Cutting stuff out:

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Rebuilt lower A-pillar:

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Finn did a really nice job with this - keeping in mind that we are not trying to preserve OEM design. His fabrications skills are improving but also his planning and designing skills are also improving. He/we learned a lot with the Scout and I can see he's putting it into practice here. Not perfect by any means, and he's really just out of newbie stage but I see a progression and that is what I want to see. The lower pillar supports the fender and the lower door hinge, so all of those touch points have to be where they should be. Finn made himself a few jigs to ensure that the locations were accurate.

I have been hammering the worst of the creases out of the fenders with the funny shaped hammers, and that is going ok. We are not aiming on a factory-smooth body like we aimed for with the scout. rather, we are going to leave some of the lumps and bumps and creases in the body. We have been back and forth regarding the finish on the truck and our current thinking is this: Epoxy primer on everything. Then a full coat of light blue. The a full coat of gulf orange. Then sand most of the orange off so that it lies in the low spots. The highest of highs might be sanded down to the gray epoxy. This will give the truck a mottled, work truck kind of look. Except it will be the gulf racing colors. The rooftop will be bright white. We are early on in the process and this could change, but we have spent a lot of time trading ideas. I'd like to get some quarts of the colors and do it on a fender to see how it works out.

Anyway, enjoy the fall. Thanks for looking - Bob&Finn

[j44ke]

Oh boy!

[72gmc]

A double header! Thank you.

[MDEnvEngr]

Plugging along: lots of hammer and dolly work. We have gotten better at knocking dents out and shrinking the metal back to where it should be. We are not trying to get the skin perfect: we plan on keeping some "texture" and go with an "old work truck" theme.

Fab work done on the cab, except for the tunnel which will depend on how the cab fits over the transmission.

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We've found patches on top of patches on top of patches: the former owners were just concerned with keeping the mud out. Who would have thought that this old work truck would someday be desirable.

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Both door bottoms needed replacing, here partially through the metalwork:

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On this door, we had to cut an access to get a hammer in there and reshape the skin. Easier to just cut it out and replace than try to wrangle a hammer into the space.

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Finny had saved up a good chunk on money from his bike shop gig and he bought some wheels. We had to mock them up - this is actually a couple of inches lower than it will really be. We do want to go around corners:

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You might think that it's early for the wheels, but there is a method to our madness: we are designing and building the front suspension ourselves. So, you need the wheels to know where the spindle goes, and the spindle to know where the ball joints go. Once you know that you can start to determine where the other end of the A-arms go, and therefore the length of the arms. And in our case, as we are building the chassis, where the chassis rails end up. Yea, simple - ha! There has been lots of studying the suspension design books. All good stuff. Thanks for looking! Bob & Finn

[JoB]

this thread is the best. thanks for posting!

[72gmc]

You might think that it's early for the wheels, but there is a method to our madness: we are designing and building the front suspension ourselves. So, you need the wheels to know where the spindle goes, and the spindle to know where the ball joints go. Once you know that you can start to determine where the other end of the A-arms go, and therefore the length of the arms. And in our case, as we are building the chassis, where the chassis rails end up. Yea, simple - ha! There has been lots of studying the suspension design books. All good stuff. Thanks for looking! Bob & Finn

I'm looking forward to this. On a forum I frequent for 67-72 GM trucks, several builders have used aftermarket chassis designed for Pro Stock or autocross. I don't think they are all competing, rather just looking for a responsive road vehicle. What are you building your chassis for?

[MDEnvEngr]

We are planning on an street/autocross truck - but not so autocrossy that it is uncomfortable on the road. This will be Finn's daily driver. And, lets face it: it would never be a great autocrosser anyway. But the AutoX is a great place to get your tire squealing on, and keep that behavior off of the road. We have an IRS out of a 2016 Mustang and will build a double-A arm IFS. We will widen the bed about 6" to accommodate the IRS and will likely have to do some fendering widening to get the front wheels were we want them. The fenders we have would be close to scrap anywhere outside of the rust belt, so we have no problems tweaking them a bit.

Lots of studying going on regarding suspension design. The chassis will be truss type - we have the vertical room under the floor to work that out. Good stuff, really gets him engaged on the design end of things. B

[72gmc]

Thanks for the reply. Makes a ton of sense to build it for safe off-street fun. Much more interesting, to me, than spending a bunch of money on dropping and bagging a street cruiser.

[MDEnvEngr]

So a little slow lately. Waiting on parts. Waiting on permits for the future barn. Working on the chassis design - lots of study to get the front suspension design correct. Collecting front suspension parts.
Collecting engine parts. Turns out you need at least 2 separate engines to build a strong 302 on a budget: we had one from a 2000 explorer specifically for the GT40P heads. The machine work necessary on the block and the parts needed (forged internals, new crank and rod bearings, roller lifters, etc) looked to be more costly that just finding a decent 1990 5.0 HO out of a mustang. So we looked around and found one of those. Stripped it down and were happy to see nice and clean with virtually no wear on the bearings, etc. Good stuff. Then we sent out GT40P heads to the machine shop and the machine shop guy made us an offer we couldn't refuse on some nice ported and polished heads that flowed better than the GT40P heads. We are using very little of that explorer engine as it turns out. But we should be able to sell the GT40P heads for what we bought the engine for - and now we have a nice counterweight for the tractor.


We finally got our parts in and built up the engine. Finny fitting the new cam:
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We will be painting the engine this weekend. Ford blue of course.

The sweet heads we picked up:
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Finn doing a little hand porting on the intake side to make the ports fit up perfectly with the head-side ports:
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In our travels we also came upon a screaming deal on an older TIG machine. It's 1980 vintage and not very sophisticated by today's standards, but it's got some power. We have a bunch of welding on 0.12 wall tube coming up and our little Everlast inverter TIG just doesn't have the oomph for that. We have some things to sort out on it, but should be a nice addition to the shop. Finn earned the money to personally buy this machine by wrenching in the LBS and building wheels. It's good to have skills.
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And we are still rocking the Scout. A couple of weeks ago we had a 75 degree week. And some birthdays to celebrate. The birthday boys decided a Sunday trip out to the Norbrook brewery to ride their super fun trails and play some frisbee golf was in order. Such a nice day, had to take the Scout. It looked good packed with bikes:
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The stripes are new. A buddy of mine used to do that kind of stuff for a living and cut us some custom stripes and came down to install them - so they are even on there straight. We like the way they look and add about as much HP as a stage 2 tune! At least 30 extra HP.

Hope everyone is staying healthy and positive! Thanks for looking! Bob & Finn

[MDEnvEngr]

Kind of slow, still. Got the engine together, cleaned and painted. It's a 1968/1991/1997 Ford 5.0. It will be interesting to see how it runs. But that is still some time away. Waiting on valve covers from the powdercoater and still have a little work to do on the upper intake. But here's what it is looking like now:

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And with the shiny blue rockers installed: the blue will add a few extra HP I'm sure. And - who knew choosing pushrod lengths was so complicated? Learning stuff every day:

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We painted the engine with Eastwood 2k rattlecan engine paint and it came out great. That rattlecan 2k is the bomb! Come out as good as the spendy guns. It's not cheap: $25/can. But you don't have to buy a whole quart and spend an hour setting up/cleaning up the air guns. Wins.

We made the lower control arms. Now back on familiar territory mitering round tubes. 095 thick tubes makes the joining pretty easy - according to Finn. They came out nice and more importantly: they came out the same.

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Well, it seems like we may have lost our window to get the barn together before the winter rolls in. The town took their sweet time on our permit. And then the excavation contractor that was doing my neighbor's barn foundation and was supposed to come here directly after up and disappeared. Oh well, so it goes and such is the frustration of depending on other people to do the work for you. No huge deal: we still have the garage space we used for the Scout.

Thanks for looking, I hope you are staying healthy and ready for the holidaze. Bob & Finn

[MDEnvEngr]

Finn got his driving permit this week. Here in CT it's a permit for the first 6 months and all driving must be in the company of a licensed adult. So, I'm in the passenger side for a while. In the first 2 days I cycled him through all of the cars we have. He says the GTI is the most fun to drive, but the Scout is the coolest. There really is very little in the way of driving "instruction" going on. He's at home behind the wheel, and takes his driving seriously. Hasn't caused me a moment of panic yet.

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In truck progress, we brought the IRS into the basement shop and sized it up, verifying our previous measurements. Then we pulled it all apart and cut the bushing mounts off, so that we can weld the subframe right onto the chassis. Here he is planning:

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Our steel is on the way, and we will be building a steel/MDF chassis table this week. As our normal xmas/New Year holiday plan up at the family compound in the Adirondacks is probably cancelled this year we will have more than a week of homebound vacation time to fill. We plan on filling it with chassis construction.

Thanks for looking - B&F

[darkmother]

Loving this thread! I can't wait for the next chapter.

[MDEnvEngr]

Our normal holiday plans went sideways with the virus, like so many others I'm sure. AS much as I like going up to the adirondacks to hang with the family, I wasn't completely disappointed to stay home for the week. In the run up to the holiday week we gathered up our supplies and refined our chassis design. First, we had to make a flat surface to build on that wasn't the floor. We just couldnt figuer out how to run the foot pedal for the TIG while kneeling. Not to mention there would be a lot of time welding - and that would be hell on the knees and back. So, we built a 5'X10' torsion box with an MDF top:
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It's as flat as our basement floor. There are a couple of humps in it, but we were able to sand those flat. One benefit of the MDF is you can screw jig pieces right to it. Worked good.

Then we got to cutting and laying out. We bought a metal chop saw. Even though the damn thing was $400 it was worth every penny. The speed an accuracy are so much better than the cutting wheel or the band saw. A bunch of in process shots:

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The front suspension. We were happy to see for real that the suspension travel actually moved the way we wanted it to, with the correct amount of castor and negative camber gain:
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[MDEnvEngr]

Out in the driveway. We are happy with it. Next up is flipping it over to get to all of the joints that were not accessible when on the table.

Whelp - I guess that is the end. I've exceeded my image quota. If any of the mods reads this and there is a way to get around this issue, send me a message.

Others=wise, thanks for looking all! Hope that 2021 is a good year for you...Bob & Finn.

[claritycycler]

Wow, you guys are pretty amazing, what a project!

[ides1056]

Very, very cool.

[TRuth]

Bob and Finn,

This is fantastic!

What are the dimensions of the square tube you're using (I'm particularly curious about wall thickness)? Is it mild steel or 4130?

Would there be any advantage to using round tube? I'm sure it would add a lot of work but I don't know if there are rel benefits.

If this site can't host more pictures I'd gladly donate the cost of a year's flickr pro (or similar) to you if it keeps these interesting updates coming.

[MDEnvEngr]

Picking up where I left off - I couldnt find my old fickr account, so we signed Finn up for his own. The boy is going to need some hosting sometime soon anyway.

The "finished" chassis:

IMG_3436 (2) by Finn Spooner

This part of the project was a lot of fun. It was measuring, cutting, welding - and something big was being created. A lot of this project is a whole session of head scratching and little steps that don't appear to accomplish much. For example it essentially took us the whole day to position the engine/tranny and tack the engine mounts in place. Perhaps 30% of that time was looking for the tape measure though...

Thanks for looking - Bob & Finn

[MDEnvEngr]

Bob and Finn,

This is fantastic!

What are the dimensions of the square tube you're using (I'm particularly curious about wall thickness)? Is it mild steel or 4130?

Would there be any advantage to using round tube? I'm sure it would add a lot of work but I don't know if there are rel benefits.

If this site can't host more pictures I'd gladly donate the cost of a year's flickr pro (or similar) to you if it keeps these interesting updates coming.

TRuth, we are using 2X2" 0.120 wall tube. We went with the 2X2 instead of the more-traditional 2X4" because we wanted a truss design rather than a "ladder" design. I think that round tube might ultimately be better, but not enough better to justify the extra difficulty dealing with all of the mitering.

We got Finn a flickr account so that we can keep the show rolling. He's going to need one anyway. Thanks for the interest - Bob