Project "Drive all of the old gas out of Scout" was a success!
in 2020, before putting it away for the Winter, I put in some fuel stabilizer, which seems to have worked really well because even on fuel that was easily 18 months old, it still ran pretty good.
Before leaving I filled up my 5 gal jerry can with fresh fuel. I planned on driving until the fuel ran out and then fill it up with the fresh stuff.
Turns out the fuel gauge is not all together accurate... the first half of the gauge is probably 2 gallons of the 12 gallon tank. The second half is another 2 gallons and then from completely empty on the gauge I still have about 8 gallons of fuel... I'm planning some tasks here soon so I'll try to remedy that, but it's not high on the list. As it turns out we pretty much drove on empty for about 100 miles until it finally quit. Once it ran out of fuel, I poured in the new gas from the jerry can and it was immediately noticeable how much better it ran.
We drove up from our place in the Seattle area to essentially Bellingham to have lunch at Taylor Shellfish Farms, it was super fun. 24 oysters, two beers and a fun view!
While I was inspecting the rig to make sure the trip would be as uneventful as possible, I crawled around and looked it over for an hour or so and made a decision that it's time to pull the body off and do some things to keep it in good condition for years to come.
1) The frame needs to be sandblasted and powder coated. It's pretty rusty in spots and needs to be addressed before too long.
2) The trans is a little noisy and seeping a bit, as is the transfer case, the syncros feel pretty worn and I have no idea what condition the clutch is in. Both need to be rebuilt and throw in a new clutch.
3) While the body is off I'm going to replace the hard brake lines with a stainless steel kit I picked up a while back. The original ones are dinged in a few spots and one of them is a quick and dirty line I made up to solve an issue it had when I bought it.
Land Cruiser project creep... a simple drive turns in to pulling the body off. HA! I'll make sure and take pictures and post them as I'm doing this. Shouldn't take too long... famous last words. HA!