'69 International Scout Part 1

Many say it was America's first sport utility vehicle, the International Harvester Scout today on Xtreme 4x4, we salute the corn binder by building up one of its can a 69 800 A.

We'll cannibalize one of its cousins for its beefy rear and Potent B A all to create a dual purpose rig worthy of the name extreme.

Now, there is no question that the modern day SUV has changed a lot over the years when we compare these small mid size trucks. Nowadays, we ask questions like, how many options can I get? Can I get a DVD player? Does it have a TV? Can I get heated seats? How many cup holders does it have? Now, all that makes us want to wish for possibly a simpler time

at a time when we were more worried about a truck's work utility, certainly not its sport utility.

And during those times, this truck right here was built the Scout 800 A. It's a small mid size SUV designed by engineers who were worried about how tough the truck was not, how well it looked parked at the mall. It's got real axles underneath it, solid suspension. And a good drive train. Some people refer to this truck as the very first SUV and it earned that name without having any cup holders.

International Harvester was a very successful farm and construction equipment company

that saw the need to create an alternative to the Jeep CJ. During the 1950 SI H began to design the scout.

And in 1961 the 80 arrived,

then later came, the 800 followed by the popular scout.

Now, this particular 800 A was built in 19 69/40 years ago. Now, the interior itself may seem a little sparse by today's standards, but honestly, it's got everything you need.

The interior accoutre

mall

included a Speedo, a couple of gauges, a switch for the wipers

and I guess that's about it

was solid axles, front and rear, a sturdy three speed standard transmission and an all gear transfer case.

International did their homework. When it came to the drive train,

they even had multiple engine options.

But the question is, how relevant is a truck like this in today's society? Is it popular?

Well, the answer is yes.

And that's because a dedicated group of international fans are keeping these trucks alive

and that is exactly what we're gonna do. We're gonna build an extreme truck, but we're gonna make sure that it stays international harvester

at a target.

Now, the scout, as well as other international harvester models earned the nickname Corn Binder and that's because the company's history in agriculture. Now, we're gonna keep that history at heart when we put together our scout here at extreme. Now, what do we got planned for this truck? How does this sound?

Personally, I love the, look at this little 800. So the body is not gonna change,

but we get a spring over up front and a four L

in the rear

that

37 inch tall tires. A RB air lockers in both data, 40 fours filled with promo axles on either end.

What?

Mhm.

The engine,

what other choice but a Chevrolet Ramjet small block.

I'm just kidding. Under the hood will be all international harvester

to the sky

but with a little twist that we're gonna tell you about later.

Hey, it runs pretty good. I don't have any brakes. But

where are you going? Dude,

here the truck in the shop.

Bring it up. No, this way this way.

Are you going the wrong way? It is there it is. Come on, come on in.

Hey, stop.

I can't

stop.

Now, we picked up this scout too from a dealership just down the road called Brewers Auto.

Now they take just about anything in on trade and we were able to pick this truck up for

well, $0 because that's about what it's worth. Now, we got this truck for three reasons. Number one, it has an international harvester V8 engine

has a Dana 44 rear axle and

like I said, it was free,

jack it up

the rear axle in this truck is a Dano 44 wide trap. A great choice for our little scout.

And once we have it torn down, we'll clean it up and prep it for rebuild.

The

Scout

two model followed the 800 produced from 1971 to 8.

Now, this particular one is a 72 with a V8 what V8? We don't know quite yet,

but with the engine out, we can find the casting id and it looks like we got a 345.

Now, normally, when we tear a truck apart here at extreme, we don't really worry about the old drive train. We pull out now, not so much with our scout 800 that little four cylinder transmission transfer case and both the axles might be worth something to somebody who's going to restore one of those trucks. So we'll set them aside for now to keep them. Now, as for this V8 and the rear axle, we pulled out the scout too.

Now, they need to be cleaned up a lot

coming up. We'll show you how capable this truck was in its day and how aftermarket upgrades can make a 40 year old four wheel drive better than new, stay tuned

back on extreme with our Scout 800 a project. We picked this thing up for 2500 bucks and now we've dragged it into the shop for the Xtreme 4x4 treatment.

But before we put this truck under the knife, we could not resist hitting a couple of trails at our local off road park

just to see how capable this little rig was back in the day.

This thing works pretty good.

I think we should just leave it alone.

It certainly would not be mistaken as a hard core wheeler, but for a 40 year old machine, it handled the mild trails just fine.

Now, one of the nice things about building a scout is there's a lot of resources available out there. There's online message boards full of information as well as international scout parts houses that supplied just that international only parts. Now, Ih only North is one of those places and we call them for a pile of parts. We got chrome Molly shaft for our rear axle, a high steer kit and chrome Molly shaft for our front axle, an A RB air locker, but most importantly, one of their spring over axle shackle reversal kits,

you've seen us perform the popular spring over axle conversion before

on this 800 A, the IH only North kit uses thicker springs that will now mount on top of the axle housing.

The fixed mounts are indexed off the front of the frame and aligned with a piece of dom tubing.

The swing shackle mount is hung through the frame rail with a dog leg shackle for increased articulation.

Then the new leaf springs can be put into place.

Now, the benefits of the spring over axle are very obvious. We're moving the axle from the top side of the leaf spring down to the bottom. It's gonna give us more lift, obviously, more ground clearance. But why we move the swing shackle from the front side of the leaf spring to the back is a little bit more complicated. But once you understand how a leaf spring suspension works, it would be very obvious. Now, from the factory, the scout has a swing shackle at the front. And when the tire goes over a bump, the leaf spring compresses and it actually swings the shackle

forward. Now, when that shackle swings forward, the tire actually moves up and moves forward underneath the truck. Now, that might not seem like a big deal. But when you're trying to bump this truck up over a ledge or an obstacle off road, what's going to happen is that tire is going to move up

and then forward, that's going to push this whole truck backwards off of what you're trying to climb by moving the swing shackle to the back side of the leaf spring. When the tire goes over a large bump, the spring will compress and the swing shackle swings back.

Now, this backwards movement means the tire will go up and actually pull away from what you're trying to bump over. Now, as you're trying to bump this truck over, it the tire will go back and land back on top of it,

make the truck work a lot better when it's off road. Even if you don't do a spring over axle, just doing a conversion like this, moving the swing shackle will actually really help your truck get over larger obstacles when you're on the trail. Obviously, we're missing one major component of this swap so far and that's an axle assembly.

It's right there on the floor.

Now, here's a perfect example of where a little bit of research goes a long way. Now, we talked to guys who've done this same swap before and they suggested instead of using a scout to axle, go ahead and get a used Dana 44 front out of a mid eighties GMC or Chevrolet full size truck. Now, the reason for that is right here, those trucks came from the factory already sprung over. So the leaf spring pad is cast

into the center part of the housing. If we use the scout housing, we would have had to grind down the stock housing to make this leaf spring fit and we would have made it weaker. Now, one thing we gotta do here is we gotta make it narrower so it matches the rear axle. But instead of making a custom with axle, we'd have to order custom shafts, we're gonna go ahead and shorten this housing to fit a set of off the shelf scout to data 44 shafts.

The first step is to remove the inner seat, a

little bit of cutting and some time with the torch is all it takes.

We use the long axle as a template to calculate the length of the short side axle tube. This mark will be the location of the lower ball joint,

sliding the shaft into the tube, gives us the amount we need to cut off.

Then we'll mock it all together and check the wind to match the rear.

Now, the reason that we've just tack welded, all of our suspension pieces in as well as just slid on this inner seat and not finish welded on anything because we wanna have the drive train in the truck and all that weight down on the springs before we do any finished welding because we may have to move some stuff around.

So for now we're just gonna leave it mocked in place. Now, another benefit to cutting down that axle to scout two with is we can use

more off the shelf parts like a complete parts mic high steer kit that we got from. Ih only North.

It comes with new knuckles, brand new ball joints. A pitman arm for a steering box, all the tie rod ends we need as well as the high steer arms. Plus the tubing has already been cut and tapped to the right length. So what we have to do is fold it in place,

build on a budget Xtreme 4x4 projects that save you time and money.

When you're building on a budget, sometimes you just got to hunt for the super good deal. Now, for example, we bought this entire scout for $0 because he just wanted it off of his property. We were able to pull a V8 engine that we needed as well as a rear axle out of it. Now, if we're going to buy those two items used, probably would have cost us about four,

600 bucks. So for a $0 investment, a little bit of labor, we were able to actually make cash.

Now, if we wanted to, we could continue to strip parts off this truck and sell them or send the whole thing out for scrap

headlight. Bezel man. What do you think? 50 cents sounds good to me. Find another one there that's a day's pay for you. Thank you.

Now, scouts come in all different shapes and sizes out on the trail, everything from daily driver, weekend wheelers to full blown buggies. And we made pretty good headway on our little 800 with our spring over axle up front. But for the rear, we wanted something just a little bit more extreme.

And when you're talking about Scout and extreme one name always comes up and that is D and C extreme. Now, from this,

we got a complete rear four L kit. It comes with new frame side brackets that index off the stock frame. The link tubing is cut to length and tap for some monster hem

joints that'll screw in place. Now, the axle trust for our rear axle is two inch tubing that is quarter wall. This stuff is serious beef

using the pipe master will mark the axle truss for its notch.

Yeah,

a little bit of plasma

and some grinding

and we tack it in place.

The frame mounts simply slide over the Scouts stock frame rail.

Then the axle can be placed under the truck,

send it up

and the links attached at either end,

we're going to mount our coal springs using a universal bracket kit that we got from ballistic fabrication.

Now, when it came time to get the coil springs for the back of our four length, we had a couple of different options. We could have went ahead and ordered a set of coil over shock springs that normally go on a set of coil over shocks. Now, the nice thing about these is they come in different sizes 2.5 or three inches around. They come in a whole bunch of different lengths as well as different spring rates. So if you know the weight of your truck, you can get the perfect spring for your application. Now, when

our

case, we got lucky, we had a set of rusty off road TJ rear springs laying around from the scrambler build when we swapped them out to the shorter size they are a five inch lift and with them in there right now, the truck is sitting nice and level. It might settle down a little bit

and I think we'll be ok in the long run. It's just a nice, good look for it and it'll work great. All we have to do now is measure for our shocks and then the rear floor length, it's all done.

But the Dana 44 axles sitting underneath their small Scout 800 we can go ahead and we can rebuild them. Now, we picked the 44 for this project for a couple of reasons. Sure. We could have stuffed Dana sixties under there, but honestly, it would have been overkill for the project. Plus the Dana 40 fours came available in scout twos from the factory. So we're kind of keeping our international scout, a scout at heart that doesn't mean going to skimp on the good stuff. We're gonna fill them with some quality parts.

They're gonna get chrome moly

axles, both front and rear that we got from IH only North we're gonna run to set a superior 488 ring opinions. Now, the 488 is a nice low ratio but not so low that we're not gonna be able to drive this truck on the street and then to finish it all off inside the center section will be an A RB air locker. Now, the nice thing about the A RB airlock

is, we'll be able to lock it up using the air solenoid to basically get full lock. It'll be like a spool. Both tires will turn at the same time. But when we turn it off, we'll have that differential action. So we'll be able to make nice tight corners when we're out on the trail. Now, that's important because that's a classic truck. We don't want to be banging the fenders off trees just to get around the corner. So the A RB is the best choice.

Stay with us because there's more on our international scout build up when Xtreme 4x4 continues.

Yeah.

Now we've made some serious headway on our little scout today and the last thing we want to do is set it down on its new wheels and tires, roll it out from the lift and get a good look at. Now, speaking of wheels and tires, we went ahead and picked up a set of Mickey Thompson Baha

claw radios, 37 inches tall. Now, the nice thing about the radio construction means these tires will work great on road, but the aggressive logs and heavy clean out area will really help these tires shine in the dirt. Now, for wheels, we went with a 17 inch by nine Mickey Thompson classic lock wheels and these are a simulated bead lock wheel and this outer ring is available in a bunch of different colors we chose. Harvest gold. So I know what some of you guys are thinking, why would you take an Xtreme 4x4 project and not put bead locks on it if you're taking it off road? Well, we didn't,

if you look inside this wheel, you'll see a secondary valve stamp. Now that secondary valve stamp runs our stone internal dual bead lock inside each tire is a line

on sleeve with a little inner tube in it. When you air the inner tube up, it'll squish against both beads of the tire and keep both of them from coming off the rim. When we air these tires down, it's got the best of both worlds. The good looks and the function of a bead lock wheel.

Now it's sitting on its tires and wheels. You can get an idea of how much of a transformation this little scout's gone through the next time we got in the shop, we'll deal with the brakes, put another air air locker and go ahead and tear down the 345 V8. We pulled out of that old scout to stuff into this one. All in all this thing's gonna be Sassier than a sling blade.

Mhm.