BinderBeast Project

Sunday, November 20, 2022

Thought I might update this a bit...

She is almost there... But this is how the saga began"

Well, sorta... I was given this body years ago. It obviously needed a donor:

Did not get much out of this one, sliding window, bits and pieces, but it did have a trashed SBC in it so my buddy got the Advanced Adapter stuff to do his SBC swap 55 Willys.

I also bought a drive train and axles from a club member who was doing a diesel swap.

I continued amassing parts until a friend alerted me to a 61 Scout on Craigs List:

Not bad huh? Rust free, literally! But, bad dent repair, cowl bent back, mismatched axle ratios and a bunch of other typical "what was the previous owner thinking?" stuff. Good thing I had an extra drive train, engine and bits and pieces.

And, I had a little experience building a Scout out of more than one...

So I started tearing it down...

Grafted in a fender piece on the worst of the badly bondo covered dent damage...

yada, yada, yada

Gratuitous pick of my friend's 55 Willys with SBC swap

This was a bit of a hassle, the PO had the hood come up at freeway speed(?), his quote. The result was pushing the cowl back. You may have noticed the awkward slant in earlier pics..

Did a bunch of head scratching, figuring, jigging, and then just applied force...

Porta-power, come along, try and try again. It worked, thankfully...

Shoulder surgeries forced me to change my plan of teaching myself hammer and dolly (I was doing pretty good), and took it to Total Auto Body in Hemet, CA. They are old school and deserve a huge shout out!

When we picked it up we knew it was worth having them straighten out the body! My buddy (with his 454 swapped 4x4, same guy that has the Willys) was as happy as me that we did not have to do all that work! We have both been there and done that.

So, she was ready for paint... I did the engine bay first then Raptor liner in interior and bed, will skip most of that...

Re-wire... the doggos know how boring that is...

The dash needed rehab, filled PO holes, rehabed cables, etc, etc. Took me a ton of time to rehab the steering wheel...

Finally paint...

My friend has painted a ton of fire trucks, but they were always green. He is teaching me, but I wanted him to do the squirting... with the help of 'aiming fluid'.