NA thinking about a Scout

I also hate having a lot of money tied up in ground vehicles. But sometimes it just makes sense, if nothing else in improved reliability. After having had a string of low reliability vehicles, I’ve discovered that if I spend more on a vehicle to get what I actually want and like it more, and so does my wife. :)

Now for a toy like the Scout spending less is another matter, but you want the daily vehicles whose job is to be reliable to be, well, reliable.
 
Z06_Mir said:
We have a Scout. It was my Grandpa's and he used it to tow snowmobiles, not sure how many pounds that would have been though. We use it now to haul our kayaks. It's a blast but in the summer we have to be cautious of the heat because it doesn't have an overdrive gear and we go up several thousand feet to get to the lakes. I'd like to add shoulder belts but that's about it. It has an 8 track player with my grandparents old tapes, we get a kick out of listening to those.

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Nice! Pactola Reservoir?
 
gkainz said:
Nice! Pactola Reservoir?
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Haven't been there with the kayaks yet. The boaters are pretty aggressive up there and last summer was the first year with the kayaks so we stayed on either lakes without motorized watercraft or small lakes with more pontoon boat types. Sylvan and Center lake were our favorites.
 
Z06_Mir said:
Haven't been there with the kayaks yet. The boaters are pretty aggressive up there and last summer was the first year with the kayaks so we stayed on either lakes without motorized watercraft or small lakes with more pontoon boat types. Sylvan and Center lake were our favorites.
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I like both of those! I used to live downstream of Stockade years ago and fished all the southern Hills lakes. Did my scuba open water certification dive in Pactola. Visibility was all of maybe 12" and cold.
 
gkainz said:
I like both of those! I used to live downstream of Stockade years ago and fished all the southern Hills lakes. Did my scuba open water certification dive in Pactola. Visibility was all of maybe 12" and cold.
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Stockade is good too! Hoping to find more smaller lakes this summer. I will still try to avoid Pactola and Sherdian. Too many crazy boaters. Driving the Scout up there is so much fun and gets so many looks.
 
charheep said:
What about older LandCruisers? I always loved mine.
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I'm not a Toyota fan, but the Land Cruisers (80s and earlier) I think are really neat vehicles. The only problem with them being the lack of a proper engine (that is to say, one with 8 cylinders :) ).
 
From what I know about old Land Cruisers(which isn't a lot) they'll go anywhere and run forever.... just slowly.
 
cowman said:
From what I know about old Land Cruisers(which isn't a lot) they'll go anywhere and run forever.... just slowly.
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Yes, they look super cool. It'll be a scout 2 for me (345 or 392) with a manual. the rest i'm still deciding on.
 
Buying a cheap scout to drive daily is a really silly idea. Have at it.

I have owned a couple of Landcruisers. An FJ62 and an 80. Quite nice vehicles really. Though they were slow and got terrible MPG. I have been craving a 100 series lately, but I know better.
 
MIFlyer said:
Yes, they look super cool. It'll be a scout 2 for me (345 or 392) with a manual. the rest i'm still deciding on.
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The only OEM V8s in a Scout are the 304 and 345. Some people have swapped in 392s but they weren’t factory.

There were also some anemic 4cyl gas engines that were literally half of one of the other V8s. There was also an underpowered Nissan diesel and in 1980 only a slightly more reasonably powered turbo diesel.
 
cowman said:
The only OEM V8s in a Scout are the 304 and 345. Some people have swapped in 392s but they weren’t factory.

There were also some anemic 4cyl gas engines that were literally half of one of the other V8s. There was also an underpowered Nissan diesel and in 1980 only a slightly more reasonably powered turbo diesel.
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I know ;) I'm only interested in a 345 or a 392 if I can find a swap or if I find one with a sad motor and rebuild a 392 to put in it. The 392 would be nice for extra torque.

I'm not an engineer, but I play one on TV, so I build a spreadsheet comparing some vehicles by seating, cargo space, wheelbase, length, width, height
I included the F350, my old 2007 Tahoe, the scout and the traveler version, and hilariously enough, my wife i3

thinking about towing and hauling people. the scout 2 is 4 seats (5 with front bench) and 100" wheelbase
the traveler, adds 18" to the wheelbase and matches the Tahoe wheelbase which was fine for towing.
the traveler also gives you a third row option. AND they were fiberglas tops so I could probably find a hardtop in decent condition for this. I've never driven the traveler, so i'm not sure if the change in looks and extra 18" length would "ruin" the experience for me, but it's potentially a car that could help us have fewer cars.

fofr laughs the i3 has the same wheelbase as the base scout 2.
vehicle length width wheelbase seats bed length height
f350 246 80 156 5 78 81
scout traveler 184 70 118 4 or 5 or 6 or 7 79 66
scout ii 166 70 100 4 or 5 61 66
tahoe 202 79 116 7 49 77
i3 158 70 101 4 28 63
Difference vs tahoe
vehicle length width wheelbase seats bed length height
f350 44 1 40 -2 29 4
scout traveler -18 -9 2 -1 30 -11
scout ii -36 -9 -16 -3 12 -11
tahoe 0 0 0 0 0 0
i3 -44 -9 -15 1 -21 -14
 
I am an engineer and you know how I buy a vehicle?

SQUIRREL
*Buy It Now*
"Hey honey, guess what I just bought?" :)
 
MIFlyer said:
well, you guys have a little more cushion on the cost of living side due to your wise choices to locate in Kansas instead of Seattle :)
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To be fair, Kansas also chose us since we moved for the job. So I can't take all the credit.

But after living in Ohio for 3 years we might have even moved to New Jersey to get out. ;)
 
cowman said:
....There were also some anemic 4cyl gas engines that were literally half of one of the other V8s....
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I have a first cousin who had a 4-cylinder manual transmission Scout for many years. He drove it to the Outer Banks to go surf fishing many, many times. That was quite an anemic engine. It's 0-60 time was probably well into double-digits! But it did the job for him.
 
Scouts are hot right now; what that means is the values have soared in the last 2 years, and while you're paying a premium today you should also have an easy time selling the Scout if you find it's not suited to daily use. I wish I had bought like 10 of these things a few years ago when they were selling cheap. Finding a non-rusty example today for a reasonable cost is getting hard to do.

For Towing you might want to consider a Terra or Traveler they have a longer wheelbase which would be more stable for towing. Personally I'd ditch the IH engine and swap in a late model GM Drivetrain (Gen III or IV Vortec with a 4L80e would be solid towing combo and yield decent fuel economy), it's an easy swap as well.

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Rogue_Ryder said:
Scouts are hot right now; what that means is the values have soared in the last 2 years, and while you're paying a premium today you should also have an easy time selling the Scout if you find it's not suited to daily use. I wish I had bought like 10 of these things a few years ago when they were selling cheap. Finding a non-rusty example today for a reasonable cost is getting hard to do.

For Towing you might want to consider a Terra or Traveler they have a longer wheelbase which would be more stable for towing. Personally I'd ditch the IH engine and swap in a late model GM Drivetrain (Gen III or IV Vortec with a 4L80e would be solid towing combo and yield decent fuel economy), it's an easy swap as well.

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I did a comparison on wheelbases and you are correct. A traveler has the same wheelbase as a Tahoe, which did a fine job towing our camper. the base Scout 2 is 100" and the traveler is 118 (Tahoe is 116). I'm worried that a traveler might be better for towing, but still not exactly what I want, so I probably need to go see a traveler in person and think about if I'd be really happy with it, or if I'd feel like I compromised.

On the drivetrain, I absolutely will have an SV engine and 4 speed manual. A GM drivetrain would take half the fun out of it for me.
 
Do you have something else you can tow with rather than the Scout? That's an awfully short wheelbase vehicle to tow that large of a trailer.

A Toyota Yaris has a longer wheelbase than does the Scout.

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FormerHangie said:
Do you have something else you can tow with rather than the Scout? That's an awfully short wheelbase vehicle to tow that large of a trailer.

A Toyota Yaris has a longer wheelbase than does the Scout.

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Yes, I currently have a 1 ton crew cab diesel truck. I think that Ted/Jaime are right up above that I should buy a driveable scout and use it as a second car for awhile, then decide to take one of the following courses of action after driving it for 3-6 months
1. keep an OK scout as a second car
2. replace or upgrade that scout with a nicer one as a second car
3. replace or upgrade that scout and dump the truck
4. dump the scouts entirely and just keep my truck
 
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