As Shawn, Erin, and myself were walking around on our final day of SEMA 2018, the question was asked "what should we build next year?"My initial thought was an early 70's Bronco. But then we looked around and noticed we were surrounded by no less than 4 of those in our immediate area. That wasn't going to work for Shawn. He wanted to do something out of the norm not only for us, but something you most likely weren't going to see more than one of at next years show. A few different ideas were tossed around but we narrowed the list down to either a slammed Chevy G10 Van or a lifted, Cummins powered Scout 80. You can obviously see which option won out.
So the hunt was on. We actually found the first Scout 80 not too far from the shop. After a few unsuccessful trips and phone calls to the property owner, Shawn finally caught the owner on a weekend afternoon and was able to talk him into selling this beaut.
While this Scout wasn't in the best of shape, it wasn't in terrible shape either. So tear down quickly began so that we could get the body to TrickyDick (Shawn's dad Richard) in plenty of time to work his magic. This Scout would never see the road again however. While on one of his nightly Facebook Market Place/Craigslist binge searches, Shawn found an even cleaner 1965 Scout 80 in Peyton, Colorado that would eventually be transformed into the finished product you all have seen. Upon further inspection, this particular scout is actually a rare "Champagne Edition" but since it was missing some very hard to find items to restore to original condition, we proceeded to build our own rendition of the Red Carpet Edition Scout.
Once again, this Scout was stripped and delivered to the body shop to be put on the rotisserie for Richard to smooth this thing out.
We didn't just scrap the original Scout entirely. Not right away anyways lol. The frame from it was used to hold the new body straight for Richard to do the bodywork while we sent the frame from the new Scout as well as the body from the original Scout to the chassis shop so it could be used to build the suspension and locate the new 4 Cylinder Cummins.
Iron Goat Garage was commissioned to help us get the 4 Cylinder Common Rail Cummins built by Full Pull Diesel Performance situated in the frame rails of the little Scout as well as build us a suspension capable of having plenty of fun on whatever terrain we decide to take this thing on. The new power plant is mated to an NV4500 transmission with an Atlas transfer case while the power is put to the ground through custom built 9" axles from Quick Performance. With over 6" of lift and rollin' on a set of 20" Detroit Steel Wheels wrapped with some 35"Nitto Ridge Grapplers, this thing just looks TOUGH! The stock turbo just wasn't going proper enough for this build so we called our friends over at Precision Turbo and ordered up a 6062 ball bearing turbo to move some air though the little Cummins.
As SEMA builds go, it came down to the wire on getting this thing fired up and able to drive so that we could load it in the trailer to head to Vegas. Lots of overnight deliveries from companies such as Race Part Solutions and Stainless Works rolled in for the majority of the final week so that Monkey from Full Pull Diesel Performance could build the intake piping and exhaust. It was an 'all hands on deck' situation the final couple days. The guys from Eli's EZ Trim were on location to finalize the interior. Chris from Iron Goat Garage showed up to assist in the wiring department. Tony and Monkey from Full Pull Diesel tackled last minute fabrication needs while Shawn and his Dad did final assembly of the body.