My friend Mike Jongeling called with a '75 Scout II for sale with some front end damage. I'll post the "before" pics at a later date. In any manner, I passed the prospect on to Ben Martin since he was interested in a 4x4.. and this sounded like a good buy. It needed the sheet metal pieces that were "discards" from my racer anyhow.. so Ben bought me a towbar, and we drove to Bozeman to tow his Scout home. During this time, I was dismantling a friend's "Old Blue" Scout racer. Around 11:30pm, I was tired of dragging Old Blue's frame around the driveway, and I had just bought a used circular saw and some metal blades, so I took the chance to cut the frame in half. Sunday morning, we finished stripping the front clip from Ben's '75.. "Hmm... does your frame look bent to you?" "Uh oh".. and then I pointed to the box of welding rod and said, "There's a good frame along the side of the garage..." and so the search for a good frame began. I ended up buying a '72 Scout II and we parted it out for the frame. I kept the 304/727 and D30/D44 for future projects (plus a windshield and column for my racer, etc.). We then needed to get Ben's body off of his bent frame and get the new frame under it.. and so it began one Saturday morning:


Ben started by removing all of the body mount bolts the weekend before. Thus, he began with my floor jack and some firewood, jacking the body up and shoving various sized logs between the body and frame.


Hmmm.. one tall body lift, huh?

We ran a 4x4 between the body and the frame. On one side of the Scout, we had my good floor jack with a big log on it (not high enough y'know) and the other had a chain wrapped around the 8' 4x4, and then attached to my shop hoist. Slowly we raised the tub until we could lower the 4x4 onto a pair of ordinary saw horses.

We slid another 4x4 up front, and managed to get the whole thing onto saw horses. We then aired down the rear tires 'till they were flat, and I slowly dragged the frame with axles, motor, transmission out from underneath the body tub (I used my Scout to pull it, not my back!). And thus, we had a Scout II body tub hanging above the street! Yes, we did get a lot of double takes..

Here you see the tub with the frame/axles/drivetrain in front if it, and my Scout hooked up.

Ever wonder what the underside of a Scout II 'tub looked like?

We rolled the frame forward, pulled the motor/trans/xfer case as a unit, then pushed the frame rearward. Then we took this shot of everything:

After that, we unhooked the springs, and my brother and a friend helped us lift the old frame up and away, and drop the new frame in place - surprisingly easy with 4 men to do the job! We then pushed the frame back under the drivetrain, lowered the drivetrain onto the frame, then pushed the chassis back under the tub, and slowly lowered the body tub right back onto the freshly installed body mount bushings. About 12 hours from start to finish on this Saturday. Easter Sunday morning Ben put a few bolts into the mount holes, and picked up his pieces lying around:

and I then towed bar'd his Scout over to his garage for the final work. When I last saw the Scout, the front clip needed reinstalled, along with the steering column, and the wiring needed re-attached. Ben stripped the interior and was trying to decide what to do about the rust as well.

-Tom
Tom's Scouts