Junkyard Find: 1970 IHC Scout

Murilee Martin
by Murilee Martin

While the large numbers of Scouts on the extremely urban and snow-free Island That Time Forgot never made sense to me, it’s no surprise that the tough little International Harvester trucks still roam Colorado in large numbers. Still, with so many Scouts, some are going to end up facing The Crusher, and that’s what’s happened to this battered ’70.

It looks pretty solid at first glance, but closer examination reveals plenty of Bondo-covered rust. Still, there should have been plenty of life left in this truck. I blame cheap Subarus!

Damn if I can ID IHC V8s at a glance. If this is the factory-installed engine, it should be a 180-horsepower 304 (not to be confused with the unrelated AMC 304).

I’m tempted to buy one of the valve covers to hang on my garage wall.

Compare this instrument panel to the “information centers” that came later. Sure, most of those cheapo gauges probably failed by 1975, but they sure look cool.

We need more road vehicles made by farm equipment manufacturers!









Murilee Martin
Murilee Martin

Murilee Martin is the pen name of Phil Greden, a writer who has lived in Minnesota, California, Georgia and (now) Colorado. He has toiled at copywriting, technical writing, junkmail writing, fiction writing and now automotive writing. He has owned many terrible vehicles and some good ones. He spends a great deal of time in self-service junkyards. These days, he writes for publications including Autoweek, Autoblog, Hagerty, The Truth About Cars and Capital One.

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  • Scoutdude Scoutdude on Apr 04, 2011

    Definitely not the original engine. The 304 was never available with a 4bbl and since it's deck height is shorter than the 345/392 you can't swap intakes. That intake having an EGR valve and being a square bore with the recess puts the intake at least as a ~77-8 model year which would make it a 345 if the intake goes with the engine. The definitive way to ID is to clean the gunk off the boss under the front of the pass side head where they stamped V3xx and the suffix of A meant a lt duty cost reduced version while the E suffix denotes that it was fitted with the flat top emissions pistions and corresponding heads. That intake will bring around $100 bucks and those headlight surounds parking lights and grille are in demand as well not to mention the slider windows and really really hard to find in that good condition rear seat. If I didn't do Scout II's and have my share of spare 4bbl intakes for future projects.....but those pieces will sell on E-bay for good money. I see an easy $1000 worth of parts there. All in all I know many people who have put much much rougher Scouts back on the road or are driving them in worse condition.

  • Andy D Andy D on Apr 05, 2011

    IH parts are mostly unobtanium. I see a Blue one in the summers, but most are long gone.

  • Wolfwagen Is it me or have auto shows just turned to meh? To me, there isn't much excitement anymore. it's like we have hit a second malaise era. Every new vehicle is some cookie-cutter CUV. No cutting-edge designs. No talk of any great powertrains, or technological achievements. It's sort of expected with the push to EVs but there is no news on that front either. No new battery tech, no new charging tech. Nothing.
  • CanadaCraig You can just imagine how quickly the tires are going to wear out on a 5,800 lbs AWD 2024 Dodge Charger.
  • Luke42 I tried FSD for a month in December 2022 on my Model Y and wasn’t impressed.The building-blocks were amazing but sum of the all of those amazing parts was about as useful as Honda Sensing in terms of reducing the driver’s workload.I have a list of fixes I need to see in Autopilot before I blow another $200 renting FSD. But I will try it for free for a month.I would love it if FSD v12 lived up to the hype and my mind were changed. But I have no reason to believe I might be wrong at this point, based on the reviews I’ve read so far. [shrug]. I’m sure I’ll have more to say about it once I get to test it.
  • FormerFF We bought three new and one used car last year, so we won't be visiting any showrooms this year unless a meteor hits one of them. Sorry to hear that Mini has terminated the manual transmission, a Mini could be a fun car to drive with a stick.It appears that 2025 is going to see a significant decrease in the number of models that can be had with a stick. The used car we bought is a Mk 7 GTI with a six speed manual, and my younger daughter and I are enjoying it quite a lot. We'll be hanging on to it for many years.
  • Oberkanone Where is the value here? Magna is assembling the vehicles. The IP is not novel. Just buy the IP at bankruptcy stage for next to nothing.
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