Junkyard Find: 1974 International Harvester Scout II
Here in Denver, the Jeep DJ-5 often shows up in Junkyard Finds. Another truck that forms a regular part of The Crusher’s diet in Colorado is the International Harvester Scout. Yes, there was once a time when a farm-equipment manufacturer made highway-legal light trucks, and the Scout was (and is) a Colorado favorite. Here’s a battered ’74 I spotted a few weeks back.
In this series so far, we’ve seen this ’70 Scout, this ’71 Scout, and this ’73 Scout. Today’s find has a bit of rust, a well-worn interior, and seriously sun-bleached paint.
Oh yeah, and it appears to have had a minor rollover mishap.
When IHC needed to add instructions for window-regulator replacement, they went for combine-harvester-style stenciled instructions rather than the decals that the Detroit Big Three would have used.
I’m pretty sure this is the 304-cubic-inch IHC V8, but I don’t know enough about these engines to distinguish the 304 from the 345 at a glance. Either way, it’s a little four-wheel-drive truck with farm-grade V8 power!
The blue-and-white two-tone paint is more like light-blue-and-off-white by now, but it probably looked great when new.
Are there any Scouts without a hunting- or fishing-related window decal? No, there are none.
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, Hagerty and The Truth About Cars.
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Had one of these in the family, even powder blue, but with a different stripe. V-8 and 4-speed all restored or rebuilt, canvas top and roll bar. Loved it for off-roading and top down cruising in the summer. But while driving it on vacation I got stuck in a traffic jam and working that clutch for 45 minutes in stop and go traffic was enough for me not to buy it when it was sold. So these basically are a redneck convertible for me, nice for the weekends, but not a good daily driver.
drove one on the farm as a teenager in the 70's the dang thing out climbed almost any other vehicle on the farm including the old K-5 Blazer. I tried to drive it threw a brick wall once after an argument with my dad but the whole wall fell down. I scratched the paint a little. on the old beast. I was tring to prove the point an Old timer told me, "you could drive them things threw a brick with barely a scratch."