I seem to recall Charlie Savvas saying he got over 400,000 miles out
of his.
On Aug 20, 2012, at 4:09 PM, Justin Haynes wrote:
On a slightly more practical (depending on your definition of
practical) note, if you can snatch up a diesel International Scout
II between the years of 1976-1980, *especially* 1980. They will
seem overpriced compared to Kelley blue book and for good reason.
If they are in good condition they will last for 100s of thousands
of miles.
The Diesel engines in these cars were Nissans:
Nissan SD33 (diesel) (naturally aspirated)
Nissan SD33T (turbo diesel—1980 only)
So why scout? They were built like tanks. Why diesel? I won't
make the case for diesel here over gasoline though I do prefer
diesel engines: Though Scout did a good job on their gasoline
engines, all the parts around the engine went to the lowest bidder.
so the distributor might have been from AMC and the alternator from
some other cheap source that would break (likely shaken to death by
the stiff suspension. :-) ). The diesels being from Nissan and
being quite solid finding appplications also in industry, are very
servicable and long lasting.
And why don't you hear more about these wonderful vehicles? Only
~30000 were made per year from 1976-1980, and only ~10000 of them
made in 1980, the last year of production. During that year, only a
fraction were diesels.
So in other words, they are disappearing. And if you can find one,
you can have a very good caving vehicle for a reasonable price
-Justin
