A question: If this shield was shorting and preventing the Scout from
starting, how come my battery was very "alive and well"?! Presumably it
happened before or when I parked it last night, so it'd probably been
sitting like that for hours.
Pete, my guess is it was shorting the terminal on the solenoid that
gets power only when starting -- the one that has the straight metal
connection to into the starter housing. Normally no problem, but you
turn the key and light that terminal up and it shorts out to the
starter housing, connected to the block and back to the ground.
That'll peg your ammeter!