PDLJMPR's Sprite Hall of Fame

The Simple Brake Job - Or My Nine Year Restoration Project!
by Frank Ianucilli

I can still remember how I planned a simple brake rebuild one weekend back in 1987. I had recently acquired a nice running example of a 1960 Austin Healey Sprite MK1 from a colleague at work who had "restored?" the car about five years earlier. When I test drove it for the first time the brake pedal needed a vigorous pumping action to stop the car and then fluid would drip on my pant legs each time I depressed the pedal. However, it was fun to drive that happy little car. It was light blue with no rust and the interior was black and just a little worn. People would honk their horns and give you a "thumbs up" as you drove by and the people who followed me would extend their middle finger, in I assume, a salute to the acceleration qualities of the car in everyday traffic.

This of course wasn't the first British car to fill up my garage. I had previously towed home an MGA whose paint had been removed with a blowtorch! After months of reflection, that same car departed my garage in the same condition that it had arrived, leaving behind only the odorous remnants of mouse droppings on the garage floor. Before that I tried to find my roots by owning an Italian sports car. I had been the proud owner of a 1971 Fiat 124 Sport Spyder, which was a glorious vehicle but had to be sold for more important acquistions, such as a home.

So anyway, there I was with my little car looking at it's toy sized brake shoes and hydraulic system. That is, attempting to look at its toy sized brake shoes and hydraulic system through an inch or two of grease and grit! Everything on the car was encrusted in grime. I had to scrape and chisel away inches of grunge before I could even fit a wrench on any nut or bolt I intended to remove. The advantage to this grease buildup was that it protected all of the nuts and bolts from rust so at least they would come off with little effort. So, here I was weeks later with the front suspension removed and all of the pieces belonging to it sitting in a pan of kerosene, the "poor mans" degreaser. At that time I thought to myself, "Hey, while I am rebuilding the brakes I might as well clean up and inspect the front suspension". It was so simple to work on it was almost fun. The next thing I knew months had gone by and my brake job had gotten out of hand. I now had totally disassembled the car! Parts were spread throughout the attic and the garage. I made a buck on casters for the car and turned it upside down to "clean up" the underside. My son was only five and stood about half as tall as the buck. He is now the one who drives the car to the meets. This was also the time I decided that the car would never be seen on the street until it was totally refinished down to the last screw. For this reason and my fanaticism to detail, the car remained in this inverted fashion for four years while I scraped away grease, welded in nail holes, (a fast way for the previous owner to get the carpet secured), and repainted the bottom side Porsche Guards Red. The same Guards Red, which would become part of everything I owned from there on out. My garage floor, shoes and clothes were not immune from this bright color.

By this time my driveway and front yard looked like a sandy beach area. Why was that you ask? You see, every night I would roll the car onto the driveway and use up a bag of sand by blasting out the engine compartment and underside. There was many a chassis or engine part hanging in the garage or house either being blasted, painted or drying.

My family and my neighbors tolerated my antics, and in fact more than one person who took evenin strolls in the neighborhoo began to stop and check out my progress every evening. They enjoyed watching me cover my face and head in make shift protective gear and blast away at the car.

Living in northern Indiana meant the outside work could only be accomplished eight or nine months out of the year. The rest of the year was spent wet sanding numerous small parts in the kitchen sink while watching television "with the family?" Another winter sport was warming smaller parts in the kitchen oven before running out to the cold garage to spray paint them and then running them back into the house to dry. There was many an evening that our house had the pungent odor of drying spray paint.

Many wonder why it took me so long to finish the vehicle if I worked on it all of the time. The problem was that my job involves travel and generally a lot of time. My goal, which I strictly adhered to, was when I was home I would go into the garage after my children went to bed. So, beginning at 10:00 in the evening I would go into the garage and spend one hour working on the car. Some nights I would only get two or three nuts or bolts stripped and painted before my hour ran out. It was in this "timed" fashion that I accomplished my work. It also allowed me to spend quality time with my family and still keep progressing on the car. The other aspect, which controlled the date of completion, was financial. Family budgets as they are, the funds for the Healey had to come from my miscellaneous dealings in used auto parts and any odd jobs I could find.

There was many a day when I would look at the car and debate rather or not I should sell it for the value of the parts. It got old sinking hard earned dollar after dollar into a car that was still upside down after four years. Unfortunately, my father who taught me the basics of backyard mechanics and instilled in us to have pride in our work, passed away unexpectedly during this time. He became my inspiration to build a car that he would have been proud of.

It was also around this time my wife and I decided to build a new house. So in typical fashion of a car restorer, we designed the house around my wants for a garage large enough to keep all of my parts in one place. Once I was satisfied with the garage dimensions, the family could do whatever they wanted with the rest of the house. The move also forced me to finish the bottom of the car so that it could be turned over and graduate to the status of a rolling chassis for the move.

With the move completed and the underside finished, it was time to tackle the drive train. The transmission looked in good shape so a good cleaning and painting was all it needed. It was completed and wrapped in plastic to be put back in the storage area. The engine was another story. The head was warped, the carbs leaked air, and two valves were cracked. I experienced a difficult time locating someone who would work on such a small, old and foreign engine. I really got tired of all of the shops asking, "what is that?" or "Is that out of a lawnmower " ? I finally came upon a machine shop in a small town that built racing tractor-pull engines. The owner was fascinated with the small engine and did all the machine work himself because everyone else in the shop was afraid to work on it. Because of his tractor-pull schedule, he took months to finish the machine work that normally would only take a few days. His equipment could not be set up to work on such small parts so he finally found someone at a lawnmower repair shop who would cut in the hardened no lead valve seats. The next bad news was the day he called and told me the block was bored crooked from the factory and the new thirty over pistons that I just purchased would not work and I had to buy another new set which were larger yet.

Installation of the drive train was a typical affair with the freshly painted engine and transmission being magnetically attracted to the freshly painted red engine compartment. Scratches to both became the standard for the day and continued to be for the rest of the restoration.

After having spent so many years rebuilding sub assemblies, you would think that by this time the car would just put itself together. Well, anyone who has restored a car knows that this is not the case. All of those NOS parts which I had paid top dollar for and have been saving for this important time simply did not fit (more scratches, more expletives). Many parts were misplaced or began to lose their shine. The body and paint work took on a life of their own. It seemed the more I primed the more I sanded. The more I sanded the more I primed. This never-ending cycle continued for months until I was satisfied with the finish. The bonnet was a project in itself. I decided to have it bead blasted because I suspected it had "a little bondo" in it. Of course the shop called and said I had better come down and look at what they found, never a good sign if you know what I mean. What they found was that the driver side fender was so destroyed it had to be removed and a new one put in its place. The area below the headlight bucket would need weeks of my tender massaging before I could ever begin to contemplate putting it back onto the car and painting it. Of course the NOS fender I ordered did not even come close to fitting the bonnet. It was about four inches longer than the rest of the car and the curve was not even close to the original design. I finally gave up and sent the car to the body shop for the fender to be properly fitted and the final color to be put on. When I brought the car home I was delighted. It was finally beginning to look like a car again!

The interior was another project in itself. My son, my wife and I learned many upholstery tricks as we shaped the hardboard backing, cut and stretched the vinyl and glued the vinyl onto the hard board backing. We wasted a lot of vinyl before we finally learned how to stretch and fit the corners of the dash. The dashboard knobs all needed stripped and hand painted. The gauges all needed disassembled painted and cleaned. After many trial fits and, "scratches" the interior was finished and so was the car.

After nine years it was only going to take a few more weekends for it to be ready for the road. I had kept my promise to myself that it would not see the road before it was complete and it was put together good enough for even my father. The big day came, the family watched as I started it up and drove it down the driveway. Only one problem plagued this perfect maiden voyage. Only one thing was giving me problems. Only one thing that I could not get to work quite right. You guessed it, THE BRAKES! The system that I started out to repair nine years earlier was the only system I could not get to work. I had rebuilt the entire car on my own but I finally had to break down and take the car into the shop for the repair of the brakes. Ironically, it was the NOS master cylinder that was bad. So it was pulled out once again and rebuilt once again. The master cylinder ended up costing as much as some pay for an entire Sprite! Such is life!

The car is now on the road and is a consistent show winner. My fifteen-year-old son has learned to drive a stick shift car by putting around in our Healey and we attend many shows throughout northern Indiana, central Indiana, Chicago area and Southern Michigan. We have thoroughly enjoyed the car and my son now does all of the driving while I just sit back and enjoy the ride. People still smile and wave when they see our smiling little car, and my son and I enjoy every wave and acknowledgement.

Frank Ianucilli

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