PDLJMPR Web Magazine,
May 1, 1997
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Having had a long-standing love affair with Healeys dating back to the mid-1960's when a flat mate had an Austin Healey 100 and another (at a later date had a 100-6), I vowed myself that one day I would own one.
In 1993 I imported an A/H 3000 and an A/H 100 from California (both basket cases). Although my contacts in California were friends of friends, the whole deal turned out to be a disaster!
The cars arrived in NZ and I realised I had not bought wisely. I on-sold the whole package to a restoration company in Melbourne (Aus) and set about recovering the remainder of my investment.
I had paid for the container to be fumigated and cars/bits steam cleaned before leaving the U.S. In hind-sight, fortunately they had not been - and when the container was opened locally there was a colony of live Black Widow spiders on board. The local press and National TV had a field day and as a result I found a friendly lawyer in California who agreed to sue the shippers for damages - for a percent of the winnings. This went on for about a year, at the end of which I received a very diluted settlement which made my short-fall on the whole deal tolerable. A most interesting and costly lesson.
Not deterred, I still was determined to own another Healey!
A friend (Gary Tansey) had imported a MKI Sprite late in 1994 which he decided he wasn't able to keep. The body was supposedly pretty good. I was only casually interested at this stage.
I looked at the car and the body was near faultless. The outside had been stripped back to the metal in the U.S. by Gary and etch-primed prior to shipping. There was a small area of poorly repaired panel damage on the LH side, otherwise it couldn't be faulted. I have previously owned a MKI Sprite with a normal amount of rust and bog in it so I knew just how good this body was.
The deal was agreed to with Gary and restoration started in December, 1994. I had the inside of the car bead blasted with a walnut shell mix
The gel-coat on the fibreglass hard-top was in a sorry state with years of Californian sun. Fortunately, the last car I restored was a fibreglass one (a Lotus Elan + 2) on which I had learnt the basic techniques of fibreglassing.
The body, doors, bonnet, and roof were painted locally in 2 pot British Racing Green.
The car came with a set of wire wheels and four disk wheels. I opted for the wires, but only two of these were restorable. The other three were replaced with new ones
Most bright work was re-useable with the screen surround and scuttle trim being cleaned up and sent away for re-anodising. The side screen frames were in a sorry state and I was ready to scrap them but a very skilled friend with a hammer worked his magic - and after re-anodising they looked like new.
Part of the grille disappeared when it was stripped prior to re-plating. My friend welded in a patch (my welding not being up to it) and I set to with a jewler's glass and a small set of files to cut out the grille pattern to match the rest.
As I mentioned earlier, I had in past owned a Bug-eye Sprite and had enjoyed it except for it's Mooris Minorish performance.
The plan for this car was to restore it to original specs, but have bolt-on performance parts to make it a little more exciting. It was still relatively simple to return it to an ex-factory state, if I had a change of heart at a later date.
My business committments didn't give me a lot of spare time, so I came to an arrangement with Gary whereby he rebuilt the engine and bolted it on all the sub-assemblies to get it to a rolling state.
I took away and restored all the sub-assemblies (suspension/brakes/steering rack & column/back axle/radiator/etc) and returned them in dribs and drabs for Gary to fit.
The original 948cc engine was replaced by a 1275cc (as per MKIV Sprite). SU carbs were replaced by one DCOE Weber and and Oeselli inlet manifold. A standard camshaft was replaced by a "fast road" cam. The Weber came from a friend in Australia, the inlet manifold and cam I bought from Oeselli Engineering while in England early in 1995. The cam was an early narrow-lobe one and after discussion we decided to use a locally-ground Kelford Camtech cam. The flywheel was lightened and all parts balanced. Very presentable extractors were made locally to a design I had obtained in England, and an oil cooler added for good measure.
The gearbox was a re-conditioned MKIV Sprite one which I also obtained in England. Diff ratio was lifted from the standard 4.22:1 to 3.7:1.
Front brakes and suspension uprights were changed to later disk variety with larger rear drum brakes also fitted. An up-rated anti-roll bar was fitted to the front. I retained the standard combined brake/clutch master cylinder but added an MGA reservoir (which bolts straight on) to give added volume for the disk brakes. MGAs used the same combined master cylinder and added the extension reservoir when they changed from front drum to disk brakes.
Towards the end of 1995 the rolling shell, with engine and gearbox in place came home from Gary's. Gary had run the wiring loom and made most of the connections, leaving only lights, horn, ignition, etc to connect.
The doors and bonnet fitted very easily with very little adjustment required (although one area of the bonnet fit I think I can improve on). I guess that is another benefit of having a body that didn't require major repair.
I upholstered the car myself, including the dashboard (that is using a kit from the UK). I was surprised at how straight forward this was, including fitting the soft top and tonneau cover. The seats caused me a little stress with three attempts and two changes of padding before I was happy with the look and how they felt when you sat on them.
Three of the dashboard instruments just required cleaning and re-chroming of their bezels. The fuel guage mechanism was beyond repair and sourcing a second-hand one prohibitive in cost - so after a bit of experimentation I grafted the mechanism out of an A40 Farina guage (the guages are quite different in appearance, but the mechanisms appear to be the same) into the Sprite housing and face. With a little adjustment it gave appropriate readings. The speedometer was re-calibrated on the the first test drive with the aid of another car and pre-arranged system of hand signals.
As most of you readers know, the joy of restoring a car is not just the problem-solving during the restoration or the driving of the finished car, but the people and incidents that happen on the way.
This car is no different. Many of the parts used were sourced on an overseas trip to the UK early in 1995. The kin spirits and places visited are all memories that now form part of this car, like three trips made to Faringdon (out of Oxford) to source an elusive Right-hand steering rack - only to get back to NZ and find that I had been mistakenly given a left-hand one.
Its amazing what you can fit in a suit case,......souveniers were jettisoned for higher-priority car parts. Even my camera bag wasn't exempt, the camera sharing space with four wheel spinners, two splined hubs, one camshaft, sundry badges, and sidescreen fittings.
The differential was located on another trip, at a wrecker's yard in Hawii. I am sure they guy thought I was a nutter. I was at a conference at the time and arrived at his off-the-beaten-track wrecking yard in semi-flash clothing. The deal was struck, part of it being that I had to pull it out of the car. I did so without a drop of grease/oil on my clothes. Then there was packaging it in a room in the Hawiian Hilton with minimal resources and convincing customs at the airport that it wasn't a sinister package.
The goof-ups.... well there were quite a few, like getting a new set of wiper arms from England only to find that like the steering rack they two were left-handed (parked their blades towards the driver's side). I diligently re-shaped them, then checked in a reference book..shock..horror...Sprites park their blades on the opposite side to most other right-hand-drive cars. More diligent bending.
The greatest nightmare was getting the car registered. Only someone who has been through importing a car that you are trying to keep original (sans high rear stop light, etc) would know what I mean.
Incidentally, the car does have a personalised plate "AN5". AN5 was the factory prefix for MKI Sprites.
Towards the end of last year I replaced the rear shock absorbers with bolt-on adjustable Spax ones....this improved the handling significantly.
I ran AN5 in the Pirelli Mainland Classic of NZ late last year (a rally held every two years for classic cars). The only problem we had was cooking a rear wheel seal after a speed section at one of the local race tracks.
The car drives and performs every bit as I had hoped, pulling effortless to beyond 6,000 rpm without sounding under strain. The cam is a little bumpier at low rpm than I had hoped, but I am currently doing another head with Rimflow valves which I understand whould smooth much of this out.
The only other mod I thought I might make is adding a panhard rod to the back, but to be honest I am pretty happy with both handling and performance as it is.
Peter White
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