As it was in the beginning - spring 1983 all looking dandy - complete with original number plate
So between 1982 and 2002 what did I do to the old car. Well very little I have to confess. I bought 4 chrome wires, despite my inner feeling that big-Healeys were never meant to have chrome wires (but they do look good). I put in new carpet. I welded my lower front wishbone mounting back on to the chassis (more of this anon), and I re-sprayed several panels as the rot came through or the 1/4 inch thick filler cracked, over the twenty year period (which gave it that distinctive patchwork quilt effect). But apart from this, I had trouble free motoring (except that I had to stop several times on journeys to fill up the oil !!!! - ever been driving along when suddenly the oil pressure drops to zero? - I've had this happen on several occasions!)
I'd threatened to re-build the engine and gear-box (it always jumped out of second on the over-run) on many occasions. But to be quite honest, I was a bit wary of lifting such a big lump out of my car. It sounds silly now, as I'd removed several engines/gearboxes in the past, but usually they belonged to friends. But this was my pride and joy, albeit a tired and weary pride and joy.
Bad paint job
June 2002 - May 2003
The engine and gearbox come out
I'll just take a look in here whilst you have a sit down David and decide what's next to take out.
Total cost:
Gear box rebuild which included a new mainshaft (knackered by the boys of The University of Bradford and Bingley 20 years previously), new baulk rings, new clutch, new bearings etc. £1160.
Engine rebuild which included a rebore, new pistons, crank reground, new mains, big-ends etc. £1300 (this didn't include the head reworking which I did myself, nor did it include putting all the bits back on e.g. head, dynamo, distributor, carbs, exhaust manifold).
Then following a nice coat of Healey engine paint in that classic green, to both engine and gearbox, it was off to Le Mans 2003
Surely it's not about watching a load of 911s chasing each other through the night and not having a clue about who's winning.
December 2003
Then the brake master cylinder had to be changed. BJ7s without a servo have a 5/8" bore master cylinder, whereas if a servo is fitted the master cylinder must be 7/8" bore (interestingly, mine was a 3/4" which I think may be off a 100/6).
Finally the servo is bolted to the outside of the drivers 'floor-pan', kinda behind the pedals. I fitted a new servo as sold by the Healey specialists (made by Delphi). I was advised against an original as a) the leather seals are likely to have perished and b) the new ones are more efficient. Fitting the servo in theory is a piece of cake. However, the mounting brackets supplied I'm sure weren't designed with the Healey in mind. The thing is, that when you screw the servo to the sloping 'floor-pan' you have to make sure the servo cylinder is at a specified angle to the Earth's curvature. This means the main bracket ends up at a funny angle. Secondly, the 'stabilising' bracket doesn't seem to have an obvious point to attach to. I attached mine to the chassis leg that goes up to the bulkhead.
Finally, the servo instructions say "If you are going to fit the servo in an area that may get dirty (like near the deck on a Healey), then fit the adapter air intake with a breather pipe going up into the engine space". Ok that's all well and good BUT the servo doesn't come with the adaptor and the Healey parts suppliers don't supply them (or they didn't when I bought it). However, I did manage to get the exact part from a company called J.E.M (tel: 01455-230626) - part number AP 3887-266. Just attach a 18" length of heater hose and point it up to the top of the engine, to stop the ingress of water, mud etc. (some people stuff some wire wool into the pipe to stop spiders making a home!).
Now the controversial bit - silicone fluid or traditional mineral based. Well I opted for silicone; I didn't want to ruin my new paint job when I got round to it. But then some people reckon that silicone swells the old calliper/break cylinder seals, causing leaks or jams. We shall see.
So...was it worth it? Well let's put it like this. I drove up the road at 30mph, hit the breaks and not only did it stop on a sixpence (which someone kindly left in the road for me) but the spanner I left on the rear seats hit my windscreen (without incident, fortunately). Job done!
April 2004
Ok, I've had the car 22 years. It's got a new engine, gearbox and brakes. I've retired. What am I waiting for?
So where do you start? Well I knew it was going to be messy, so remove the seats and out with the carpet, take off all the panels, remove all the chrome (including the grill surround which needs patience and very long thin arms unless you've taken the rad out first). Then it's choose your weapon time - nitromors, hot-air gun or sander. Well the reality is that I used all 3. For some odd reason the nitromors stripped some paint with great ease, but didn't touch other areas. The hot-air gun was great on underseal, as was engine degreaser (which I guess is paraffin based). I left most of the panels on to start with, but when it came to getting down to bare metal, one-by-one the panels came off.
That's Dave in the garage. He hasn't moved from that position since we took the engine out in 2002!
So it was back on with the wings ( I had to drive it to the body shop). Forget all those fiddly bolts and fasteners, cable ties were the answer !!!!!
All the wings back on again
- with cable ties !!!
No point stripping the bottom of the doors, a new lower skin was required in place of the ton of filler !
May 2004
Then we cleaned down the rear wheel arches, inside and out (using engine degreaser to remove the underseal), only to find that the 'B' posts were fastened to the wheel inner arches by 16 sections of rusty patchwork quilt! In addition the outer sills were looking fragile. So off came the sills, and Lance's "welder par excellence" colleague Mark put on new sills and rebuilt the arch sections.
Body all reshaped, new sections put in, time for a 'dry' fit. Did everything line up - well good enough. So then it was off to the paint shop. Once there, the wings, doors, bonnet, boot lid , front and rear shroud all came off again (what a pain!). Wheel arches given a good coat of black stone-chip (black shows off the car profile, but some may prefer body colour). Then all the panels were painted individually in 2K (two pack) Healey blue (BU2 paint code). Again the jury is out whether to go for original cellulose, which is easy to maintain, or go for the more durable, high gloss two pack. I chose the latter.
With all the panels painted, the front and rear shrouds went back on, remembering to put seam-sealer between shroud and inner body under the rear of the front shroud (the section between bonnet and dash). This helps stop the whole thing drumming on the body. Then the wings and doors went on temporarily, but accurately, so as to put on the Old English White (WT3) and get the line straight.
Alan Pitkin's Austin Healey 3000 Mk 1
I have owned my 1960 3000Mk1 BN7 now for 5 years, it has always been prone to some extent to pre-ignition (run-on), however the fact file that came with the vehicle indicated that the engine had been overhauled about four years before I purchased the car, but no exact details were included as to what had been done to the cylinder head, whether or not it had been skimmed and due to the pre-ignition, it was the head which I assumed was the critical item. The limited diagnostic tools that I owned, led me to believe that the timing and mixture were not too badly adrift from the recommended values. (The car had only covered about 2000 miles from the time of overhaul).
I had found a source of genuine four star petrol close by in Windlesham and had tried running the car on this for a while to check whether octane value had any bearing on the problem.
Over the next few months I had become quite practised in the art of placing the car in gear and stalling it whenever I needed to switch off the engine. I also received advice that another recognised method was to floor the throttle when attempting to switch off the engine. Of course neither method was the cure, but only a solution to the problem, and the condition was getting worse, so when after becoming embarrassed about the length of time the car took to shudder and shake its way to a halt, did I consult Bill Rawles. My first thoughts had been to ask Bill to convert the head to run on un-leaded fuel; however that was dismissed by Bill for two reasons, the first being that to properly carry out the conversion, he would have to skim the head and this of course would raise the compression ratio and make the problem far worse. The second reason was that I had already measured the compression ratios and Bill was of the opinion that I should initially be looking elsewhere for the problem. He suggested that the fuel mixture, the timing (or the idling speed) could be the most obvious causes of my problem.
Armed with this advice I went home and over the next few days and weeks tried a whole range of alternative settings for both timing and mixture, but nothing seemed to substantially alter the condition of the running-on, it did however drastically affect the cars performance on some settings. I reverted to the timing, mixture, and idle settings that I had previously noted (before attempting any changes) and returned tail between legs to Bill.
No need to worry too much Bill said, we once had a Healey here with a similar problem, but that ran-on for a couple of minutes after you switched off the ignition. He then told me all about engine hot spots and how they had eventually cured the other Healey problem by fitting harder compound plugs. Bill disappeared upstairs to his stores and re-appeared with a set of used racing plugs from his race car. I was instructed that these were the solution and to go away, give them a good clean and to put them into my engine when it was warm and then try them. Off home I went feeling that I would now be going to see an end to my problem.
I followed Bills instructions, went for a drive, came home and expectantly switched off. True the shuddering was slightly less than usual, but it was still there. Let’s try the mixture and timing variations again I thought, that could perhaps help the situation. Nothing seemed to improve it and so again I reverted to the remembered settings and went back to stalling the car whenever I needed to switch off. One factor that I did observe was that the new plugs really helped in starting, but that was not what their main function was meant to achieve.
The winter followed and over these months more settings of timing and mixture were tried, the compression ratios were again checked, but still the bloody thing ran-on. Now, feeling convinced that the cylinder head was the culprit, I returned to Bill.
He was still convinced from what I was telling him that the head was not the fault, but that the plugs, mixture, timing combinations would cure the problem. Try placing additional washers on the plugs he said, to stand them further out from the ignition point (hot spots being blamed again). So off home I went to try out this possibility.
There should be no reason now to wrongly guess what the result was, precisely – very little change even though the whole range of timing and mixture settings was again tried. It must be the head mustn't it! I looked around to see what the cost of a new aluminium head would be, £2000 plus labour. Well if it’s the only solution then I suppose it will have to be done, especially as I sometimes forgot to stall the car.
It was around this time that the Technical Day was scheduled at Bill Rawles. I phoned him before the day and asked him whether after the event I could leave my car with him to replace the head. On the day however Bill decided that perhaps my problem was one to investigate and to indicate to people there, the correct procedures to diagnose and rectify timing and mixture faults.
Go and get the car then Bill said. The bonnet was raised and it was left ticking over for a while to reach running temperature and then Bill emerged from his workshop armed with a Timing Gun, a Multi-meter and some tools. First thing was to check the timing; this was not too badly set and Bill left it alone. Next the carburettors were to be checked, the car was switched off and minor run-on was observed. To check the carburettors Bill first removed one of the dash pots complete with piston spring and needle jet. The first one showed evidence that the piston was not moving freely in the dash pot, however there was no wear evident on the surfaces of the needle and the needle shoulder was correctly located. The second carburettor dash pot was removed and in this case the piston moved freely and again there was no evidence of wear on the needle, but Bill decided that both dash pots should be cleaned internally and have a very fine Emery abrasive run around the inside of the dash pots until the pistons moved freely, to his satisfaction. Having resolved this problem, we were then shown how to obtain an initial mixture setting (on each carburettor) by rotating the jet adjustment nut until the jet seating was level with the top of the recess on the carburettor body and then to back off the nut by rotating it by six flats (ie one complete turn), however on mine Bill decided that eight flats should be the setting.
The dash pots were then replaced, ensuring that the correct one was fitted to each carburettor, that the needle jets were carefully lowered into their seatings and that after the dash pot securing screws had been tightened, the pistons could be heard and felt to freely move when the jet lifting lever was activated. The dash pots were then topped up with the correct grade of oil and the engine restarted.
Having achieved this stage Bill was revving the engine to check its response when he noticed a problem (I had also become aware of this problem, it had manifested itself fairly recently, but I could not find a cure), this problem was a reluctance for the engine to return quickly to its idle speed. It did eventually reach its correct idle speed, but this took some seconds to achieve. Bill separated the links to each carburettor and was able to establish that one of the throttle return springs had become weakened. The offending spring was removed and the length adjusted, using a pair of pliers, until an acceptable tension was achieved and the spring replaced.
The engine was restarted, a few quick checks made and then Bill drove off for a test drive. He returned some minutes later, switched off the engine and miracle of miracles, there was no run-on. Bill said that in his opinion I should now be able to remove the hard plugs and revert to normal ones and if things went well to advance the ignition timing, but not by more than 2 degrees.
I have since reverted to standard plugs, slightly advanced the ignition and the car has performed impeccably ever since. I can't thank Bill too much for saving my sanity.
Alan Pitkin