Healey 100M On a Recent Rainy Day. Click to Enlarge

Back in the day, when the Austin Healeys ruled the road, you could saunter down to your local Austin Healey dealership and order up a car built the the exact specification of the LeMans racers.  These cars were known as the 100M.  If you had the patience, you’d wait while the British Motor Corporation pulled a car off the Austin assembly lines in Longbridge and trucked it out to the Healey factory in Warwick where they prepped your own personal racecar.  But, if you had an urgent race date you had to make, you could buy the complete kit of parts and have your dealer install it, instead.

100M Register Dash Plaque. Click to Enlarge

We’ve worked with both iterations of the 100M, however, this one is the genuine article.  Our first acquaintance of this car came when the owner approached us to do something about rough running as the rpm’s increased.  A road test led us to quickly determine that what the engine needed was to be balanced.  A pity, really, because the first build was by a high end engine shop in New Hampshire, which for the purposes of this narrative shall remain nameless, but had already raised the owner’s suspicions because immediately upon initial start up, it had seized a valve.

100M Engine with 1-3/4" carbs with cold air box & a rare original Lucas Sports Coil. Click for Detail

When we pulled it down to prep it for balancing, we discovered a couple of things we didn’t like.  The first was finding two pairs of Vandervell main bearings and one pair of Glacier mains, a basic ‘no-no’ in the engine world, and a set of Jahns pistons which creeped me out.  A Zyglo* inspection confirmed my suspicions, one of them was already cracked.  We replaced them with a custom made set from JE pistons.  What’s good enough for NASCAR is good enough for me.

Donald Healey said that the 100’s were his favorites because of their all around balance.  If that’s the case then the 100M must be first among equals.  It’s a rocket sled out on the road.

This car may be for sale.  Inquire.

Rocket Sleds, Part II

A Well Known MGC on Which We've 'Breathed' a Little

With the  coming of the Social Networking  investment mania , this is not a bad time to reflect back on a poor orphan of the Wall Street Dot.Com boom of a decade ago, because that’s when this MGC was born, an exercise in no expenses spared car building.

Three HS8 Carbs on a Very Healthy Engine. Click for Detail

Back around 1997 we were tasked with putting the engine together for this car.  We did, outsourcing once again to our favorite piston company (JE) for a special set of +.125″ flat top pistons, amongst other go-fast goodies.  After completion this engine clocked in at 172 bhp with 205 ftlbs. of torque at 5,000 rpm on the dyno.  When we subsequently had the opportunity  to retune it, we found the carbs still running rich in the initial startup position, so chances are it’s making even more power now.

Genuine Downton Performance Exhaust

Those beautiful carburetors are sitting on a “Mike The Pipe” custom built intake manifold, and the exit arrangements are courtesy of a genuine Downton Engineering MGC exhaust system, with the mufflers stacked horizontally, Jaguar Mk2 style.

When the Dot.Com’s when bust, the first owner’s lifestyle did too, so we arranged the sale to the very satisfied current owner.

Attention. Series 2 E-type Owners: Coming Up Fast in Your Rear View Mirror !

Needless to say, this car is very fast !   Here’s a picture of John on a roadtest last summer.  When I berated him for laying on the coals like that, he simply said, “I sneezed”.

David runs a pressure test on a "D" type overdrive

You’re looking at a simple but effective basic pressure test of a “D” type overdrive fitted to an early MGB 3-synchro transmission being performed in our driveline shop directly underneath where you saw Butch was working on an “A” type overdrive last week.    Your correspondant is runnning up the TX in 4th gear with an electric drill mounted in the bench vice to counter torque reaction, and coupled thru a piece of 5/8″ heater hose secured with four NAPA hose clamps.

You can make a quick check of the overdrive hydraulics on your own work bench in a similar fashion by running the same test and simply checking that, once engaged, hydraulic pressure prevents the TX output shaft from turning backwards until the pressure is released by cutting power to the solenoid.

3synchro & 4synchro interlock mechanisms

Now the reason that we were in this gearbox to begin with, was because of an interlocker problem.  It didn’t have one.  Our client brought it to us  and asked us to take a look at it and determine why it was stuck in gear.  We popped off the side cover, saw a nice looking gear set, worked it thru the gears manually and told him “nothing wrong” and sent him on his way.  Well, we were the ones who were wrong.  The interlocker was M.I.A. !

Illustrated above are from left to right, are a 4synchro interlock mechanism, modifed by us to suit the 3synchro O/D application, the standard 3synchro interlock arm, and the 4synchro (std & O/D) unit.  The purpose of the interlocker is to prevent the simultaneous selection of more than one gear.

Modified Interlocker Installed. Click to Enlarge

Here’s the modified 4-synchro interlocker installed in the overdrive adaptor housing.  It’s purpose is to prevent the peg on the remote control rod from engaging more than one selector at a time, which with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight, was exactly what was happening.  Our Bad, missing this obvious problem the first time !  What we didn’t miss was the fact that the similar appearing 4synchro interlocker lacked sufficient clearance to do the job, but after a little massaging on the Bridgeport, all was well

A Farm-Style Breakfast

Attention 4-wheeling fans: Owing to recent weather conditions, we’ve been providing additional rations to the 29 heaad of cattle pastured behind the shop.  Seth Holton’s crew hauls over these 1000 pound round bales which we transfer into the back of our our farm truck for delivery on the other side of the mud bog created by the recent heavy rains.

Return Passage. Click to Enlarge for Flying Mud

It’s the getting back that’s the challenge.  Here’s your correspondent charging back up the muddy barnyard hill with chains on.  To borrow from someone else’s classic advertising slogan: “You Can Do It In A GMC !“

Butch strips an "A" type overdrive

Our client asked us to staunch the flow of oil from the overdrive in his side shift Austin Healey, so we hauled it out and Butch pulled it down and found a number of very small leaks that added up to a puddle.  In our experience, the Laycock de Normanville overdrive  is about as trouble-free a mechanical device as you’re likely to find in an older sports car, but after the passage of time, 20, 30, 40, 5o years, their somewhat marginal sealing capacity becomes incrementally diminished to the point where anything south of the overdrive unit is effectively immunized from rusting.  We do this kind of work a lot, and we have the Churchill tools necessary to do the job correctly, and we do.

MGB bottom end with selected components. Click to Enlarge

While Butch was diligently working away upstairs, I was busy downstairs cobbling together an MGB bottom end to replace the cracked cylinder block featured in our earlier post, “Return of The Hunter-Gatherer” at the end of May.  It’s kind of an interesting collection of parts; a late 18V cast iron crankshaft (ground .010″/.010″ if you look very closely) with early 5-main 18GB full float connecting rods.  We’re still trying to figure out the cylinder block, because although it featured the 18V-style exhaust relief at the top of the cylinder bores, it only has the mounting bosses for a generator bracket and not the additional second set for an alternator.  This is not a big deal, because you can use a 1275cc “A” series alternator bracket, which has the necessary offset, but still, we’re wondering…

Inspecting an MGA 1500 with some of our rolling stock in the background

Late this afternoon I got a chance to take a closer look at the wiring in this MGA 1500. The owner had concerns about it, but I decided to give it a conditional pass.  Some repair is in order, but overall not bad for a car which is now more than 50 years old.  In the background are my MGB, a customer’s MGB, John’s mother’s Sprite, and Butch’s pickup, although he would like to trade it in on a newish MGA.

Fresh British Racing Green paint on this Austin Mini panel van. Fender flares in the foreground.

Hyper-Drive: This Mini is the first finished product of the completely renovated paint shop at East Coast Collision & Restoration. Jason and his right hand man Eddie Johnson put down the hammers & dollies and took up the hammers & saws and spent a month doing a gut rehab on their stand-alone paint facility.

Side view of this rare Mini panel van.

It’s a painter’s dream environment.  The lighting is so bright that I actually found it uncomfortable to be in there without sunglasses.  Of course if you’re a painter the complete lack of shadows from floor to ceiling is to die for !   After being backed up on paintwork for more than a month of 14 hour days of renovation work, they’re back in business again, and hopefully I’ll be able to report out in a few weeks on a currently embargoed special project.

We have 35 acres of open pasture around the shop, and working in concert with the 29 head of cattle grazing thru it, Patrick has been brush-hogging back the overgrowth the cattle haven’t gotten to yet.   Things start to happen very quickly in June.

Can you identify these three cars ?

Having retrieved the MGA on our car trailer from Richmond, Vermont Tuesday night, we shuffled the deck again on Wednesday.  That’s our favorite Austin Healey 100 M in the shop, and our Morgan +4 rolling chassis in the foreground, which we’re shipping up to East Coast Collision & Restoration now for re-bodying.

Butch tops off the brake master cylinder

In the course of our fairly typical week, Butch spent about 20 hours sorting thru some issues with this Mini.  It’s a good car, perhaps even better now that it has some stopping power at the rear end as well.  I roadtested it Friday afternoon and it goes like stink, although all we had to do with that end of it was an ignition timing adjustment.

John begins to strip out this TR3 front suspension

John began to strip out the front suspension on this veteran TR3 Thursday.  We’re certain it’s for the first time, not too shabby on a car over 50 years old.  It’ll go another 50 years as long as all those zerk fittings see the grease gun every 1200 miles or so.  This is our service recommendation for lightly used cars.  My MGB sees the grease gun every 2500 miles, but it’s not lightly used.  With nearly 150,000 miles logged over the last 25 years, and 1600 miles within the last two weeks, the suspension is still tight and accurate because of this.

Michael stops by on his way back from the New England 1000

Strictly speaking, this picture is from last week at the shop.  Michael Lerch stopped by on his way back from a surprisingly dry New England 1000, where his car put up a staggering performance (2nd place) with very little drama, apart from the muffler blowing out, literally !   It was replaced with an in-stock unit in a Midas shop in Newport, Rhode Island.