Projects Austin Healey pulled from field, anyone know these?

This definately IS Stormin' Norman Cowdry. He still
owns a shop named Norm's Auto Body in So. Cal. that is now run by his son Norm.

 

No it won't. A Healey does not have a chassis in the conventional sense. It a semi unit tub. The sheet metal bolts to the tub.

 

First gear was not "activated" on the later cars. It was an entirely different trans. You're correct about the BN1 trans, it did have first gear locked out. It was a truck trans and first was way too low to be useful. As a sidenote, the Laycock overdrive in the 3 speed cars had a higher ratio than the later units. We all used them in our street cars. You could cruise, very comfortably, at 90-100 all day long

 

That BT7 means it has a back seat - the 2seat only was BN. You car has disc brakes which should make it late 59..or beyond. I've had a few of these, and a Chev V8 makes just the nicest little scooter. The stock trans will hold up if you don't launch from a dead stop, but the clutch is small...9" if I recollect. Watch the 'hog troughs' and frames...these cars are notable for their tendency to rust seriously in those areas. Certainly worth thinking about restoring. More fun to swap in an SBC, change it over to negative ground...and go kick some Corvette butt. There are a couple of websites that are dedicated strictly to engine swaps in the 100s and 3000s. There are a jillion (more or less) sites that are for restorers and collectors and just plain fans. Little known fact is that when Shelby was trying to put something together in the way of a hybrid - AH/sbc was his first choice, but neither company would play ball....AC had lost their engine provider...Ford agreed to provide some 260s and the rest is history.

dj

 

Just remembered...some parts of those 100-6s are aluminum...be careful

dj

 

My Brother had one.I remember driving from Mass. to TN. in it.
In the 60's I had some friends that loved to take them and drop in SBC's.It was a very popular converstion.
However, there was a problem with them.The frames liked to rust.
I'd do a through assesment of the car before I dove in.Restoring one with your biggest pars source being overseas can get reall expensive.
Some of that stuff (Lucas,Smiths etc.) wasn't good when it was new!

 

there were plenty of them done with small blocks, since yours is original I would keep it that way, a restored healey 6 is a thing of beauty, and torque. plus nothing else on earth had that sound. watching that video takes me back to my childhood and that sound of one chasing down a jag nearly brings tears to my eyes. get someone with a restored one to give you a ride flat out, and you'll understand. these were guys cars.

 

here's a great video of one racing a ford falcon in a vintage race. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yyZBCwtYmE4&feature=related

 

all 3000s dont have roll up windows i had a 60 mk1 bn-7 3000 had plastic side slicing windows looks like a 59 100-6 or a early 3000

 

Aaahh, one of Britain's finest old chap !
I say restore it !!! It is NOT going to be easy especially if the floor panels are rusted out. But you could end up with one of these:



(The 1961 Pat Moss/Ann Wisdom works rally car)

And do this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1qcxu6A6qLM&feature=related

Swapping engines is a thing of the past: a well made rally replica has $70.000 selling value (But would probably cost as much)

 

Here's one of the most beautiful examples I've seen....and an interesting site on swaps.....
http://www.britishv8.org/

 

The biggest parts source is, probably, Moss Motors here in SoCal. Contrary to what may seem obvious, MOST Austin Healeys were sold in the US and the lions share of them were sold here on the west coast. We had guys from England and Australia come to us for cars. They are quite rare in GB.
The Smiths guages are as good as they come. You won't find anything in that era that's better. The Lucas stuff, though weird, isn't as big an issue as some would believe. We would adapt GM one wire alternators and Pertronics ignitions and they were trouble free. You just have to keep those goofy Lucar connectors clean and use a little dielectric greas

 

The stock trans is problematic. Non synchro 1st gear being the bigggest issue. I'vs seen many, many, V-8 Healeys, but never with the stock trans. I don't recall the clutch size, but it is much larger than 9". The stock rear end will take a lot of abuse. A GM posi will fit. At Hollywood Sport Cars, where I worked, Doane Spencer was our competition mechanic. He swapped a Pontiac posi into one.
If it is restorable, I wouldn't alter it. Yeah, as someone said, there is hardly a sweeter sound in the world than a Big Healey going thruogh the gears

Just remembered...some parts of those 100-6s are aluminum...be careful

The center body sections or the "shrouds" as they were called are aluminum. Thats about all other that stuff that is ordinarily aluminum like pistons, trans cases etc.

BTW, that front shroud looks to be in pretty good shape. The area under the grille seem pushed in, but that is common, and easy to fix. I paid 500 bux for one, not as nice as that, 25 years ago. I don't know if they're being repoped. Moss Motors had pieces of them made some time ago. They were pretty crappy and needed a lot of work to make them fit. That one piece could be worth a bunch

 

I had a59 100/6 with a 327 3speed when i was 17 .lt was candy color frost grape. Raced an older guy with one with a built sm ford/stock trans. We ran sideby side till he hit the overdrive. All i saw were his taillights fading away. Car must have made an impression or the yearbook kids,they said i left my Purple car.Funny thing is Senior year i was driving a 67 Mustang GT

 

Car must have made an impression or the yearbook kids,they said i left my Purple car.

Huh?!?!?!

 

X2 . nice find

 

Check out this one, for sale in Australia for $17,500 Aussie, which converts to exactly $12,821 US!

http://www.drive.com.au/used-cars/A...4178733&pg=1&pp=6&d=0&nv=1&SG=1268937101&pt=1

It doesn't look in that much bette conditionr than yours, motor and gearbox are disassembled, and it appears to have the same sort of bits missing!

Not exactly small change is it?

Cheers, Glen.

 

\ rf vgb

 

Let's see, what was the original question; does anyone here know anything about them? Is this the best site on the net, or what?

 

If you are not going to restore it, it would be better to sell it to some AH enthusist and make his day. Putting a SBC etc. would ruin its value eventually. Great mountain road car for sure.

 

There's one at the end of my street here in Sydney owned by a yuppie blonde chick. I'm gonna print that picture out and stick it to her windscreen...

 

http://www.britishv8.org/index.htm

Someone may have posted this already (don't have time to read all 5 pages right now) but it will give you a decent amount of stuff to look at.

 

I done it

 

Oh, yeah.....thanks alot! I just spent 2 hours watching different U-tube vidios on sporty car racing...I WAS HYPMO-TIZED! but I loved it.
I was stationed in Germany in 67-69 and as died in the wool hotrodders, a buddy of mine from Iowa and I were able to score a free '59, A-6 roadster when it's previous owner rotated back to the states. It came with a blown motor and a parts car with a supposedly good motor. We swapped engines and got a buddy to help with synchonising the carbies...when the engine reached 3000 RPM it exploded so we did the onliest thing we could.....we went shopping for a SBC in Nuremburg, Germany. Amazingly, we couldn't find one but we did score a 348/3 speed with hurst shifter from a wrecked GI's 59 chevy. I swear the 348 weighed as much or maybe less than the original 6 banger....
I had to go on manuevers when the big engine swap took place and when I returned, 2 weeks later the job was done...it was awful! The guys said they had to move the steering box over 4 inches to accomodate the wider engine and they said they had to add in 4 inches to the pitman arm also...made the turning radius about 32 turns lock to lock [I dunno, seems ass backwards to me...an aditional 4 inches to the pitman should have made the steering faster IMHO but I wasn't there to witness the work]
Anyway, the car ran like a scalded cat but there was absolutely no way to hook the power to the ground....even with 8.20 tires. The car would simply go around backwards because there was no way to keep up with the slooooooooooooooooow steering....and the car was so low we never got an exhaust system on it either. We were forced to keep the car on post and our little army post [Monteith Barracks] comprised about 1.5 miles total of roadways/streets....still, it was a blast and we only had 50 bucks in the motor/trans....everything else was free. We gave the car away to some other young gearheads as we left to return to the states.

 

Exactly! Nobody else has mentioned that fact but the one we had in Germany had aluminum body panels.. I was surprised to see the one in the photo has rust on it. I was thinking the entire body was of aluminum on our car...I believe it was a '59 100-6....maybe a '61, hell I can't remember

 

Only the two center sections of the bodies were aluminum. That's why the car in the pix seems to be white around the hood and trunk. The rest is steel.

 

Well. I suppose you could do it, the wheelbases are similar (same if it was a 100/4). It would have been either quite a piece of engineering or a total bodge.

I DONE it?!?!?! I thought those that speak the mother tongue knew better.

 

I do appreciate all the replies I've gotten here. I watched that video of the racing with the Jaguars, great stuff. The sound is beautiful.

As for right now, I'm going to get the title, I've been cleaning out the crap on the inside to see what's there. I will get the one wheel turning (the right rear is locked) and get a tire on it since that one is flat. (anyone know how to mount a tire on these knockoff wheels?) Then I'm going to sand all the crap off of the steel portions of the body and put some sealer on it to keep it from rusting further.

It would be neat to see this one get restored back to stock, I think that's probably a bit beyond my abilities. Does anyone make repop parts like emblems and trim for these? Seems like all of my small trim pieces are missing. All I have is bumpers and the grille.