In reply to NOHOME :
I was talking a friend recently whom I initially met through the local Healey club. She fully restored three Big Healeys, hasn't owned one in probably 5-6 years and says she doesn't miss them one bit because how much of a pain they can be.
I've said many times that if it weren't for the family connection, there's no way I would have built this car. In many ways, however, I am very glad that I did.
It's home. The weather people were wrong and we got a bit wet but, it's home.
Welcome back for another seasonal lap of the Healey hobby.
Well, I took the Healey out for it's first cruise of the season and I suppose what I can say is that I made it back.
About 2/3 of the way through the drive, it started shaking horribly. So bad that I pulled over to see if maybe the wheels were falling off. They were not so I limped it home.
I thought maybe the tires went flat over the winter? This doesn't really make sense because the shake wasn't immediate. That said, all of the tires were at about 22 PSI. I pumped them back up, took it up and down the street and the shake wasn't there but... I'm not convinced.
Also. The rear end, mostly right rear is making all types of nonsense noises. Creaking, groaning and any other manner of things. I laid down next to the car and had my wife shake it a bit but I couldn't pin point the noise(s). This will require some investigation but I *think* most of it is just bushing noise.
I took some time yesterday to investigate. Nothing, that I can find, is loose or falling off. Nice.
It seems like a lot of the noise is actually coming from the shock itself but there's also noise from the drop link that it attaches to as well as the front spring mount. Although I believe I waited until there was weight on the suspension to tighten everything down, I wonder if that drop link is binding causing the shock some undue stress.
I'm thinking maybe I'll get it up high on jack stands supporting the axle back those nuts off, let it settle and re-tighten(?). I greased the rear spring pivot but the front one isn't greasable.
Also on the short list is a valve adjustment. They've become pretty loud.
Squeeky shock links have probably de-bonded the rubber somewhere. Squirt some silicone lube on them. If they go quiet, they have already failed.
In reply to TurnerX19 :
I saw this and then forgot to spray them before taking a quick ride last night. Will do next time although there wasn't nearly as much noise last night.
It wasn't a very long ride but there was no death vibration...so that's good. It ran fantastic for almost all of it last night, revving up to ~4k pretty happily. Twice though, once after light throttle cruising and once soon after that trying to accelerate hard it snapped hard out of the carbs.
I've had this issue previously and I think it's got to be float height or maybe a gummy needle and seat. It definitely does not smell lean which is why I'm not leaning towards mixture. It also hasn't had a new fuel filter after the rebuild so that certainly could be restricting flow.
In it's 6th season back on the road, it's probably reasonable that the tuning needs revisited.
In reply to AxeHealey :
Check damper oil first, if OK think sticky distributor advance mechanism. Retard it 2 degrees and see if it is cured, and if performance still feels OK, put some oil on the pad under the rotor and wiggle the dam slightly side to side before you assemble. Chase this now, it takes far too short a time for the manifold gasket to fail when they sneeze.
OK, the dam cam...
In reply to TurnerX19 :
So glad you suggested the dashpots. That thought crossed my mind while I was driving home and then it slipped away.
The rear carb dashpot was just about empty. Front was full up. Now there's fresh 3-in-1 in both. I've got the kids to myself tonight so I can't go test it.
I pulled all of the plugs. Here's #4. They were all generally like this although 3 through 1 saw the mark on the ground strap migrating towards the threads while 5 and 6 were at this same level.
Here's how I read this. Thoughts?
With unleaded fuel plug reading nears meaningless, those are fine. I run motor oil in dashpots, 3in1 evaporates, as you found.
Early Sunday, the Healey and I met up with a few friends and had a great 30+ mile blast on the fun roads near where I live. We led the group of a 911 T, V70 R, Ford Transit and a classic Beetle.
Tonight after the kids went down I had it out for about 25 minutes.
Happy Father's Day everyone.
My son's first ride in Grandad's Car. Three generations of enjoyment.
I needed a car-related uplifting yesterday and realized it had been about 3 weeks since I've driven the Healey. Because of that I opted not to do any work on cars and just go for a evening cruise.
The Healey has been getting some good action as of late but there have been a few strange things happening. First is that the turn signals and brake lights are no longer working. The marker lights, high/low beams and taillights work just fine but no blinky blinkies. I did some minor looking at that sometime today and didn't get anywhere. I need to look back at a diagram.
The little parcel shelf under the dash is supposed to have a support up to the underside of the dash. It's been bouncing around ever since I got the car back together and for whatever reason I got tired of it this week.
At some point I may pull it off, give it speed holes and paint it black but that's good for now. Another little annoyance is that the dash lights, aside from the ignition and high beam indicators have never worked. I have known the reason - a missing ground. So I fixed that today.
Last was a rattle in the driver's door latch. Turns out three of the four nuts that hold the latch to the bracket that holds the latch to the door had excused themselves from duty. I scrounged up 3 more nuts with the correct thread and we have a solid door again.
The happy Healey also wasn't quite as happy as usual this evening when I took it out. It wasn't very excited about WOT and had some snapping out of the carbs. I'll have to see if I've lost all of the dashpot oil again. If not, it looks like I have some SU-ing in my future.
Twice this week, my son requested that I take him to school in Grandad's car. Twice this week I have taken him to school in Grandad's car. Twice this week we have been aggressively cut off buy cars jumping their turn at one of the traffic circles we encounter on the ride to school.
The Healey stops but I have now found that it's emergency braking ability (not the emergency brake) is absolutely not good enough.
I have bled the brakes with my Motive bleeder in the past and they are better than ever but it needs to be better. Any of you have suggestions? The line routing definitely has the potential for lots of trapped air so maybe I just need to up the pressure and run a lot of fluid through all lines.
I guess I'll also say that at least as of earlier this summer the rear shoes were adjusted correctly so I don't believe that to be the problem. It should stop harder than this even if it were just the discs up front.
If the rear shoes have less than several thousand miles on them they very well might need another adjustment. If they take up a lot the drums are probably bell mouthed or oversize. Check also that the pads are parallel to the disc and the disc faces are also parallel. to each other. This car should have a pretty hard pedal that takes a lot of leg to lock up, not travel, but force. Later 3000s had vacuum boosted brakes for less force, but the unboosted ones brake far more controlably if you are strong enough.
In reply to TurnerX19 :
Heard. I will check all of those things.
AxeHealey said:In reply to TurnerX19 :
Heard. I will check all of those things.
Yep regular adjustments on mine were very helpful as the new shoes seated in. My bn4 is drum all around but when it is adjusted they are fantastic for the technology of the time. I think we are somewhat spoiled by automatic adjusters on "modern" drum brakes... so it's a good thing our drum brake mechanical adjustment cams aren't too bad to work with.
My last Healey client has three Healey in total that he needs to keep running. I have all the side-work work I want going forward. No more rust repairs!
Some updates.
Turns signals and brake lights inop - dirty connections at the big ole relay on the inner fender. Fixed.
Made a ground for the turn signal indicator on the dash!
I came to the conclusion that the issue with the brakes just had to be air. Everything mechanically seemed to be kosher and the pedal feels like there's air in there, not just weak brakes and there are just so many places for air to hide in this system. I was cruising around the internet one evening looking to see if people have had success with certain methods while bleeding Big Healey brakes and came across a suggestion to get the back end way up in the air. The thinking behind this is the angle of the outlet of the master.
While not totally convinced, I figured that at the very least, the system has never been bled in that position so it was worth a shot. I did my normal pattern starting furthest away and working in closer and actually did get some air out of the right rear. I was using my pressure bleeder and also cracked the outlet of the master with pressure applied and...
It stops 100% better than it ever has. I even locked it up this afternoon when I tested it. Big time success.
At this point it'll probably be spring time but I plan to do another round of bleeding before calling it done but this really feels great to have a Healey with totally competent brakes.
Another one of the small jobs I didn't get to before putting the Healey back on the road was the license plate light. I finally found an LED/bolt combo with a warm color.
I was able to route the wire behind the license plate bracket to keep it tidy.
It's been quite a nice extended driving season in Northeast Ohio but I need to stop pressing my luck. My afternoon work break today was taking the Healey for a quick little blast, filling it with fresh 93 and Stabil and tomorrow it's off to storage.
It's chilly enough today that it never got over about 170 so it wasn't fully in it's groove but it was a nice final drive for the year.
When I walked around the car I noticed a small drip of...something. A drip is not unexpected, of course, but I can't quite identify what it was. It feels like oil and looks like Penngrade (greenish) but is sort of fruity smelling and I haven't had Penngrade in this car since it first went back on the road. It doesn't smell at all like antifreeze nor does it look/feel like the unholy marriage of oil and coolant. It was also totally cold which means it dripped off the car on its way out of the garage. As I'm typing this my mind is matching the smell to 3-in-1 oil but, eh, not really. In a bit I'll go pop the hood and see if anything sticks out but I'm not particularly concerned at this point, moreso curious.
EDIT: Turns out, there's a rather large transmission leak. I can't put it up in the air at the moment but if memory serves, the oil all over the frame is from around the overdrive region. It also could very well be Penngrade as I know I put 20w50 in there last time around and probably had a few quarts of that sitting on the shelf. I also went back to that tiny drip and it doesn't smell sweet anymore oddly enough.
Alright, there are a number of leaks going on. Shocker.
The largest actually seems to be coming from the bellhousing. It's impossible to tell at this point whether it's engine or trans considering they're both motor oil. I have an 11:15 meeting but when I pull it up on the trailer to take to storage later today, I'll let it run up there to see if there's active dripping with just the engine running.
That looks pretty substantial considering I believe that to be just from the ride yesterday but I check the engine oil very frequently and it is still totally full as of this morning. I haven't checked trans fluid in a month or so.
There is leakage around the overdrive unit. It's tough to decipher exactly where it's coming from most.
It's also quite wet near the slave. This makes me think that the trans is leaking out of the input shaft seal but I'm not going to make any bets right now. I think if it were leaking from the back of the engine it probably wouldn't be sneaking out of there but a spewing input shaft seal could definitely get on the clutch arm and find it's way over there. I suppose if it's leaking enough out of the back of the engine the clutch could be throwing it all over the place but it doesn't seem to be slipping.
Time to take the interior out , and the gearbox. I hope the seal has failed from age and not a bad sealing surface on the gear. The factory paid 5.5 hours to do this on warrantee if I remember right. I can't imagine how. I never had the gearbox out of a Healey with less than 3 years and 50K in the rust belt, so several hours might get the seats and the tunnel out...Your clean semi race car you have a target time here. No rust, recent hands on familiarity....Tape a cut up tennis ball on the end of the steering column after you take the wheel off, this reduces the blood flow from your head.
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