Small Axe Racing: Big Healey, BMW E21 & '67 F350

Great progress, must be nice seeing a twinkle of light coming from that long tunnel. I couldn't remember if you were vintage racing this build? I didn't see plans for a roll bar, also what kind of front negative cam are you going for. I suggest 1-2 degrees for street and 3-4 for a racer. 

When you're ready for more power, I have my first street ported iron head, 9.5:1 compression, Chevy LS large valves, Comp bee hive springs and all spacers required. It made 200 hp & 215 torque using the stock BJ8 cam and flat top forged JE pistons, balanced stock crank and rods.

Best

Doug

Fantastic progress.

It won’t be long now... 

They may be a tad overbuilt, I just chalk that up to character!

I work on a a lot of different cars and things, but the Healey always brings me to my center.

For a variety of reasons.

dougie - The original plan was to race this, and I may eventually do it but the primary goal right now is to make it a road car so we can enjoy it. That head sounds real nice. If you've still got it kicking around in 5 years or so, you've probably got a buyer in me!

a_florida_man - I dig that 100-6! Love the hard top.

Well, I've now wasted a legitimate 4+ hours of my life berkeleying around with the u-joints. It's a stupid endeavor to attempt to rebuild these without a press. I'm dropping it off at a shop at lunch today. Shouldadoneit from the jump.

Because I needed to make some sort of progress last night, I set up the choke mechanism  and finished off the bushings for the trans. This car never had the correct BJ8 choke set up in our ownership so this is pretty cool.

I pretty much have tonight and maybe a bit of time tomorrow night to work on the car this week. We leave for Wedding #3 (at which my wife is the maid of honor) first thing Friday morning and won't get back until Sunday evening. Things are looking kind of tight to get the engine and trans in this week because I can't get it done with the car on jack stands. Why is it still on jack stands you ask? Because the brake pads I ordered way back when (correct for a Non-servo BT7) don't fit the calipers (Servo BJ8) on the car. Ugh. I may still just throw the wheels on without the pads for some mental progress.

Timeline update. Even with my driveshaft annoyance, I think I'm in pretty good shape. I certainly won't have it done by my dad's bday (Oct 20th) but I see no problem getting it done before Thanksgiving *knocks on wood feverishly*. We tend to have at least a handful of nice days in November that we should be able to take advantage of.

The interior on these is not trivial.  I suspect Mr Healey's remuneration was based on the number of individual parts used to assemble the car.

Pete

In reply to NOHOME :

Interesting. It didn't have a complete interior in it - lots had essentially gone back to the earth. I suppose the upside is that we can still drive it with a partial interior!

I'm sure others have felt this phenomenon but it feels like the closer I get to the finish line, the harder it is to make progress. Not that the finish line isn't getting closer, just more difficult to move towards it. 

No pics from last night but I got the gas pedal mounted, e-brake cable and handle mounted, main battery cable sort-of run and the hood release rod in. I can't seem to find the solenoid anywhere. It was good when I took it off the car so I can't imagine I threw it away... I'd like to get it mounted up before the engine goes in.

EDIT: The double locking seat sliders arrived late last night and the seats are to show up on the 21st. Carpet and all the various interior bits are on order as well.

E-brake cable routing finalized, handle in. Although it worked well when we took it off, I think I need a new cable. Either than or it just needs a lot of grease as it doesn't like going back into the housing after being pulled. I found the solenoid and got the battery cable fully mounted and also flipped the fuel line clips to tuck it up closer to the frame. Throttle linkage is also as complete as it can be without the carbs in place. 

I picked the driveshaft up this morning before work and dropped it off at the shop but I won't get back there until Sunday evening at the earliest. 

No pictures again but driveshaft in (connected to rear end), front brakes done, brake lines tightened down and big parts delivery sorted mostly through. My homemade "rear seat" panel doesn't allow for the predrilled holes on the bump stop boxes to align correctly (DOH!) so I had to slot the holes. I then ended up without the correct hardware to mount them up. Once that's done, I'll put the car on the ground on its wheels. Hopefully tonight.

Even though the plugs were new ~13 ish years ago and have very few miles on them, I replaced all 6 last night. 4 looked absolutely perfect and two looked pretty rich. Right next to eachother at the back of the engine. I guess we'll see if that problem persists once it's running again. Someone gapped them all perfectly though...

My broad working plan is;

1. Bump boxes in, finalize anything else that I need to be under the car for
2. Put wheels on and take off the stands
3. Engine/trans in
4. Wire what can be done then
5. Interior
   1. As I'm writing this I'm realizing that getting the seat sliders positioned and installed might be a good idea before the car is on the ground. 
6. Body
7. Final wiring
8. Vroom

8 easy payments of time, frustration and determination!

1, 2 and 5.1 (mostly) done! Bump boxes are done and in place and the driver's seat is in! Of course, it'll come right back out again but, still. Many vroom vrooms made.

Although it may not look like it, the seat is an extremely tight fit in a number of ways. First is that there's just not a ton of space in the car, clearly. Second is due to bad luck - where I wanted to put the seat originally, much of the rails landed on various bits of frame. I was not about to cut holes in the frame and put in captive nuts. No way. Third is that, although the rails are pretty short, clearance between the steering wheel and the seat is minimal. We'll definitely be getting a smaller diameter steering wheel sooner than later. Fourth is that I'm 5'8" and I had to set up the travel of the seat at all the way back to get the rails in a good spot. Luckily I'm the tallest person that will regularly drive the car but I'm going to drill new mounting holes in the rails that will move things back about 3/4 inch. It ain't much but it's something. 

Those seats are going to be fun to get into.

Pete

Yes, it's tight but how about this angle... Those seats will be fun once you get in!

The smaller steering wheel will be nice as well.

Pretty good bit of progress this weekend. Passenger seat located, mounted, removed. Almost made a huge bonehead mistake on the template I took from the driver side but I caught it thank goodness. Oh, by the way, the driver's seat wasn't actually all the way back and I don't think it was hitting anything... TBF (to be figured). Driver side floor carpet trimmed and ready to go. Passenger side floor carpet trimmed and ready to go. Wheel well carpet in place on both sides. High beam switch bracket painted, switch hooked up, everything installed. There are pieces of sheet metal that screw to the frame that the trans tunnel sits on. I fixed a little bit of rust on those, painted them and got them mounted. New carpet snaps screwed into trans tunnel, one snap installed on carpet cover. They are impossible to snap together though. I fixed a few bits of rust on the "splash" panels that screw to the wheel wells and painted them up as well.

The biggest news...

I'm getting pretty good at getting the lump in and out by myself. Hopefully it's not a skill I need to utilize very often. I needed to remove the brake/clutch reservoir along with one of the brake lines from the distribution block but it really went in with ease. All the mounting holes even lined up. 

I've been ordering all of the parts from Moss through a local reseller who gives us a 15% discount (thank goodness). He let me know that the wheels showed up on Friday. He's got one more small parts delivery coming. I've got to order a couple bits and bobs that I either forgot about or didn't realize were broken (see: spring in the shifter assembly) and the tires are on their way.

I'd really like to drive this thing two weekends from now but at the very least I promised my cousin a ride when she's in town for Thanksgiving. E36 M3s getting real.

No pics from last night but many, many hours were spent berkeleying with carpet. I had forgotten the carpet pads so I had to trim them and put them in. Then came the trans tunnel. Holy hell what a pain in the ass that was. The snaps are difficult to get in the right place, the new screws provided in the kit are apparently smaller than the ones previously used so all new holes were drilled and getting the rubber seal in place was seriously annoying. Once the tunnel was in place, I had to re-trim all of the carpet to fit. It's done now though.

Tonight will be putting in the vinyl-covered panels that fit on the outside of the wheel wells and then I'll work to get everything hooked up on the engine. 

Saturday looks like it'll be nasty, maybe even snow, but Sunday is looking nice to transport the body from my house over to the shop.

Made an optimistic list of smalls to complete last night and actually got through most of them. I just couldn't get myself to do anything on the underside last night.

Kick panels in, carpet trimmed AGAIN, splash panels on, tach cable in, temp/oil gauge in, temp sensor run, various grommets and plugs placed (the kit from Moss doesn't really have great size matches), reservoir re-installed and the silicone valve cover gasket bonded to the valve cover. 

The interior is starting to really come together. Let's hope the seats still go in with all the added carpet. It was a tight fit to begin with.

I've got something pretty cool planned for the windshield but it will mean no top will ever be on this car. There also will be no heater. The engine and trans will do just fine. I'm saying this as a note to myself that I need to get to the parts store to find some heater hose that I can loop from the copper tube, through the firewall and then back into the engine.

Worked on the tank for a while last night. I accomplished stinking up the entire house (did it in the basement because it was pouring rain) and I removed all of the rusty flaky bits but there still appears to be clumps of varnish in places and the tank still smells like it. It's currently sitting on my wife's side of the garage with fresh-ish gasoline. Hopefully that'll dissolve the rest and I can keep moving. 

If you have any plans to drive this car in the summer I would seriously try to keep the heater loop within the engine compartment.

In reply to TurnerX19 :

I understand the reasoning but with massive amount of heat that the engine and trans throw off on this thing, will it really make a noticeable difference? I know of a couple Big Healey racers that have looped it inside to keep appearances and I kind of like that idea.

I went over this morning at 4:45 to make some progress. Some of the progress I made was actually backwards. I realized I never hooked up the overdrive / reverse switch which meant the tunnel had to come back out. I also decided that I definitely need a new e-brake cable (arrived yesterday) so the tunnel had to come out for that reason too. Forward progress for the morning was hooking up the overdrive / reverse, finishing the throttle linkage and getting the valve cover on.

Oh and I also finally found a strong enough, small screw driver to unscrew the the terminals in the new cap. Seriously, I twisted up two of those magnetic tip screw drivers. Who knows why they are so tight from the factory. That's not the whole story though, I had to flap disk the driver to be narrow enough to fit in. I'll try to remember to take a pic to show what I'm talking about.

I had to flap disk the driver to be narrow enough to fit in

it looks like that's what would have to happen for me to drive it, too

How the game works

Sorry, but the engine bay is so nice that the hose and clamps on the crankcase breather offend the eye! You must dirty up the rest of the bay to match.

Pete

Patrick said:

I had to flap disk the driver to be narrow enough to fit in

 

it looks like that's what would have to happen for me to drive it, too

Best laugh of the week, thanks!

In reply to NOHOME :

Got the exact same comment from a friend I sent the picture to this morning!

TurnerX19 said:

If you have any plans to drive this car in the summer I would seriously try to keep the heater loop within the engine compartment.

Loop it behind the firewall, just keep the valve on the head connection closed. Same thing.

Those screws in the distributor cap were always problematic relative to tool twist. Snap On warranteed a few for me when I did a lot of Lucas work.

In reply to TurnerX19 :

I have a Klein Tools screwdriver that is almost made for those berkeleying little screws in the distributor cap. 

Pete