My Healey: Buying and transporting home from Cumming, Iowa Jan 2002

The name of this blog came came about because I am a professional archaeologist and an amateaur at fixing up and restoring Austin Healeys. I see my 1963 Austin Healey as an historic artifact. An artifact embodying the 1960s. Made in England in June of 1962 and likely landing on the western shores of the United States in the fall of 1962. The Cuban missle crisis was going on at this time. My car has a plastic badge 1963, which according to the Anderson and Moment was only installed on Healeys coming into the west coast.

All of the Healeys that I have owned (since 1978) were rusted out pieces of shit that looked like I dug them out of the ground. My first Austin Healey was a 1957 Austin Healey 100-6 BN4 with the dreaded two-port head. It was a rusted out dog of a Healey (read oil PSI of 12) that my brother and I picked up from a farmer outside of Charles City, Iowa in June of 1978 for $600. The car had been driven in the barnyard Grand Prix and had dirt clumps jammed up into the fender wells and chicken feathers and shit in the trunk. I think that it doubled as a chicken coup for several years on the farm. Even cows had rubbed up against the body and removed (through hide abrasion) some of the ugly-ass orange paint. The farmer never worked on anything on the car without a claw hammer and a pair of vise grips. Every nut and bolt was rounded off. When I tried to remove the nuts and bolts later I always had a propane torch and liquid wrench in hand, even then most of them snapped off. As an enthusiastic 19 year old, I drove the car to college in Iowa (even in winter) and the brakes sucked so badly that I always had to pump the pedal for a block before I had to stop. I never could get all of the air out of them.

All of my Healeys have come from Iowa. My friend Karl's BT7 also did, as well as my brother's 1963 BJ7 and my 3 other Healeys. I found this 1963 BJ7 #20,040 Healey on the internet at Hemmings for $4500. I'm starting to think that all Healeys go to Iowa do die until some poor idealistic sap with visions of grandeur rescues them. Here the Healey doesn't look too aweful. Initially, I was caught up in some dillusional thinking, "hey, just a little bodywork, fender dog legs and some paint and some clean up and maybe I could have a decent driver". WRONG! As the pictures will soon bear out.

A truckload of Healey parts, a blizzard and disassembly begins!

The 26-foot long truck full of Healey parts mingles with my domestic crap that I moved from Iowa City, Iowa to Wisconsin. Karl looks somewhat bewildered at all of the rusty Healey parts. Karl and I were the second set of Healey rebuilders to get the large parts lot to complete our cars. These parts were originally part of a "quick sale" before a divorce in eastern Iowa back in 1992. My Iowa friends Tim and John rebuilt their Healeys (a 60 BT7 and a 62 tri-carb) from parts scavanged from this lot in the 90s. These pictures don't even begin to show the real nightmare of a story moving these parts entailed. It was March 1st 2002 and a huge snow storm was coming in and we were trying to load the truck and beat it. We lost the race. We drove out of Iowa City, Iowa at 25 mph all the way to Beloit, Wisconsin. I could not see out of the truck's windshield (1st picture) as it was covered with ice. From there we went on to Karl's house in Milwaukee. This four hour trip took 12 hours and I almost went off of the road dozens of times. Had that happened I had a contigency plan to abandone everything in place and jump into Karl's SUV.

The other pictures show the last time the Healey rolls for a long time. I fired up a generator to give us some electricity to work by as the storage facility had none. We tried to start the engine before we disassemble the car to see if it might run and to see what the oil pressure was. We could not get it started and gave up. Good thing, as we later found that there were several mouse nests inside of the ports of the cylinder head. My friend Karl is pictured helping me in the dissassembly process. Karl has a 1960 BT7. He found it in an apple orchard in SE Iowa for $500 in 2000 and it was rotten to the core. We made a new frame for it and reassembled the inner sheet metal and outer panels on it. It will be on the road in 2009.

The Healey starts to get taken apart, January 2002!

A cold storage bin facility in NE Wisconsin in January is not an ideal place to disassemble a Healey. My friend Karl came up for the weekend and helped me take the car apart. He was even willing to lie down on the cold cement to undo the gearbox bolts. I had to reward his sacrificial behavior with steaks and good whiskey.

Healey disassembly, rust and mouse shit!

frame repaired, painted with suspension mounted

rear clip, frame and repairs

The first picture is of the frame painted with the epoxy primer. The second and third pictures are of a frame dent-puller apparatus that I made. I would tack weld a bolt to the bottom of the frame rail and then put a stiff piece of steel box tubing over the bolt with a piece of wood at each end and then thread a nut over the bolt and tighten it down. If I put just the right amount of tack weld onto the bolt, the bolt would break loose just when the dent pulled out. I would then carefully grind the old tack weld off of the frame. Initially, the bottom of my Healey frame had more waves then the ocean from the ham-fisted POs jacking up the car, but when I was done it looked pretty straight. You can see the swiss-cheese outrigger in the picture. These all got replaced.

The next pictures are of the frame after it got media-blasted. I painted it with a PPG self-etching expoxy primer after that. The frame is now in my newly moved into, old body shop in late 2002. In the second picture, I was trying to adust my new welder and the ugly weld on the front was ground off and redone cleanly. There was not actually a weld on that spot. I figure that when my chassis was being built, the guy who was welding the chassis went out to lunch, had a few pints, came back to work tanked and forgot where he had left off. I suppose that this hypothesis is as good as any.

The next picture is of a wheel truing jig that was inspired by Jack Daniels and constructed with a wire-welder and an angle grinder. I have taken it upon myself to asign it a BMC Service Tool Number of 18G6787K.
The other picture shows the rear clip in complete disorder.
The other pictures are of the frame mounted on saw horses, which I kept making beefier and beefier to hold the rapidly accumulating weight of parts. Aside from the outriggers, pretty much only the tops of the frame rails were rusty. I cut the tops off, inserted lots of extra steel and welded inside and replaced the tops with heavier gauge steel.

The 26-foot long truck full of Healey parts mingles with my domestic crap that I moved from Iowa City to Wissonsin. Karl looks somewhat behildered at all of the rusty Healey parts.

sand blast area

My garage is an old bodyshop that I rented for $250 a month. I also stored all of my domestic stuff, work supplies, books and research tools in the garage because my girlfriend (wife to be), whom I lived with, insisted on renting an apartment the size of a damn shoebox.

That is my 1966 Cobra replica in the backgrund just before I repainted it. The body shop was probably about 13oo square feet. I found that I could sand blast some of the old paint and bodywork off of my steel body panels with a lower pressure and a shallow angle of the gun. I had to rewire the shop for 220VAC then I ganged two 5hp compessors together to get enough air volume. I used very fine silica sand. I did not get any panel warp at all. I made a beach with about 2500 pounds of sand. Unfortunately, the beach is located in northeast Wisconsin.

panel stripping and paint stratigraphy

Thes epictures show the panel stripping and all of the paitn episodes. My Healey came painted white, was painted red twice and then finally painted BRG. I swear that the last paint job was done with a bucket of paint and a broom. The aircraft stripper that I used is nasty stuff and I always wore an OSHA aprooved mask and did it outside. The insdie of the rear shroud picture shows the original number from the factory. I do not know what is corresponds to but maybe somebody can tell me. The BMIHT certificate indicates that my car was built June 18-19 1962.

panel stripping and floor fitting

The Healeys door were actually in real nice shape. No rust in the bottoms at all and very straight. It must be all of the layers of paint that protected them over the years. The boot lid was in great shape too. No rust whatsoever and pretty straight. The bonnet had a layer of survafe rust but was no big deal. The bonnet was actually tough to work with to get to fit. I had to tack weld a couple of cracks in it. No big deal. But, lot and lots of sanding and filling. I knock the filler down with an air file then used a 16 inch long sanding block to get it smooth and flat. Also, the edges of the bonnet come so damn close to the edges of the shround I'm afraid that there will be paint abrasion. I bought an extra bonnet on Ebay ($26!!, what a score) last year and it fits the same. Oh well, I guess that they just fit tight or my shroud has expanded.

Old repairs, panel and part fitting