Karl's Healey: Started May 2001, Finish?

These are pictures of my friend Karl's Healey. I found this car on the internet in May of 2001 in SE Iowa. I told Karl about it and we made a road trip to from Wisconsin to Iowa to pick it up for $500 sight unseen. We were in for a rather unpleasant treat. The car had no engine, no gearbox, no interior, no gauges and a bunch of other parts were missing as well. The car was a basket case. We towed the car back to Karl's house in Milwaukee, WI and started the disassembly. The frame was so badly rusted that the Healey had a swayback like an old mare. The Healey had spent the last 20+ years of it's life on it's frame rails in an apple orchard. We disassembles the car in one afternoon. The rust was so bad and Karl was distraught and ready to haul the entire thing to the dump. Instead of dumping the Healey Karl accepted the encouragement from me (he was drunk at the time) as well as a couple of others to build a frame from scratch. Karl bought a couple of 4 inch square box tubes. We cut the box tubes and rewelded them together We then welded the original x-brace into the center of the tubes. Karl welded new sills, rockers, outriggers and finally, the original front and rear inner sheet metal assemblies. The entire process took miles of welding wire and tons of grinding wheels. The car is almost ready to start these days as of April 2008. These finished pictures are four years old now. Karl got distracted as he and his wife had a second child and then he got shipped off to Iraq for one year. He is now safely back and this beast should be on the road by summer of 2009.