[Healeys] Hand Controls

[J. Scott Morris]

Hello All;   Back in late May, Carlos Cruz requested information about temporary hand controls for his Healey and some discussion followed on the List.  Last Thursday in the Globe & Mail, Bob English wrote about hand controls being fitted to a Fiat X 1/9.  I thought it might be of interest. The entire story can be found at http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20070719.wh-enthusiast-0719/BNStory/specialGlobeAuto   while only the key parts are below.    Enjoy !!  
  --Scott Morris, Simcoe, Ontario, Canada;  '60 MkI BN7, '62 MkII BT7
   
    
  
'I can once again drive my little red beauty'  BOB ENGLISH     Globe and Mail     Thursday,  July 19, 2007  
  "mailto: Bob English <globeauto at globeandmail.com> "
  Don't ever tell Cheryl Paget she can't do something, it only makes her determined to prove you wrong.
  Take this little matter of being paraplegic.
  Paget says she had a red car and a red horse  "both of which I loved"  when a fall from the latter left her with a broken back and paralyzed from the waist down a few years ago. And, despite the initial urging of friends and family, she still has both.
  She hasn't managed to get back on the horse  yet  but she is once again behind the wheel of her much-loved Fiat X 1/9 sports car thanks to a little help from friends in the Toronto chapter of Fiat-Lancia Unlimited (FLU), a group of enthusiasts of the Italian marque.   .  
  
  ............... The X 1/9, with its manual gearbox, was another thing. She says she was reconciled to riding as a passenger "while waiting for a miracle."
  That duly came along after FLU club member Jerry Cucchiara spoke to Anthony (Tony) Kaluzny about the possibility of designing hand controls for Paget's car.
  Kaluzny, who had spent years installing hand controls on automatic-equipped cars, took on the challenge, eventually coming up with a hand-operated clutch system using bits from a model helicopter, a pneumatic proportional linear controller used to control truck dump boxes and a carbon-fibre bicycle hand brake lever  among other things. The system was developed on his car and then installed on Paget's last year.
  It's a double handful, literally. "I have to do five things with two hands," she says. "Steer, gas, brake, clutch and shift. It takes a bit of concentration."  
  Paget drove the car to the 2006 Fiat Freak Out in Detroit, but the system still needed development. Kaluzny has since refined it to the point that Paget expects to be driving her beloved Fiat to this year's Freak Out, again in Detroit, July 26-29.
  "I can't say enough wonderful things about Tony. I can once again drive my little red beauty," Paget says. "Never say never."
   


J. Scott Morris - Keep Smiling, Murphy Lives
       
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