[Healeys] it's alive! Part 1

[Bert Van Brande]

Dear listers,

After 8.5 years my 56 BN2 came alive again yesterday.  I bought the car with a rebuild engine (somewhere in the 80's) but a stalled restoration.  After moving around 2 times here in California just after a relocation from Belgium I started a full nut and bolt, body, frame on rotisserie style restoration 6 years ago.  Since I am doing not all but a lot of the work myself it's a slow but fun learning process.  The amount of time I spend in books or workshop manuals is surpassed by sifting through the archives both here and over at the british car forum.  I probably spend more time studying than executing.

2 weeks ago Charlie Hart helped me with pumping oil in the engine using an external oil pump.  This helped us make sure the engine was lubricated again before startup after sitting again for 8 years.  Last week we dropped the engine and transmission in.  This week I further build up the engine. First getting the starter going, secondly cranking till I got oil pressure.  The car needed to sit through lunch to get the oil pump fully primed.  After getting a dribble out of the oil filter hole in the block and then from the pressure port, I got 55 lbs on the gauge during cranking after purging the oil line.  Hooking up exhaust, carbs, controls, radiator.  Yesterday checking ignition and setting static timing and confirming I got the little blue sparks.  A last little checkup on ignition points and the car was ready for the big day...

Yesterday morning after last checks we rolled the car outside, filled the radiator with regular water for now.  Poured a couple of gallons of gas in the tank and checked the fuel delivery.  Tightened the banjo bolts, All good.  I pushed the button, cranked the engine... no ignition... pulled a plug, no spark.  I knew the last thing I did was checking the points so I pulled the distributor cap.... we checked that the points were sparking, till we realized the rotor was gone!  I had pulled it out when checking/gapping the points the day before and forgot to put it back. I know I'll have to hear this for the rest of my life (specially from my neighbor Yancey!) but we had a good laugh!  A friday funny Healey comedy classic and a lesson learned that a small dollar part missing or broken can have you stranded.

The car then fired up without issue and after initial tuning was run for 25 minutes at 2000 rpm for a renewed breaking in of the cam.  The engine runs great.  Charlie also confirmed that it runs smooth.  Started up immediately on further tries.  It just needs a bit more fine-tuning of mixture and syncing of carbs. Then a check of dynamic timing confirming the advance is working properly and timing is spot on.  I'll also do a compression test later.  

We'll see how the cam holds up.  I am just taking this as it comes and fix where/when needed.  Everything was hooked up when I got the car with some evidence of having run.  Let's hope it was properly broken in 25-30 years ago.

-end of part 1-