[TR] Can I ask an Austin-Healey question?

[Jonas Payne]

Andrew,

 

There is a very active healey list on autox.team.net as well.  Lots of very
helpful friendly people on that one, much like this one.

 

I am going to go out on a limb here and say that the Healey guys are a bit
more interested in matching numbers, the fact of the matter is that the
Healey's are pretty valuable cars and very the very good ones are extremely
valuable.  

 

There are no shortage of them running with engine swaps however, and it
seems to be more so for the 4 cylinder cars and early 6 cylinder cars than
the later models.  The early 6 cylinder is sort of a boat anchor and the 4
cylinder cars have known cylinder head issues.

 

4 cylinder engines are available, but you are going to have to look hard.
You may have to source it from bits.

 

I have a good 4 cylinder spare crankshaft that we were lucky to find and I
had it magnafluxed and ground .010/.010.  

 

The 4 cylinder block itself was used in lots of other cars, and parts
availability is pretty good.  

 

Finding a good head will be the sticker.

 

It's pretty common for folks to upgrade to a later model transmission rather
than the 3 speed.   later 4 speed side and top loader transmissions are out
there.  You can also go with a Toyota 5 speed conversion.

 

These cars use a ton of Whitworth stuff.  Most of us have the wrenches, but
you'll want to invest in taps and dies if you don't have them already.

 

Rust repair on these can be a lot more complicated than a TR.

 

The front and rear shrouds are aluminum - not easy to work on if damaged.

 

You'll find the 4 cylinder car to be relatively crude.  They are very simple
cars.  You won't have any difficulty working on it with your TR experience.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jonas Payne

PBR Consulting Services, LLC

702.882.6711

 

From: Triumphs [mailto:triumphs-bounces at autox.team.net] On Behalf Of Andrew
Uprichard
Sent: Saturday, November 7, 2015 5:29 AM
To: triumphs at autox.team.net
Subject: [TR] Can I ask an Austin-Healey question?

 

As Triumphs owners, we aren't too concerned about "matching numbers" since
our engines never match body numbers anyway.  But I recently came across a
big Austin-Healey (100-4) sans engine and had a couple of questions:

-           Is it easy enough to source an engine for these cars?

-          Will the car be worth less with a non-matching engine?

 

Andrew Uprichard

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