Phase II Begins

One of the best parts of this journey are the people you meet and the friendships you develop. One of those for me is a gentleman named Jerry who I have been talking to for many years, but only since my project came to life have we begun to trade parts, how to's and how not to's . I talked with Jerry at the recent swap meet at Montgomery Park and he told me that He knew the best aluminum polisher left in Portland. This is important because the windshield surround is aluminum and is in bad need of a good polishing. As part of phase II it is highly recommended to install the new windshield before the dashboard. Since the wiring harness, and thus all of the dash components are part of phase II, I thought I should heed the sage advice and get the windshield in first. This, in turn, led me to Jerry's buddy Paul. I contacted Paul and he was in agreement with Jerry that he is probably the best polisher left in business or still alive in Portland. He said to get the windshield apart, clean it up and bring it over to him. So I did.

 The screws were a lot more difficult than I imagined. I used a lot of penetrating oil and had to easy out two of them. But it finally came apart. The new windshield glass is in the box in the far left part of the picture.

I delivered the fully dismantled parts to Paul. Paul was really fun to talk to as he told me about his long career working in the polishing business and starting his own chrome and polishing shop in Portland. He has been working on his own subcontracting for a few select shops for the last 20 years or so. Everyone else in town ships their work out of state or does a less than professional job according to Paul. I can't wait to see the results.

In the meantime, I have started looking at the wiring restoration. I have the new wiring harness and pulled out the old one to compare them. Long ago, I was really good while taking the car apart to label every wire and leave as many components attached to the old harness as possible to make reassembly easier. There is good news and bad news. The components all look great (for 50 year old parts) but all of the ink on the labels has completely faded. (see the picture below) Fortunately. I have a new color coded wiring diagram to go by. So I think all will be well. Hoping that Dad's lessons will help me with this part as he was the wiring guru.

 

I first laid out the old wiring harness. I can see the whole car when I look closely, just as an anthropologist can see the whole body of T-Rex from a few half buried bones. This view is from the rear, tail lights, then dash components, then engine connections and finally the headlights. Below is the wiring diagram. Note the wiring is the same for MG Midgets. I checked a few of the old wires to see if the colors were the same as the new diagram and they matched up perfectly. So far, so good.

A few closer shots below of the old harness. Note the old plastic bags just falling apart as I they are handled for the first time in many years. Next will be to lay out the new wiring harness and label every connection. One lesson learned, I will not wait 30 years to read the labels this time around. Then plan when to move the existing components onto the new harness. I will show a picture of the newly restored and painted dash in the next post.

Turn signal lever, ignition switch, and a few switches



Fuel gauge



Nice label huh?

 

 

Phase I comes to a close

Bill at British Auto Works delivered the painted and rolling Austin Healey last week for the close of phase I+. Phase I now consisted of all of the body work and paint (minus the final cut and buff of the paint job), front and rear suspension, the steering rack, the engine and transmission and driveline, all rebuilt and installed. Essentially a rolling frame now with the full drive train in.

The first thing I needed to do was pull the two front shocks and paint them in order to really call the suspension rebuild complete.

Removing the shocks



Cleaning

Painted

 

Installed

 

Notice the nice new poly bushings

Next up is planning phase II. Phase II will consist of a new wiring harness, all of the engine and ignition wiring, rebuilding the dash with all of the instrumentation, wiring up all of the lights, new hydraulics for both the brakes and clutch, and finally the fuel system. If all goes well I should be able to start up the new engine somewhere near the end of Phase II. Moss is having a 20% off sale at the end of this month so I will be buying the wiring harness and a few other ancillaries. 

Finishing up Phase I - The paint is perfect!

I had been waiting to take the rebuilt engine out to Bill at British Auto works. However, I did not want to make the trip out until after the car was back in his shop with new paint so I could see it first hand. I had been really anxious to see the final color in person after seeing the pictures of it while it was still in the paint booth. If you can recall from the last post, the actual color could have been one of about three shades of blue the way it showed up in the pictures due to the lighting and flash. I just needed to see it in person. I was again accompanied by my good friend George Pouch. Both he and my wife could tell this was a special day for me. My excitement was hardly contained.

I think I wrote earlier about how difficult it was to nail down the color from the original color codes. There is no official color code cross reference from the old British paint codes. Of course, there are a bunch of unofficial references online. Each professing to be the accurate color rendition. So, choosing the color became a long and drawn out exercise with Bill taking a color code to the painter, painting up and sending me a sample or two and me adjusting lighter or darker based on my interpretation of the original Riviera Blue. This is just one area where Bill has been extremely patient with me and understood just how important this decision was. Let me tell you it was more than just a little nerve racking to finally say go based on a 4x6 paint sample knowing you don't get a second chance. At least not a cheap second chance. Finally, last Saturday I got to see it. Thanks to George for the pictures. I was just in awe walking around the car noting everything that had been fixed.


Riviera Blue

What do you think? I think we nailed the color. There were a number of issues with the front end that are all fixed and straightened out. Bill noted that the paint job has not yet been cut and buffed and that it should be shiny once that is done. It looked pretty good to me. I can't wait. Bill told me that he has never seen another Riviera Blue Sprite in the area.

The other reason for the trip out was to deliver the engine and take a look at the rebuilt transmission. I had also refurbished the drive line and installed new U-Joints, and cleaned up and painted the engine mounts. At this point BAW has all of the parts to install the new suspension, steering rack and drive train. Then it is back to me for Phase II which entails installing a new wiring harness (including the dash components), all new brake hydraulics and the fuel system. The end of phase II will culminate in the first engine start up. Not so fast John, for now, let's get Phase I finished and paid for.

Note the slight overkill on strapping the engine in the truck. That baby was not going anywhere. At the shop they jokingly said the truck could have flipped end over end and the engine would have stayed in the truck bed. I didn't mind.

It was a beautiful day to take the engine to British Auto Works

Ready for installation. All new motor and tranny mounts in the plastic bag.

Blasted and primed.

Rebuilt, ready for paint and installation

 

Paint! Early Pics of Phase I Progress

 

The main updates are that the shell has been painted and that the transmission is almost finished being rebuilt. Thank you to George Pouch for riding with me out to North Plains to deliver the transmission for rebuilding. It was a fun trip and I think George had as much fun in the shop as I did. George is an old car aficionado too and we have spent many hours at some great car races. Ask me about the Laguna Seca trip some time. The guys at British Auto Works accepted George quite well even though he is a BMW guy with a restoration of his own on his hands. There is a lot of history between those Brits and Germans and I was just glad the discussion stayed civil.

Paint changes everything. It is hard to believe this is the same car in the photo leaving my garage earlier in the blog. I can't wait to see it live since it is always tough to gauge the exact color so soon after application and still under the bright paint lights, but is looking good. Remember you can click on the photos for a larger view. Highly recommended for these. I am currently trying to schedule my next trip out to British Auto Works to deliver the engine, engine mounts, and the rebuilt drive line (new U joints installed and painted) so they can drop the full drive train in. Our original plan was for BAW to bring back the painted shell to me with the suspension installed and I was going to drop the engine and transmission in. The discretionary decision on my part is to now have them put the engine and transmission in taking a little stress out of my life after seeing that new Riviera Blue paint. I have removed and installed these engines for myself and others about four times and I know it can be a little messy banging a few hundred pounds around just getting the things to fit right. Again Bill at BAW is really cool about changing things up. We are really close to finishing Phase I.

A quick remembrance of Kevin Sheridan who spent many hours with me in this car and will not have the opportunity to see it finished. Godspeed Kevin.

Stripped and ready for primer.

Rebuilt driveline and engine mounts with new rubber mounts in the plastic bag.

Engine Rebuild and Body Work Update

So, a lot has happened over the holidays. I made some new friends up at Jet Motors in Happy Valley. Another parts connection and some great guys who love these cars and know a lot about building them. Note the cool valve cover wing nuts I got from them. The engine is essentially complete with a few minor finishing touches needed.  I am struggling with deciding what to do with the distributor and need to soda blast and paint a few more parts.

I also have some pictures of the body in the paint shop. It is looking pretty straight. Actually, the best it's looked since I have owned it. Hope to have some pictures with paint soon.

Front Fenders and Dashboard

You can see some of the old Riviera Blue where the dash area is uncovered

Hood and Trunk or more properly the Boot in British terms

Engine Rebuilding - The Real Fun Begins

Gary my Machinist

The first order of business was to find the right machine shop and, as I found later, the right machinist. Every machine shop in Portland and on the West Coast will say they can do the work on your BMC A Series engine. And most are telling the truth to some extent. We are talking about an inline 4 cylinder engine with all of the specifications readily available online and most shops have modern machining equipment that can do the work. I started with a  few recommendations from local car owners and shops, then I interviewed three highly recommended machine shops. In the end, I was most impressed with  Gary, at the NAPA machine shop on SE 9th and Morrison. When I walked into his shop, I saw an A Series1275 exactly like mine,  a few MGA and MGB engines, plus a Jaguar engine and some, whose lineage I was not sure of but were obviously British, in various states of machining and rebuild in an immaculate, organized machine shop. Immaculate and organized is not what you usually see in a machine shop. I thought I was in the right place. A few minutes into our "interview", I realized that I was the one being interviewed. Gary knew everything about my engine. He said, if (yes if) my core engine was acceptable to him to begin with, and I would agree to buy the parts he recommended, he "might" agree to do the machine work. One major issue was that I wanted to do the rebuild myself.  He was, at first, not too amenable to me building the engine. After all, he was going to do all the hard and expert work on the cleaning and machining. Gary really cared about the outcome of his work and knew how valuable his experience and knowledge would be in the actual putting of the parts together. Once I explained to him the history of the car, how my father and I had done this together before, and the fact that I really needed to do the assembly myself, he signed up. Though probably still with some skepticism. I am glad he accepted me as a customer. I knew I was working with one of the best British engine guys I could find. One who would challenge me from a quality standpoint and make me fully justify the what and why of any decisions I made on the engine rebuild. I learned a ton from Gary. Just look at the pictures of the engine he machined and prepped for me. "It is a thing of Beauty" was what he said when I was picking it up. That is not to say we did not have our disagreements though. Gary likes to build a stock engine and he does it well. A well built stock A series engine will run 150,000 to 200,000 miles with the right maintenance. Still we found our common ground on the modifications I was planning. Between the .060 inch rebore, the non stock 9.75:1 compression pistons,  the APT "swept head with oversized 1.4" intake valves, a fast street cam from Delta Cams, and the harder than hell steel EN40B crank. I can remember Gary saying, somewhat discussed with me , "So you got me bronze valve guides when I told you to buy cast iron guides." We discussed the implications of this decision too as we had on other places we departed on philosophy, and we agreed the decision was mine and he whole heartily let me know the best way to proceed even if it was not his best and recommended method. Gary was a true partner who I was able to talk through the options and consequences  with.  Once he was finished, I took it all home in pieces to begin the actual rebuild. For the rest of this post, I will simply post pictures with captions that show the progress. Double click on any picture for a closer view.


Cleaned, Bored and Ready to go.





APT "Swept Head" New Valves/Guides. Completely Rebuilt

  


Painted APT Head





EN40B Crank and New Tri-Metal Bearings



Measuring Crankshaft Endfloat. This needs to be .020 inches. Looks right on.



Main Bearings installed




Balanced Cooper S Rods with new pistons



Installing 9.75:1 High Compression Pistons

Rod Endcaps Installed

Delta KB Fast Road Camshaft

Balanced Flywheel



4 Degree Advance on the Camshaft from 108 to 104 degrees