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

 

Phase I

Phase I: 

Phase I consists of Body work and paint, all new suspension, and an engine rebuild. I chose British Auto Works out of North Plains, OR to do the body work, paint and suspension rebuild. Bill at BAW was receptive to letting me do as much as I could myself on the project, acknowledging that it could require some additional coordinating who was doing what and when. But after a some planning and agreement on what Phase I was, it was time for him to pick up the body shell and suspension parts and start phase I.



Loaded and ready to go to be stripped

 There was a light rain falling on the Saturday morning they showed up to take her away. I couldn't help but think the weather was probably very similar to February 7th, 1966 when the Austin Healey was built the first time at the Abindon-on-Thames factory in England. The plan is to paint it the original Riviera Blue color. Easier said than done, as this color was not one the the most popular of the time making it difficult to identify a current paint code that closely matched the original factory color. After some trial and error. I think we have a pretty good match.
BAW will also be installing the new suspension parts so the car will be on all four wheels when I get her back.



Original Factory Specs

 I started the engine tear down and rebuild while the body work and paint were being done. I found a rebuildable 1275cc engine and bought it. There were three engine sizes available for the Sprites over the years. The 1275 is the largest the most durable. I almost forgot to mention the engine also came with a Weber DCOE 45 side draft carburetor. You are supposed to be saying "ooo" to yourself right now. These are very simple four cylinder engines. But do not let that fool you, The BMC A Series engine has a long legacy of racing. It is very receptive to modifications. They were used for many years as the stock engine in the Formula Junior series in Europe, powering the entry level class for Formula I drivers. Steve Mcqueen raced a Sprite at Sebring in 1962.

I plan on building a slightly modified engine. But first, I had to disassemble it and get it to the machine shop.

 

There were a few surprises when I took the engine apart. You always hope to find nothing really bad. These engines had a lot of different OEM parts and modifications available through the years. Most have been rebuilt many times and you are never sure what you have until you take them apart.The good surprises were Cooper S rods and an EN40B nitrated crankshaft.



EN40B crankshaft





 

Well, everything is apart and it's off to the machine shop. The next post will show the engine going back together.



Off to the machine shop