Northwest Healeys

Here’s a preview of the cover of the soon-upcoming June issue of Healey Marque magazine, the world’s largest-circulation magazine focused on Healeys:

We’ve got coverage you won’t find anywhere else on Sir Stirling Moss’s relationship with Healeys, three tech pieces, a story about a low-mileage but very badly damaged BN1 brought back to former glory from “recycle condition,” and the backstory of a race driver who crashed his Speedwell Sprite shortly before the Sebring race and who later went on to become an enforcer in New York night clubs.  You know, like so many Sprite drivers.

Resistance is futile.  Join the club so you can get the magazine every month.   We have a certain ex-race driver who can help persuade you.

I spent much of the last couple of days working on the recently acquired project car mentioned in several previous posts, and while we – that’s Kent Lambert and me – were at it I took the opportunity to get photos of those numbers inscribed on the carb bodies of the “Le Mans Kit” carbs that show them to be the real deal.  Note the “6047” and “6053” in these photos, and if your heart beats a little faster as you do, then you get it.

However, one thing I don’t get it this:  The Healey cognoscenti look for the style in which those digits are rendered.  In other words, they have to be in just the right hand, the right penmanship.  OK, but how can it be that over the course of the years when these were made, only one person inscribed them all?  He never took a day off?  Never got sick?  Never got a promotion or even a new assignment?

“OK Tommy, your job today here at ACME Carburetter Inscribing Ltd., just as it has been for the last 2,347 days, is to inscribe the SU H6 carbs with the numbers … you know the ones!  Yes, 6047 and 6053!  And watch that penmanship.  Consistency is our motto.  Don’t let us down!”

Kinda weird, don’t you think?  The exact same penmanship, inscribed by the same guy, over the course of years.  But here’s the real kicker: No one knows what those inscribed numbers mean.  Oh, they’re real, real important to authenticate the carbs as correct components of the Le Mans Kit, but without known meaning.

It’s like a cult or something.

It seems like we’re due for an update on Austin-Healey Club of Oregon business, and I’m proud to report that our April event, mini-golf followed by lunch on April 11, was 100 percent social-distancing compliant.  In fact, we were so socially distant that we didn’t even get near the mini-golf course or the lunch.

Our next event is a rally on May 14, but of course we’ll have to see what the Governor’s orders are at the time.  If you’d like to read the entire Oregon Governor’s Executive Order on the subject, you can find it HERE.

Meantime, may I recommend a little light reading to get you through the current inconveniences:

With all this extra time at home these days I thought maybe I should pose for an updated photo to appear at the top of my column in Healey Marque magazine each month.

So what do you think?  Somehow it reminds me of The Terminator: “I’ll be back,” but without the light-hearted delivery.

The next time you remove the transmission tunnel cover of your big Healey – or perhaps the first time if you’ve never done that before – be sure to check the brass data plate on top of your overdrive.  It looks like this:

The potentially interesting thing about it is the “percent overdrive” the unit is.  This one, from a BN2, is a standard 28 percent overdrive.  The way to tell that is by the first two digits of the serial number:

The print is small and if you’re like me you may find it easier to take a phone-camera picture of it, such as this one, and then enlarge that image.  Note the serial number begins with 28/, so it’s a standard 28 percent overdrive.

Maybe your Healey has a rare, non-standard unit and you don’t even know it.  Now you can easily find out.

I previously mentioned that there was some spectacular documentation that came with the 1956 100 Le Mans that Kent Lambert and I recently bought together, and I’ve posted some of it here already.  However, this one may be the rarest of the rare:

This is a shipping tag that specified the purchaser’s name and address in Tacoma, Washington, USA, and also listed the shipping company within the UK and the ship, the “Pacific Unity,” that would transport it to Seattle.

This Healey 100, series BN2, was purchased as a used car in 1962 at the Donald Healey Motor Company’s London showroom, and Manchester, from where embarkment was arranged for shipment to Seattle, is hardly the nearest port to London.

Did the car make a stop at the Donald Healey Motor Company in Warwick on the way from London to Manchester?  Warwick is about half way between London and Manchester, and also very interesting is the notation on the sales receipt for the car where it states, “Price of £400 includes payment for Le Mans Kit.”  Was the kit installed at Warwick on the way to Manchester?  Why else to ship it from London to Manchester?

In any case, the car rode the “Pacific Unity” on that voyage in 1962.  The Pacific Unity was built in 1948 and broken for scrap in Shanghai in 1970.

This tag remained with the car for the voyage and was among the paperwork we received with the car.  I’d never seen one of these shipping tags before, and it also lists the British registration (license plate) for the car: RYW 188.  We also still have both of those registration plates, and with appropriate patina.

Now this is documentation.

So in this era of closed restaurants you may be thinking of ways to make your in-home dining a little bit special.  I have my way…

Oh, the hammer is for opening walnuts, but please, not on the plate.

Gary Feldman recently sent me some pix I hadn’t seen before.  They show a Sprite stripped down like I’d never seen, and the degree of “show prep” is impressive.

I especially like the bonnet badge attached to the radiator top tank.  I own a couple of Sprites myself.  Might have to duplicate that decorative little touch!

Paradise is a relative concept for our purposes, but I suspect several of you reading this would consider a visit to the annual 24-hour race at Le Mans, France, to be one definition of it.  What we have here are two tickets to paradise, and they date from 1962.

The top ticket is the basic entry ticket, and note the perforations spelling “24 HEURES DU MANS” and “1962”.  Such perforations were a way of preventing fraudulent tickets in the days before bar codes and magnetic strips and such.

The bottom ticket is likely even rarer, and it’s a re-entry ticket serving the same purpose as getting your hand stamped so you can leave and then come back into an event.

These tickets will not likely get you into any events now, but as collectors’ items or just plain motorsports artifacts, they’re not bad, and they might just get you into an automobilia exhibition!

In 2018 when I organized the annual Healey Rendezvous – held in Madras, Oregon, that year – I designed some wine labels for gift wine for the participants.  Yes, I bought many cases of wine and over the course of a couple of weeks while watching the evening news I scratched off all the labels and applied these.

If your supply of that souvenir wine has run out, remember you can always refill those bottles and no one will ever know!  If you never got some of this wine, you can still get the labels and apply them to any bottle you choose.  The possibilities are endless.

Catch me at an upcoming club function and I’ll give you a couple, but when they’re gone, they’re gone, so remember to keep those empties for refilling.