Introduction: How a Respray Turned Into a Full Restoration of a 1959 Austin Healey Sprite.
One of my friends owns a 1959 Austin Healey Sprite. The paint was a bit faded and slightly damaged, so he wanted to give the car a fresh look by giving it a respray. And when we would strip the outside of the car ourselves, it would be an easy job for a paint shop to give the car a fresh coat of paint. I like to work on cars, so I quickly agreed to help my friend with this project. We started just before Christmas in 2021 and we expected to be ready by the end of January of 2022. That was the plan. But sometimes plans change...
In the end we restored almost everything on the car, including a full engine rebuild and the total project took 10 months to complete.
We are not professional mechanics, but with some common sense and some advice from other people we managed to complete this project. I did about 80% of the technical work of this restoration, while my friend did the other 20% plus all of the logistics, like transportation of the Healey, contacting paint shops, searching for parts, buying parts and paying all the bills :-)
I really enjoyed working on this car and we are both very happy with the result.
My goal with this Instructable is not to write a detailed restoration manual for this car, because it would involve hundreds or maybe even thousands of steps. My description will be more general, giving you an overview of everything we did for you to enjoy.
If you like classic cars or even did your own restoration projects, I am sure you will recognize a lot.
And if you like classic cars but never actually did a restoration, I hope I can encourage you to start a restoration project.
Anyway, I hope you like reading about our project and I would love to read your comments.
Step 1: The Original Plan: Strip the Outside for a Simple Respray
The original plan was simple: we will just remove all components from the outside of the body like the windscreen, the head lights, the tail lights and the hood. That way the paint shop can sand and respray the Healey at the outside and it will make the car look much better.
Step 2: Let's Quickly Test the Engine
With the hood removed, the engine was much easier to access than with the hood in place. The Healey had not been running for at least one year, so we decided to quickly test the engine while we could easily reach it. If any work had to be done, it was best to do it now, because if we would scratch the paint, it would not matter that much.
We did a compression test and we tried to start the engine, but the results were not that good.
Step 3: Remove Engine and Gearbox
Since the engine seemed to need at least some maintenance and maybe even a complete overhaul, we decided to take the engine out and check it further.
First we drained the coolant and the oil and then we removed the components that were in the way, like the radiator and we disconnected the exhaust manifold.
We removed the bolts that kept the engine and gearbox on fixed to their supports. This might sound a bit complicated, but it was actually surprisingly easy. It is just a matter of looking where the engine and gearbox were bolted to the body or to other components. I strongly recommend to take many photos during the process as it is very helpful later on to be able to check how things were originally connected.
We used a hoist to lift the engine including gearbox out of the engine bay and it took us approximately 2 hours to get the engine out.
After this, we opened the engine, checked the cylinders and decided that a complete engine rebuild would be best.
This engine overhaul is really part of this project, but it consisted of many steps so I published a separate Instructable about the engine overhaul. Here is the link:
Step 4: Let's Clean the Engine Bay
The engine bay was quite empty when the engine and gear box were removed. But it was also very dirty as oil, grease and dust had collected over the years, so now would be a good time to clean the engine bay. Next door there was a company that does maintenance on tractors and we could use their steam cleaner.
The engine and gear box had the best day of their life when they were sitting in the car behind the wheel and we were pushing the car.
After this wash the engine bay was much cleaner, but it also showed that the paint had suffered from a major spill of brake fluid in the past.
The original plan of only giving the outside a respray was quickly adjusted: we would also remove everything from the engine bay and get the inside of the engine bay included in the respray.
But if the inside of the engine bay will get a fresh coat of paint, then it would be nice to also give the entire inside of the car a respray ...
Step 5: Remove the Interior
As we just decided to also give the inside of the Healey a respray, I had to remove everything from the interior. The seats were really easy to remove as they were kept in place with just 4 bolts. The carpet and lining on the floor and the sides was partly loose and some other parts were glued or screwed to the car body. It was just a matter of taking photos to document how everything was connected and then removing the screws, nuts and bolts.
I had many little boxes to keep all the nuts and bolts and screws organized. I wrote on the lid where the screws came from and combined with all my photos it was very useful to have when we reassembled everything.
Step 6: Bring the Healey to a Paint Shop
When I had stripped the outside and the inside of the Healey and we had removed everything from the engine bay, we brought the car to a paint shop.
Only the wheels and suspension were still present and also the dash and steering wheel.
The guys at the paint shop started sanding the outside of the body. After a few days my friend got a call from them. They told him that the original paint was a one-component type of paint and the modern two-component paint types would not stick very well to this old paint. They did not have any good quality paint that would work well with the original old paint, so for a good result all of the paint of the Healey had to be removed. That would only be possible when there was good access so the wheels and the dash also had to be removed.
Step 7: New Plan: Strip the Healey Completely
We brought the Healey back to my friend's garage and we continued disassembling all remaining parts.
The dash was quite easy. There were many cables connected to the instruments on the dash, but we decided to keep the cables connected to these instruments. I already marked the ends of the cables when I disconnected them from the lights and from other accessories, so although it looks like spaghetti, it was still clear where each cable came from.
Removing the wheels was also easy, but removing the suspension was more complicated. Since the engine and many other parts had been removed already, there was not much weight pushing the car down. So when we placed a jack under the suspension, the springs were not compressed. The jack just lifted the car. We ended up placing a wheel in the engine bay and one of us was sitting on the wheel while the other was using the jack to compress the springs.
We removed the suspension, but I am sure that it was not done by the book. Still our method worked and we managed to remove everything without getting hurt and without causing any damage.
I twisted a small piece of electric cable around all parts that came from the passenger side of the car. That way we did not have to spend much time later on figuring out which parts came from the driver side and which parts came from the passenger side.
Now we had a completely stripped car and we put it on rollers to move it around. The rollers were not absolutely needed as we could just carry the body with just the two of us. So we put the body on a trailer and my friend brought it to a company for sandblasting.
Step 8: Sandblasting and Epoxy Primer
All paint from the Healey was removed by sandblasting. Of course we do not have the equipment to sandblast an entire car, so this was done by a specialized company. After sandblasting they gave the Healey a coat of epoxy to make it well protected against rust.
This step took several weeks.
Step 9: Restoring and Painting Many Small Parts
As we had to wait for the sandblasting and other body work, we decided that we could as well clean and restore and paint all parts which we had removed from the body, because it would not look good to remount dirty and scratched parts on a freshly painted car. So we added that to the project.
Fortunately we could use a small sandblasting cabinet at a company nearby to remove all the grease and dirt and old paint from the parts. There were many small parts to restore, so we just divided them in batches. My friend did all the sandblasting and I gave all parts at least three coats of paint with rattle cans. The first layer was a primer, then a base coat and finally a clear coat.
I did all the actual spraying outside because of the smell and then carried the parts inside to dry without getting dust or insects on the paint. I did not have enough space to hang the parts after painting them, so I sprayed one side at a time while the parts where laying on a piece of wood. Flipping them over to spray the other side should not be done too quickly as the weight of the part will damage the freshly painted surface. So all in all the entire process of sandblasting and painting all these components took several days. Since we also have a day job, we could not work full time on this restoration, so several weeks passed before we finished painting all these small parts.
Step 10: Seats (1)
The seats were in a poor condition. The seat covers had been moist in the past and mold was present now. I removed the seat covers and the cushions from the metal structure of the seats. The seat covers were held in place by clips and nails which I could remove with a screwdriver, pliers and hammer. Then the metal structure became visible, and it's surface was rusted but the metal itself was still good.
The cushions for the backrest seemed to be made from a kind of rubberized horsehair and that still was good. We took the bottom cushion to an upholsterer specialized in classic cars and he told us that cushion was also still fine and made from a good material. Therefore, we decided to reuse the cushions, to sandblast and to paint the metal and to replace the covers with new leather seat covers.
Step 11: A Little Helper
I had a little helper for this part of the project. This little boy is the son of my friend. At the moment of this picture he was 3 years old and he really wanted to help with the restoration. And while many jobs were too complicated or too dangerous for a boy of his age, he could help to clean the metal of the seat.
As you can see he was very happy that he could finally really help us.
Step 12: Seats (2)
Sandblasting and painting the metal structure of the seats was easy.
After that I had to put all cushions back to where they belonged and somehow make sure that they stayed in place. The upholsterer gave us a can of spray glue and that worked perfectly. I also glued a layer of a thick cloth around the metal edges of the seats, so the metal will not damage the leather seat covers.
I placed the seat covers loosely over the cushions and made the photo you see above. A professional upholsterer would probably fasten the seat covers just by himself, but for us it was a two-man-job to anchor the seat covers to the metal structure by the clips and nails. One of us was pulling on the leather to make sure there were no wrinkles while the other was placing the clips and nails.
Step 13: Fuel Tank
I drained the fuel tank before I removed it from the Healey several weeks ago. The fuel was very dirty as you can see on the photo. Now, I took the fuel tank outside and flushed it several times with clean fuel. After that I looked into the tank to check if the inner tank surface was still good. I used a small mirror so I could see most if the inside and it looked quite good.
The outer surface of the fuel tank was not so great. The paint was coming off on several locations. We did not want to get any grit from sandblasting in the tank and we also did not want to use any power tools on the tank as long as there was still some petrol vapor inside, so I used paint stripper to remove all the paint at the outside of the tank. And although the paint already had come off from some parts of the tank, the paint was not that easy to remove from other parts of the tank. But with some patience and elbow grease the tank was finally completely back to bare metal.
I gave it three coats of paint and then it was looking fine again.
Before flushing the tank, I had removed the fuel sender because that seemed to be a bit stuck. I cleaned that mechanism, made a new gasket and used some RTV and thread sealant when I reinstalled the fuel sender.
Step 14: Exhaust Damper
The exhaust damper was corroded at the bottom side and there were even some gaps in the metal. The top side still seemed to be in good condition, so we decided to repair this damper.
I used an angle grinder to cut the bad part away. I used that part to make a paper template and marked the area that I needed on a new metal sheet. I bend the metal around a thick pipe to give it the correct form and then tack welded it in place. Next, I stitch welded the new piece completely so there were no more gaps remaining.
Finally, I painted the exhaust damper with heat resistant spray paint.
Step 15: Head Lights
The head lights were a bit corroded, and the rubbers had cracks. My friend bought new rubbers and I sanded and painted the head lights, so they were again looking good.
Reassembly was not very difficult as there are not so many parts involved and I made photos before taking the lights apart.
Later, when the Healey was almost ready, my friend drove the Healey to a garage where they had the right equipment to align the lights, so they would be shining at the road and not blinding any other drivers.
Step 16: Cleaning
A significant part of a restoration project is just cleaning everything.
Some parts are easy to clean. Cleaning the wheels for example went very quickly. I just used a rag and a little bit of brake cleaner and the dirt came off immediately.
Cleaning the interior of the Healey took much more elbow grease. First, I used a cloth and water to remove the dust and loose dirt. After that I used a cleaner for leather. The instructions on the flask said that after using the cleaner, I had to use some water again, so I did that. Next, I applied a leather conditioner and after waiting fifteen minutes, I could use a rag again to get a nice clean and slightly shiny surface.
It took some time, but then the interior of the Healey looked as new again.
Of course, there were many other parts that still had to be cleaned, but cleaning is easy so I do not have to explain that in detail.
Step 17: Rubbers
I was surprised by the amount of rubbers present in the car. Since the Healey is over 60 years old already, most of the rubbers were not in great shape. We replaced all the bad rubbers and only kept the ones which were probably replaced not too long ago.
The first photo shows a dust cover for the steering mechanism. Only one of them had a small hole, but I replaced both sides.
Next there were many rubber bushings used at the front and rear suspension. I replaced all of them by new ones.
The Healey has side windows that can be placed on the car when driving in bad weather. It was a real struggle to replace the rubbers around those windows. Removing the old rubber takes 10 seconds. Getting the new rubber in place took almost 2 hours per window. The rubber has a sort of T-shape, where the top side of the T had to go in a groove. I used soapy water and a credit card to patiently work my way around the window. It took a lot of patience, and I was very happy when that job was finished.
After that I made the rubbers that are used between the car's body and some other parts to prevent scratches or maybe some noise during driving. I either used the old rubber as template or the part itself and cut new rubbers from a large sheet of rubber.
Step 18: License Plate
The old license plate of the Healey was damaged and the letter K had completely fallen off. In the past somebody just used some white paint to write the "K" again, but since we were restoring the entire car, we could not put this old shabby license plate back on the car. So, my friend ordered a new license plate.
If it was not for Instructables, I would not have taken a photo of the old and new license plate and I would probably not have noticed that we received a license plate that ended with the letter "L" instead of "K". But because I made a photo, I noticed the error, so the company that made the license plate sent us the correct one. The new licence plates came with a nice metal strip so I put that around the edges of the licence plates.
Step 19: Nuts and Bolts
Since we stripped the car completely, we had many nuts and bolts to clean. When the tread was still OK, we cleaned the bolts with a rotating wire brush. This machine is very powerful, and it could for sure remove the skin of my fingers. I was always very careful when I cleaned the bolts and the machine never touched my skin.
When the thread was damaged, we replaced the bolt or nut by a new one. We also replaced all washers and lock nuts by new ones as we did not want to reuse the old ones.
Here in The Netherlands it is easy to buy nuts and bolts with metric thread, but since the Healey is an English car, it has UNF nuts and bolts. My friend found a store that sells UNF nuts and bolts, so we did not use metric threaded nuts and bolts, but only the original English threaded once.
The new bolts have a nice shiny galvanized surface, but the bolts that we cleaned and reused no longer have that protective layer. After mounting the parts back on the car, I used a small brush to add a primer and after that black or yellow paint to protect the old bolts. Maybe it is a bit overdone, but if I would not have painted these bolt heads they would probably start to rust again very soon.
Step 20: Progress of Body Work and Paint
While I was restoring and repairing many parts, the body work also continued. The body of the Healey had been sandblasted and it had received an epoxy primer in a specialized body shop. Now the work continued in another shop. They repaired all tiny dents with body filler and sanded it smooth. We went to the shop to check the quality of the work and the quality was very good.
The body got a white primer and after that the bottom and the inside of the car were sprayed into the final yellow color.
Step 21: Rear Axle and Suspension
We had removed the drums from the drum brakes at the rear axle and cleaned the inside, already at the start of the project. At that time we also sanded the pads and thought that the brakes were fine, so we put the drums back on. We should have replaced the wheel cylinders but at that time we did not think that was needed.
One of the brake lines had a dent, so we used a new copper brake line to make a replacement part. Then we cleaned and painted the rear axle and also the leaf springs.
All other suspension parts were included in one of the batches that we sandblasted and spray painted.
Step 22: Brake Calipers
This Healey has disc brakes at the front and we decided to overhaul the brake calipers. I disassembled them, cleaned and painted the actual calipers and replaced the worn pads with new pads. Of course, I also replaced all the rubber rings. Then I used a special grease for brake installation and put everything back together.
Step 23: Hub, Rotor and Seals
We disassembled the hub, so I could replace the oil seal and put fresh grease on the bearings. I also cleaned and painted the hub. Since the rotors will get very hot during braking, I used a heat resistant spray paint and put masking tape on the rotors during painting to keep them clean.
I used the well-known trick of putting a screw in the old oil seal, so I could pull it out easily. To push the new oil seals in, I used a small hydraulic press since it was available. Of course there are also other methods to place a new seal, but a press works very good.
Step 24: Polishing Aluminum
The Healey had quite some aluminum parts and they were dull and had scratches.
I had never polished aluminum before, so I looked at some videos how it should be done and it did not seem too complicated. We had a set of polishing paste and wheels, so I started with a test piece first, but I struggled with the different colors of the polishing paste. On the website where my friend bought the kit, it said we had to use the brown paste first, then the green paste and finally the white paste. But on the instructions that were on the package we received, the order was different. We also had a second kit and that brand used different colors paste and they did not give a description at all. So I ended up trying all the different polishing pastes and used the combination that seemed to give the best results.
The aluminum is now quite shiny and all the scratches are gone, but it took some time to get there.
Step 25: Distributor
We cleaned the distributor and removed the distributor cap. That was made of a brown sort of plastic and in the past someone added black paint on this cap. That paint partly came off but the remaining paint was hard to remove. So we decided to replace the old distributor cap by a new one that was completely black.
I made a sketch where each cable was connected, before I disconnected them from the old cap. Then I connected the cables to the new cap and checked for continuity to make sure that the voltage will be properly distributed.
Step 26: Part of the Car Comes Back From the Paint Shop
We finished all the restoration work on the parts, but the body was not yet ready at the body shop. The actual body of the car still needed to be sprayed at the outside, but the hood and the doors were far from ready and needed several more weeks at the body shop.
We therefore agreed that we would pick up the car body, bring it to our garage so we could build back everything in the engine bay and then we would return the car to the paint shop for a final layer of yellow paint at the outside.
That was better for the overall planning of the body shop and that way we could not damage the final paint at the outside while placing the engine into the engine bay.
At the body shop we placed the body on a trailer by just lifting it with four people. At my friend's garage there were just the two of us and although it is possible to carry the body with two people, that is quite heavy. So, my friend borrowed a forklift at a company next door and used that to put the car in his garage.
I had the parts for the front and rear suspension organized and ready for installation on the car and we were happy that we could finally start the assembly process.
Step 27: Rear Wheels and Suspension
I had the privilege of mounting the very first part on the freshly painted body. I started with the leaf spring of the rear suspension. Actually, the leaf springs in an Austin Healey Sprite are just half the size of normal leaf springs. That makes it more easy to handle and it is sufficient for the low weight of this car.
I had many photos of the rear suspension before I removed it from the car, so mounting everything back should not be too complicated. Still, it is possible to mount parts in a different order than how they were taken apart and that can result in problems with placing the next bolt because the access is blocked by the previous part. Of course, I managed to do this...
Fortunately, I learned from my mistakes and at the other side of the car I mounted everything directly in the right order.
On the third photo above you can see a small piece of twisted copper wire, which was painted black. I used that as a trick to mark all the parts that came from the passenger side of the car. That made it easy to remember at which side of the car the part had to be mounted.
We used a car jack to compress the rear suspension, but since the car body was still completely stripped from all other parts, the result was just that the entire body was lifted from the floor. Since my friend is much taller and heavier than I am, he crawled into the back of the car to give it some weight to compress the springs which was just enough to mount the final bolts.
Step 28: Front Wheels and Suspension
Installing the front suspension was comparable with the rear suspension, although a bit more complicated because there are more parts. Still, it was quite clear where each part had to be mounted and my friend did this part of the project while I was abroad for a business trip, so when I came back the front suspension was ready.
Now we had the Healey back on its wheels for the first time in several months.
Step 29: Engine Bay
In step three I mentioned that we did a complete engine rebuild for this car. That part of the project went quite fast, so the rebuilt engine had been sitting in the garage for about 5 months now. We were very happy that we could finally put the engine and gearbox back in the car. It is surprisingly easy to get this engine in the engine bay and we did not damage the fresh paint in this process.
With the engine and gearbox in place, I still had many more components to install. I started with the parts that are positioned at the bottom of the engine bay and slowly worked my way up. It was quite easy because in classic cars of this age there is still plenty of space in the engine bay and nearly everything is just mounted with a few bolts or screws.
Step 30: Carburetors
Earlier in the project my friend had cleaned the carburetors internally and he replaced the air filters with new ones, so it should be as good as new again and we put the carburetors on the engine.
Step 31: Dynamo
The dynamo seemed to be in poor shape when we removed it from the car and my friend asked a specialist to check if it still worked. The answer was "no", so he bought a new dynamo. The new one came without pulley and without fan, so I removed them from the old dynamo and attached them to the new one.
The next action was to mount the dynamo in the car and set the tension of the V-belt. The 4th photo was taken before we disassembled everything and you can see the green strip that was used to adjust the position of the dynamo to tension the V-belt. Now that I needed that strip I could not find it anywhere. I looked at all my photos and I knew we took it to be cleaned in the sandblasting machine but after that I did not see it anymore. I looked (nearly) everywhere in the garage and still could not find it. My friend vaguely remembered that he spray painted this part, but he also did not know where it was. I decided to make a replacement part because I assumed we lost the original part. After I made a new part, I suddenly remembered that there was something hanging from the ceiling. My friend had put the original strip there to let the paint dry, but that was some months ago.
I was happy that I found the original part, so I installed that one. At least we already have a replacement part just in case we ever need it.
Step 32: Starter Motor
We knew that the starter motor was not working properly when we used it during the compression test which we did at the beginning of the engine overhaul. My friend bought a new starter motor already some months ago and now it was time to install it.
I wanted to be sure that the starter motor turned in the right direction, because the Austin Healey uses the positive pole of the battery as common ground and in most cars the negative pole of the battery is connected to common ground. So I connected jumper cables from the battery to the starter motor and briefly touched the body of the starter motor. It turned in the right direction, so I thought is was the right starter motor and I continued to mount it.
The starter motor has two bolt holes, so I aligned the top one and put a bolt through the hole. The bottom hole is a bit difficult to reach, but I could feel the hole with my finger, so I tried to place the second bolt, but it did not seem to fit. I held my phone in an open area in the engine bay and made a photo of the location of the hole. As you can see in the orange square on the 4th photo, the holes are not aligned at all. So we had received a starter motor that was supposed to fit on this engine, but it did not fit. My friend returned this starter motor to the shop that sold it and after a few days we received another starter motor and that one both turned in the correct direction and it did fit, so I installed it.
Step 33: Dash
Next step was to install the dash. I had labeled each cable when I removed the dash and I also made a drawing to indicate which cable had to go through each hole of the fire wall.
It would have been very handy if a second person was around to hold the dash in place while I put the cables through the holes, but my friend was still abroad and there was nobody else around, so I had to be creative. I put some crates in the car and placed the dash on top, so I had both my hands available to guide the cables through the holes. This worked very well.
The dash is just held in place with two small brackets and some small bolts, so once it is in place, it is easy to tighten the bolts.
After that I connected all the cables in the engine bay. The cables have different colors and I had labeled all of them and I had photos of the original situation, so it was not difficult to reconnect them.
Step 34: Final Part of the Respray
In the previous steps the Healey was still partially white at the outside and we did not yet get the hood back from the paint shop.
Now after the summer holiday season we returned the car to the paint shop and they gave it the final layers of paint and they also finished their work on the hood.
About one week later the paint shop was ready so we went there to collect everything.
Step 35: Getting Ready to Start the Engine
With the car back in the garage and the summer almost over, my friend really wanted to start the engine and go for a test drive even though the car was not completely ready yet.
Therefore I set the valve clearance, added oil to the engine and coolant to the radiator. When I was filling the coolant I heard that there was a leakage. Fortunately it was easy to fix, because the coolant came out of the drain, so closing the drain plug solved this leakage.
Before actually starting the engine, we first wanted to check if the lubrication worked fine. We removed the spark plugs, left the valve cover off and then made the starter motor turn over the engine. We did not see any oil coming, so we had to find out what the issue was. We discovered quite quickly that the oil pump is located some distance above the oil sump, and since the engine had been completely taken apart during our overhaul, there was no oil present in the oil pump or in the suction line of the pump. The result was that the oil pump was just moving air and no oil. We solved this by disconnecting the discharge line from the oil pump and adding oil there to make sure we got oil in the pump and in the suction line. That worked, so when we made the engine turn again, we saw oil coming. We added the valve cover and the spark plugs and tried to start the engine.
We found out we had to replace the fuel pump, because it did not always want to run and we adjusted the ignition and the fuel to air ratio, so we managed to solve everything and the engine was running nicely!
Step 36: Lights
Now the engine had been running, my friend wanted to go for the first test drive as soon as possible, but I still had to connect the lights now that the car was fully painted. The cables run through the car's body and there is just enough space for somebody with small hands to feed the cables through.
It is quite clear where each cable had to go, but I still managed to switch the cables of the tail light and the brake light, because I did not check the photos. We tested if all the lights were working before the test drive, so I corrected my mistake and then the lights worked fine.
Step 37: Test Drive
We had been working more than 8 months on this restoration already and finally it was almost ready for a first test drive. The hood still has to be mounted and the seats too, but my friend could not wait any longer because it was now an autumn day with exceptionally good weather, so he went for a short drive down the road to feel how the Healey performed. His little boy had been asking for weeks if they could go for a ride, so he immediately hopped in to join his father.
The engine performed well, but the brakes were not as they should be yet, so we assumed we could fix that quickly and then the car would be ready...
Step 38: Hood, Interior and Seats. Also Topping Up Oil in the Gearbox
We mounted the hood, but I could not take any photos of that as the hood is heavy and it takes three people to mount the hood. Fortunately there was a third person around to help us, but there wasn't a 4th person to take a photo. It is not difficult to mount the hood; it is just a matter of tightening bolts, but those bolts are not that easy to place when the hood is balancing on your back. Anyway we succeeded, so the hood is in place.
The next action was to screw or glue the black interior in place, bolt the seats to the floor pans and add the removable carpets.
You can see a red funnel attached to the steering wheel. That was to add oil to the gearbox, because we lost some oil from the gearbox when we removed it from the car. Unfortunately we did not have the right oil for the gearbox available when we needed it, so we had to wait for this oil to arrive. In the meantime, I worked on the interior as most other jobs were finished already.
And then, finally, everything was ready to drive the car. At least, that is what we thought...
Step 39: Brake Issues
My friend went for the second test drive, now with the fully assembled car. He felt the car drawing to the right while braking, so back in the workshop we found that the flexible hose to the brake caliper at one of the front wheels was blocked. We replaced this hose, added brake fluid and removed air from the brake system by bleeding the brakes.
The first time that we filled the brake system with fluid was some weeks ago when the hood was not yet installed, but now it was more difficult because the reservoir with brake fluid is very small and it is located close to the hinges of the hood, so there is little space to work and we had to be really careful not to overfill the reservoir. If you have ever worked on an Austin Healey, I am sure you recognize this problem.
But we managed to get the system filled and free of air, so my friend went for a longer drive.
Step 40: More Brake Issues
During the longer drive after more than an hour my friend hit the floor when he used the brake pedal. He immediately started pumping the brake pedal and got enough braking force to stop the car without hitting anything. Modern cars have a brake system which consists of 2 separate circuits, so if you loose brake fluid from one circuit, you still have the second circuit working to safely stop the car. In the Healey there is just one circuit, so a leakage of brake fluid can quickly lead to a total lack of hydraulic braking force. The only back-up is the mechanical hand brake.
Back in the garage we saw brake fluid at one of the rear wheel cylinders. The fluid came from the cylinder itself and when we later took it apart, we saw that the rubber seal in the old cylinders was old and slightly damaged. In hindsight it is not that surprising that the rubbers in the wheel cylinders were old, so we learned a valuable lesson for a next project.
The front wheels have disc brakes and we already overhauled those calipers, so with 2 new wheel cylinders for the rear wheels we should be fine. We removed the rear wheels, the drums, axle and bearing to get access to the wheel cylinders. The first time we removed them, it was a bit of a struggle, but once you know that you have to squeeze the cylinder to make it slightly shorter, it is not that difficult to replace. We bolted everything together, filled the reservoir with brake fluid, bled the system and found out that we were still hitting the floor with the brake pedal...
During the next three weeks we worked several days on this issue and we tried everything to get rid of air in the system: bleeding the brakes with vacuum, without vacuum, more quickly, less quickly and so on. We even went to a professional garage to see if they had a pressure filling system, but that did not fit on the Healey.
I read comments on this subject on an online forum and I learned that we were not the only ones struggling with this issue. Unfortunately the solutions that were mentioned on the forum were not the solution to our problem.
Step 41: This Was Not Needed After All.
My friend called several professionals and explained the problem. We kept hitting the floor with the brake pedal the first time, but after pumping the pedal a few times we got good pressure and we did not loose any pressure as long as we kept our foot on the brake pedal. When we released the pedal for just two seconds and pressed it again, we hit the floor. And this problem only came after replacing both rear wheel cylinders.
Most professionals thought the issue came from the main brake cylinder at the front of the car or from the brake booster. We were not convinced because when we asked them to explain how our symptoms matched with what they thought was the root cause, we did not get a clear explanation. But we had been struggling so long already that we were willing to try anything.
We got a new brake booster, but the mounting bolts were different. We needed a bolt where I was pointing with my finger on the photo, but there was no bolt. So, I had to modify the mounting bracket and then I could install the new booster.
The parts store did not have a main cylinder in stock but as alternative they had a kit with rubber seals, so we got that. Back in the garage I found out that the size of the new rubber seals was larger than the ones that were used in our cylinder, so the new ones did not fit. A second parts store told us that the larger diameter is for a system with 4 drum brakes and the smaller diameter is for a system with disc brakes at the front. That store had the correct kit available, so I replaced the seals, mounted everything, added brake fluid and bled the system once again and the result...
No improvement. We still had the exact same symptoms.
My friend had some time to work on the car when I was not available and he bought a new main cylinder, installed that, went again through the process of filling and bleeding the system and....
Still the same problem.
He called me to discuss by phone and I came up with the idea to clamp the flexible brake hose at the rear axle and press the brake pedal with that clamp in place. He tested it and immediately had a firm brake pedal, so clearly the problem was at the rear. (If I had thought about this test earlier, we could have avoided replacing the booster and the main cylinder, but at least now they are new and can hopefully last many years.)
Step 42: Finally... Brake Problems Solved!
Now that we knew for sure that the problems came from the rear wheel cylinders, we focused on that.
The design is a bit weird because the cylinder is pointing upwards and the bleed screw is located on the connection of the brake line which is just before the cylinder at the bottom side. So, when air is trapped in the cylinder and you bleed the system, the air can stay where it is and the system is just flushed with fluid without removing the air.
We finally solved the problem by a combination three actions:
- We filled the cylinder with brake fluid before installing it. (We tried that before and on it's own it did not solve the problem, but at least we were reducing the amount of air in the cylinder.)
- After installation of the cylinder we used pliers to squeeze the cylinder so the volume in the cylinder is as small as it can be. (We sort of tried this before too, but now we really made the volume as small as it can be.)
- Then we continued by bleeding the system like this: my friend pumped the pedal until he felt pressure, then I opened the bleed screw and immediately my friend pumped the pedal three more times. During these three pumping strokes some air came out.
- We absolutely did not want to bottom out the level in the reservoir, because then we had to start all over again. We had done that enough in the past weeks. Since the reservoir is very small, I added brake fluid after opening the bleed screw three times and that worked well.
Slowly the pedal started to feel more solid and after some more bleeding we finally had the problem solved.
In total we had used almost 4 bottles of brake fluid, which is enough to fill the entire system 25 times. But we drained and filled the system a lot as we took the wheel cylinders off several times to check and replace them, we replaced the booster, we replaced the seals in the main cylinder and later we replaced the entire cylinder. Since the reservoir is very small, we bottomed out the level during bleeding a few times, so then we had to start again. We have been making jokes that we can better buy brake fluid in large drums because we used a crazy amount of it.
I read on the forum about this issue that other people also used a crazy amount of brake fluid to solve their braking problems with an Austin Healey.
Fortunately, the problem is solved now and my friend has already made some longer trips without new braking issues.
Step 43: The Project Is Finished
Finally, after 10 months the Healey was completely finished. We are happy that we decided to do a complete restoration, because it now looks as if it just came from the factory and it runs good.
Step 44: Next Project
The Healey is finished and we already have the next project waiting in the garage. The blue car is a Maserati Sebring that my friend bought 25 years ago. At that time it was in poor condition including rust issues on the body work. My friend has been working on and off on this Maserati in the past 25 years and the body work is finished, but many components still need to be restored and mounted to the car.
My friend does not have that much free time to finish the car quickly, so guess what I will be doing the coming months....