Healey Sports Cars

Right front together. Right rear needs final assy, and then it can go on its wheels.

It looks like your header outlets are positioned like mine were, right into the frame rail. In order to have the pipes run over the top of the frame rail, I had to have the outlets re-welded to 90 degrees. Even still it's a tight fit.

Rick, yes, well need some close cutting to get them to turn over the frame. We'll be using V- band clamps there.



Future exhaust system, at least the front part.

Really nice progress on modding the headers. We'll probably want to add some clearance to the frame before final prep and paint. Driver's side:



Driver's side



Passenger side:



Chris angling for hazardous duty pay! This was about 7 hours of work over 2 days. 7 hours for a pro that is...





Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/30/2024 11:47AM by 3000bn7.

Yep, that passenger side fits exactly like mine. The things you have to do if you want to route the headers over the frame.

Sitting on its wheels for the first time in a long time. We replaced the 100# rear springs with 150#. Time will tell what it wants, but for now it is one step closer to being able to test it. My goal was always good suspension travel for back road driving which implies reasonable spring rates with good damping control. The cobra center-laced wheels look pretty good, they may fit without much body interference.

Up in the air showing suspension travel. I would like to see more droop in the rear, the limit straps probably need to be longer.

Major pain putting in the sparkplugs, the headers were designed for the later small plug size and that space is super tight in any case. Body needed to come back off the put them in! I'll be seeing the car this weekend, hopefully running, so looking forward to that.

We had a productive but frustrating weekend, got the brakes and clutch bled but it was a major project. All of the copper-nickel lines were leaking at the fittings. We ended up replacing them with steel. I think the flares end up too large since the material is softer.

The clutch is too stiff, we have concentric slave cyl with a 3/4 master cyl. We ordered a smaller master to see how it works.

We started it briefly to see how the new/old exhaust sounds. The carb leaked like crazy at the accelerator pumps so that was also short-lived, but it sounded good.



The car has BJ8 seats, we placed one in to be able to work the pedals.We will need to shorten the steering column a bit to get more space.





Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/20/2025 10:41AM by 3000bn7.

I like the Cobra-laced wheels. I have GT40P heads, which makes installing spark plugs with the headers a real joy. You're making great progress. I found installing the driveline the easiest part. It was all the stuff that came afterwards that took up about 80% of the time.

Impressive skills, Art. Regarding hedder/collector/frame issue, perhaps "wedge cut" primaries at flanges, allowing to swing up and outward, reweld.
Cheers, Art.

I had the same idea about the wedge cuts. I am in no position to suggest that though! Chris was doing the welding as a favor and I am far enough away that I can't really see what the possibilities are. I had one idea to try to dump the left header to the inside under the oil pan and back across the top of the right frame rail so that we could do side exit on the passenger side. Things are too tight under there once I checked it out myself. I have also wanted to have some kind of crossover, but again, things are too tight.

Expedience is 90% of the plan now so that we can get it together and start testing before taking it apart for the final finish work and build.

Thanks for the comments! We are gaining on it...

Steve has the smaller clutch master installed but I don't think it is bled yet to test that.

A little late to the party but.....
Back in the day, I, for some misguided reason stuffed a LT1 into the lovely Lynne's 82 hard top 2dr Mazda 626. No it's not a typo.
I wanted it to look Mazda ish. so the Mazda script was grafted onto the valve covers and a Mazda air filter lid was used on the dual snorkel Pontiac air cleaner base. The rear end was a 9 inch with 15" steel wheels all around. The factory 4 spoke mags were machined in half and used as hub caps to maintain the look.
However the incentive for this post is the exhaust. There was no room for it to exit the engine compartment. So a set of swept back shorty headers were installed backwards facing the front of the engine. The exhaust crossed over in front of the engine went down both sides of the trans and joined up into a single 3 inch out the back of the car.
With the balance pipe in front of the engine and the convergence into a single exhaust the thing sounded incredible.
It looks like you have room for the same thing. A decent flowing exhaust with very little compromise.

Live like you mean it.
Fred

I recall Ford 390 engines in trucks having a front crossover. i don't think we have room for that, it is tight with the steering, fans, etc.

Minor update today, the 5/8" clutch master seems to work better. Now that the engine can be run longer with some carb work, we see that the driveshaft is hitting the emergency brake mechanism inside the tunnel. We have a 3" dia driveshaft, maybe just too big.

Looks like this will be the driveshaft solution. Funny, we had the other one custom made...

Looks like the new driveshaft will work well.

View from the transmission to the rear New shaft is still pretty close to the brake mechanism. I think the Ford rear must have the pinion offset more than the Healey did. I doubt we took account of this when we were building the housing. Not sure about the 8", but the 9" was designed to have a much lower pinion position for lower cars being designed. That could play into this as well, there is a lot of headroom in the tunnel.

Good point Fred, keep our options open. Thanks to Chinese polished stainless SBF shorty hedders, can be readily
modded to fit other small block V8's. RV8's, 4.9L. Cad's/etc.
Cheers, Aer.

Starting to put the body back on with proper bolting, etc. to be able to start running the car for shakedown work.

Some housecleaning need on panel gaps, etc. The LR fender needed to be cut and re-gapped. A bit of Dynaglass to cover things and a quick coat of either Chevy or Hemi orange will tidy it up for the shakedown phase. The rocker [repro] will also need to be corrected, the indent is in the wrong place and these fenders have various old patches that will need to be done better.

Body mostly back together.