September - Austin Healey Owners Club of Victoria

Borrowing a broom I cleared away the snow to reveal a
terrible mess. Fortunately the interior had been protected
by a heavy tarp but the front was stove in and everything
that was not alloy peeping through split paint was red rust.
It had started to moulder into the dirt. I paid grubby £50
and told him I’d pick it up in two weeks when he’d get the
rest.
The big black phone on my desk at the ad agency in St
James Square was busy as I spoke to Peter and then Les
about what I’d found and they were excited. Les spoke to
Geoff Healey and wrote to me on February 18th1969 : “I
had a quick chat with Geoff Healey yesterday and as
far as he can remember NOJ 392 started life as a 100/4
and was then rebuilt as a lightweight racer and was a
team car at le Mans and the Mille Miglia ...” He went on
to explain that the car never had a 100S engine - a
disappointment for me as a racer.
Anyway, on the last weekend of February 1969, NOJ 392
was lifted from its near death bed and transported to a
warm brick garage in Henley on Thames. My garage.
The Lucky Racer had got lucky again and started a very,
very long road to back to life. Although I now owned a
famous Healey racer, it was in terrible condition and - as I
thought at first - would take at least a year to get on the
track. Meanwhile I would have to sell my Silverstone to
fund the rebuild - a car which was my special racer.
As Spring arrived, I began to have second thoughts. But
there was no going back - GOW686 was sold to rival racer
Eric Hall and I threw myself into the task of dismantling. Of
course the more I did, the worse it felt, since the scale of
the job became clearer.
Everything was corroded and rusty or seized up. The front
guard was bent and folded, the shroud was distorted and
buckled.
Front shroud
"Crunch !! This is where the impact hit, stoving in
panels, bending and splitting the frame."
The chassis rail and cross member was bent in and split
and severe corrosion inside the chassis was evident. The
front suspension on the near side was bent. The bulkheads
were badly corroded, the alloy structures were very brittle
and corroded up about 9". Every bush and bracket was
rusty and seized. Every component was rusty and the rear
(and rare) Girling callipers were porous - you could poke a
screwdriver through the powdery alloy. The rear springs
and axle were red with heavy rust.
It was a very depressing process for someone who really
wanted to get this racer back into racing within a few
months.
12
Through the summer and winter of 1969 and 1970 I slowly
completed dismantling the car, sorting it into boxes and
jars and tins. It was sole destroying work, since by now I
realised that the task of restoring this machine to be my
race car was financially and in terms of time way beyond
my reach.
NOJ Rear section
"Junk? No, its a priceless, historic Healey. But this is
how it was after the dismantling was finished. The
rear section is intact but you can see the corrosion in
the alloy panels and the red rust on the steering
column. The door panel pulled back is where the
notebook was found; and note the original colour in
the door shuts where a cheap BRG respray had been
done."
Front scuttle
"The front scuttle structure was not bent but very
corroded with the alloy brittle and broken. Hard to
believe, but the Healey Factory made this as good as
new"
There really was only one bright spot - the interior. The
seats - remarkably undamaged - were stored to keep dry in
the roof space of my house at 50 Makins Road, Henley on
Thames. Then I spotted the corner of some paper
protruding into the door pocket from behind the door trim
panel. A few minutes later, I held some old papers and a
red school notebook.
The dusty warm wind of La Sarthe in June suddenly wafted
through my garage as I read “Check engine oil - gearbox -
water - hub nuts - remove front number plate - dim out OD
light - tape atmosphere pipes from Carb No 1 to stop
vibration with each one ticked and signed.
HUNDREDS AND THOUSANDS SEPTEMBER 2011