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by Perrin French
Palo Alto, CA
(Being the True Account of Attempts by a Mechanical
Novice to Restore a 1962 Austin-Healey 3000 Mark II BT7)
I always thought you had to be a jock to work on cars. In
the neighborhood where I grew up, the big kids hurling hard balls back and
forth across the street smackingly into each others bare hands were the ones, a
couple of years later, who were out in their driveways making mysterious
adjustments under the raised hoods of automobiles. Mechanical ability, I assumed
required development along cerebella rather than cerebral lines. I tended to
view coordination and academic abilities as mutually exclusive endowments; and so,
as an honor student, unable to handle footballs, basketballs, or baseballs in
any capacity other than some team’s assistant manager, I viewed the domain of
grease monkeys as forever forbidden to me by a territorial imperative. I never
saw the underside of an automobile hood.
 Right side of firewall panel on a 1962 Austin-Healey 3000 MKII as seen by the Klutz (Perrin French)
Having a reliable car already to take care of my
transportation needs (a ‘76 Toyota Corona station wagon, the repairs for which
over a four year period had consisted of replacing one fuse), and having
learned through ownership of a 1972 Audi 100 LS the lethally high costs of
having Gucci-shod European mechanics in white laboratory coats perform the
weekly repairs required by a European auto, the stage was set for my encroachment
into the territory of the greasers. I would do any repairs required by the
Austin-Healey myself, thereby saving money and simultaneously learning a skill
which might come in handy should I feel like
surviving further after the bombs fall.
Lesson One: Some parts of a car you can replace rather than repair.
As with many great events (World War 1, the unraveling of
Watergate, etc.,) things began trivially enough. I noticed the gas gauge
readings bore a random relationship to the actual gas content of the tank.
Despite the previous owner’s air of in-credulousness and injured pride when I
mentioned this to him and his convincing assurances that the gauge was a completely
reliable instrument, if properly read while motoring at a steady speed in a
straight line, I had run out of gas twice with the gauge’s needle still cheerily
bouncing back and forth between one quarter and three quarters full.
Ah ha! My first opportunity to engage in repair work!
Armed with the owner’s workshop manual, I removed the
fuel tank sending unit, discovering in the process that it resembled a toilet
tank shut off float and seemed to be in perfect order. I instantly deduced that
the difficulty must lie in the fuel gauge itself. Through some editorial
inadvertence, the description of the dismantling and reassemble of the fuel
gauge had been omitted from the workshop manual. No matter. After a moment’s
reflection I realized that the directions regarding the instruments dismantling
must have been omitted because of the self-explanatory simplicity of the
maneuver. Imagine how surprised I was when I pried open the gauge and saw,
under the prodding of my blunt screwdriver, its several delicate parts go
“sproing,” like the workings of a Swiss watch, scattered forever to the winds
of entropy. Lesson one: Some parts of a car you replace rather than repair.
When the local parts store couldn’t come
up with a fuel gauge of the right vintage and make (Smith), I placed what was
to prove the first in a succession of orders for obsolete car parts with a company
a car-buff friend had recommended, located in
the small California town of Goleta.
Ah, the thrill of the packages arriving in the mail from Goleta,
California! Goleta!
The strange new name itself became as exciting as “Battle Creek, Michigan” had
been when I was nine years old, waiting for my Buck Rogers
space ring (with a secret compartment) to
arrive in exchange for twenty-five cents and a Wheaties box top.
The same supportive friend who had steered me to Goleta
in my search for a gas gauge pointed out, in one of my calls to him for
education and moral support, that it was a straight shot from the gas cap to
the bottom of the tank, and thus an adequate alternative for a fuel gauge could
be had in the form of a straight stick. Could be right? He was right. A bamboo
stick used by my wife to sober up potted plants did the trick. Four and a half
inches of wet stick indicated a full tank, with shorter lengths of wetness
representing proportionately lesser amounts of fuel.
With no further immediate need for a fuel gauge, I was
free to continue to “tour about,” right? I could just leave those itty bitty
wires dangling where the gauge had been. I mean, how much electricity could
such little wires contain? Not very much, I would bet on that. Six blocks down
the road I began, like Big Daddy in Cat
on a Hot Tin Roof smelling “an oduh of mendacitih,” to smell an odor of
doubt regarding my bet. Another two blocks and the message that I had lost the
bet was being semaphored to me from under the dash board by smoke signals. This
irritated and somewhat frightened me and I decided if the car was going to
behave that way I would take it
straight home. I’d learned a thing or two about the management of difficult,
temperamental behavior at my daughter’s co-op child care center. I realized the
value of some “time out” if the car was going to get so upset over my leaving
those little wires out. The car would have to go straight back home with no
drive today. A block from my house, the intermittent sparks and glowing wires
ignited into frank flames and I thought it best to pull over to the side of the
road. There I attempted to break off and pull out the offending wires from
under the dash with my bare hands, before they could, for all I knew, detonate
the rest of the car. Despite the wires’ incandescence, the only thing that was
breaking off and coming away was the skin on
my hands. Turning off the ignition had failed to placate the machine’s fiery
outburst, and my final effort towards conciliation was to go around the back
and turn off the battery. Beyond that, I was ready to wash my hands of it and
leave it up to the authorities to deal with the car’s bad behavior.
The neighbors, victims of repeated home burglaries, first
answered the doorbell out the second story window, but then, after I identified
myself, let me in to call the fire department on their phone. By the time the
big red truck with its helmeted authorities arrived the fire was out, my final
gesture of conciliation having apparently sufficed to extinguish the car’s
fire.
“If this was the good old days,” the frustrated foreman
of the local repair shop informed me, “I'd tell a mechanic, ‘You work on that
car or you don’t get paid today.’ But today, they tell me what they’ll do and
what they won’t do, and there isn’t a one of them that will rewire your
Austin-Healey.” The job generated by my laissez-flare attitude towards the
loose wires consisted of replacing the entire “main wiring harness,” the car’s
plastic-coated copper nervous system, a significant hunk of which had been
fused together into a mass resembling spaghetti added to boiling water without
stirring. When I finally found a couple of men able and willing to do the job,
one wanted $600 and the other, Ken Walsh, recommended
by the President of the A-H Club (which I had learned of through an ad in a
friend’s Road & Track Magazine), $300.
Both men suggested I could do the job myself— simply send away for a
reproduction of the original wiring harness and install it in my spare time.
They made it sound so simple. Why hadn’t the men at the local repair shop
snapped up the job? Just my luck to have poked into one of those rotten spots
spreading across the soft underbelly of American culture today: a nest of
indolent, parasitic mechanics, acrawl with fear of honest work.
They made it sound so simple. Why hadn't the men at the local repair shop snapped up the job?
The package from Goleta
was a large, padded manila envelope, stapled shut —the sort used for mailing
books. With the old Battle Creek
reverence for That-Which-Has-Come-in-the-Mail I carefully extracted the
contents: two coiled, black electrical tape-wound snakes with many heads, tails
and side pieces of colored wire. No instructions, no diagrams. The message was
clear: You’re on your own, kid.
There was a diagram in the workshop manual that pretended
to represent my 3000 Mark II BT7’s electrical system. Actually, I was to learn
later, for some reason it did not. A diagram purporting to pertain to the 100-6
turned out to be the one corresponding to the system in my car. But at the time
I started work, both diagrams might, as easily have been letters from Mr. Spock
to his Vulcan grandmother for all the sense they made to me in terms of the
wires I could see in the car. What I needed, If I was ever to fit all the
heads, tails and side pieces of the wiring harnesses into place without having
the windshield wipers go on when I stepped on the brakes, were drawings of the
wires as they really looked throughout
the car. And by the time I’d finished making the necessary 7 drawings (see two
of them in the accompanying illustrations),
starting with a brake pedal’s eye view of the dash, I had begun to develop (a)
a pain in my left shoulder which to this day prevents me from sleeping on that
side, (b) an incipient case of claustrophobia, and (c) an appreciation of the
mechanics at the local repair shop as honest citizens, motivated by nothing
more insidious than their constitutional right to freedom from cruel and
unusual punishment. Do not fear, gentle reader, that I shall subject you to a
blow by blow account of my Laocoonian wrestling into place of the main and rear
wiring snakes. Suffice it to say that it took many times the ten hours
estimated for his own performance of it by Ken Walsh, and was a “valuable
learning experience,” both in the true sense of the phrase and in the sense of
the phrase as it is used by Senior House Office to coerce medical interns into
performing rectal exams on their patients. Among the things I learned were: the
names and locations of all the internal organs supplied, controlled or
monitored via the wiring harnesses; how to jack the car up onto jack stands and
remove the wheels; the various angles to which fingers, wrists and arms may be
contorted short of outright fracture; how to screw tiny screws with multiple
washers into inaccessible apertures while upside down without blowing your
lunch; what a socket wrench set is good for and what you need a set of little
individual regular wrenches for instead; how to remove and get resoldered your
oversized radiator after learning how easy it is to accidentally poke holes in
it; how to clean ½ inch thick layers of grease and dirt off of various parts
and panels with toothbrushes, butter knives and rubber spatula; and, yes, how
to read a wiring diagram (and learn which switches and wires a previous owner
had improvised himself in order to run interior lights, an ooga horn and a
radio, as well as to monitor oil temperature and amperage — all of which I tore
out from a recently acquired wire-phobia and a conviction that I would be lucky
if the basic wiring worked when I got it finished without tempting the wrath of
Chevy, god of Car Repair, with unorthodox additions).
 Brake peddles eye view of the dash of Perrins Healey
Would one or more fires gaily break out in
celebration of the return of electricity?
Examination of the wiring diagram with my newly trained
eyes enabled me to guess at where the trouble might be: at the fuses, where the
ignition system and the main wiring system which fed the fuel pump were closest
together. There had been a broken fuse in its own little plastic container
wired diagonally across the car’s standard two fuses. In the-course of rewiring
the car I had replaced this broken fuse with an intact one, imagining myself to
be doing the car a favor. According to the wiring diagram, this fuse didn’t
exist. With the fuse removed, an appropriate lack of activity accompanied
the turning on of the battery switch, while the fuel pump started up on the
turning of the ignition key, the engine started up on the pressing of the
starter button, and the lights and wipers went on upon the turning on of their
proper switches. Hallelujah! I had done it. I had tricked Chevy into believing
I was a legitimate member of the athlete-greasers priesthood and had had my
imposturous ministrations accepted and rewarded the same as if I had been one
of the elect and had truly known what I was doing.
Inflamed with hubris, I have subsequently challenged the
gods in further matters, many attended by minor nemeses. There was the matter
of setting the valve clearances, wherein I learned that to turn the engine over
slowly one pushes the car in third gear rather than frying to get a wrench in
anywhere to turn it over by hand. There was the changing of the oil and oil
filter, wherein I learned that subsequent oil leakage is due to failure to
tighten the casing down hard enough on the gasket. There was the replacing of
the starter motor with a rebuilt, wherein I learned that I should not chicken
out and have others be paid to do jobs that turn out to be easy. Then there was
the re-gasketing of the fuel level sending unit, wherein I learned the use of
gasket-in-a-tube, after learning that the source of gas fumes filling ones
trunk (where the battery is) is most likely a by-product of ones own handiwork
if one has been tampering with the tank. There was the matter of freeing the
carburetor float chamber needles and cleaning out the gunk from the chambers,
wherein I learned that stuck valve needles can be one cause of gasoline pouring
out over one’s engine. In that matter I also learned that one should not
hesitate to make one’s own gaskets from a gasket kit rather than trying to buy
them ready-made, since there are as many different shaped carburetor types used
in such cars as there are different float chamber needles, and the chances of
getting the wrong ones vastly outweigh the odds of bringing home the correct
ones, even when you think you’ve got all the part numbers down. And then there
was the matter of replacing the radiator and fuel line hoses, wherein I learned
that fatigued fuel hoses can be another cause of gasoline pouring out over
one’s hot engine. Finally, there were a couple of less essential tasks, having
to do with my developing notions of what the car should look like and how it
should sound.
Hallelujah! I had done it. I had tricked Chevy into believing
I was a legitimate member of the athlete-greasers priesthood.
One crisp winter day while driving (in my Toyota station
wagon) up on a small road in the coastal range to cut a Christmas free, I came
upon an apparition around a turn near the summit — stuck awkwardly crosswise in
this back road, as unexpected as an Arabian race horse with a foot caught in
some farmer’s cattle guard, was a long, low beautiful, white vintage Jaguar
convertible with two elegantly dressed young women in its cockpit. I waited, of
necessity, fascinated, drinking in the delightful scene like a seven-year-old
consuming an ice cream soda, while the ladies completed
the backing and filling required to reverse their direction. The next moment
the car was gone, as suddenly as I had come
upon it, leaving in its wake two questions, regret, and an impression. Who were
the ladies? What was their relationship to the car? Wouldn’t it have been a
finer, more fitting encounter if I had had my Healey under by butt instead of
on top of jack stands? That car had certainly looked noble! And as I reviewed
the car’s image in my mind’s eye I realized that a feature I had perceived as
one of the ultimate manifestations of the car’s nobility was perhaps obtainable
for my Austin-Healey: the glinting coverings over its semi-detached head lamps
— some sort of polished silver battle grid of diamond shaped mesh, vaguely
evocative of chain mail in the days of knights on crusade. “Stone shields,”
Later learned, was the Britishese description of the item and, yes, I could and
did get some for the Healey. While not as noble seeming to me on the engendered
Healey lamps as they had looked on semi-detached ones, they combined
nicely with the extra set of halogen road lights to establish an esthetic balance
with the chrome accessories on the rear of the car (license plate frame and
luggage rack).
Equally inessential to the running of the car, but as
arresting in its way as the car’s physical appearance, was the matter of its
sound. Austin-Healeys are notoriously beloved for their throaty rumble. The
voice of my Healey had progressed, during my brief period of ownership, from a
hoarse rasp to a continual shout, by discreet jumps in volume which I
accurately guessed corresponded to successive losses of wall matter in the
exhaust system. The exhaust system, I learned, consists of three parts: a set
of down pipes, a muffler, and a set of tail pipes. While the hole, big enough
to admit a baby’s fist (should one be crawling, God forbid, under the car
toward the front on the left side), was located in the down pipes, I decided to
replace all three parts together. I did so at the advice of a friend who had
attempted to replace his car’s exhaust system piecemeal only to find himself
suicidal frustrated by the parts’ adherence to one another.
Though disinclined towards suicide through a naturally
cheerful disposition, the frustrations of jimmying a new “stock” Healey exhaust
system into place under my particular car (which the previous owner, in a fit
of candor, acknowledged) had been in at least three significant accidents) did
drive me a bit nuts. Under the stress of being squeezed in, upside down,
working over my head with dirt falling in my face, struggling with bolts and
flanges and nuts of wrong sizes in wrong places, I found my mind cracking in
the direction of Eros rather than Thanatos: a state of perverse, masochistic
arousal. “Americans are always accused of being in love with the automobile,”
my delirious musings began. “Suppose someone took that love one step further?
No longer platonic. Went beyond giving the shiny beauty an occasional pat or
kiss on the fender. Went, in a word, ‘all the way’? Is that so totally out of
the question? Why shouldn’t automobiles have the necessary capacity?” My mind
blithered on, auto-erotic in the true sense of the word. “They have the other
systems and properties pertinent to living beings: ingestion (fuel tank),
digestion (fuel system, cylinders), respiration (carburetors), excretion
(exhaust system), locomotion (drive shaft,
wheels), even sensation (fuel level and water temperature sending units and
gauges, etc.) — why not reproduction? If they had had reproductive systems, “I
reasoned, recklessly prying and tugging, spitting out dirt and beginning to
laugh out loud in a demented chuckle, “the Austin-Healey species might not have
become extinct in 1968 .... And if there could
be some sort of consummated union between a Homo sapiens and an Austin-Healey,”
I wondered, “what would the offspring be like? Intelligent automobiles? Human
beings with overdrive? At the very least, they’d be fast and cute…“ Even after completing
the installation, it took the fear from smelling burning point while on the
test drive and the subsequent reassurance of realizing the smell “went with the
territory” when one broke in a new exhaust system to finally purge my mind of
its miscellaneous meandering.
My most recent task has been to strip off and polish up
all the chrome (save for the beading on the fenders, some bolts of which I
found inaccessible despite assurances to the contrary from the Austin-Healey
Club’s otherwise extremely helpful Parts Manager, Dave Leeling), while having
the car repainted a fresher tone of
It’s original bright red. But the job just prior to this
is the job with whose mention I wish to conclude this saga. It is the one of
which I am the proudest, and which may be of the most interest to any
athlete-mechanics out there reading this, bored to tears or laughter by my
presumptuous enumeration of elemental mechanical acts.
This job, the most beautiful act of “restoration” of my
vehicle to date, was largely done by John Lush, a young neighbor who had just
won a prize in industrial art at his high school. This young man and I replaced
the rather mundane original vinyl-covered aluminum dash with a board truly
worthy of the Marque: a chunk of solid burl walnut, purchased in Oregon and
fashioned by John into a polished sheet with the contours of the original dash,
a half inch thick in the oval around the steering column and stock dials, routed
down to a quarter inch thickness over the rest of its length. Other drivers,
whiling away their sentences at stoplights, may tune in their radios or fondle
their loved ones. For my part, whenever I am detained while behind the wheel of
my Healey, I shall always have an escape available in front of me. Absent radio
or companion, I can experience rhythm and
beauty by simply resting my eyes on the infinitely rich and varied swirling of
the polished walnut (see photos).
Someday soon I will be content with the appearance of the
car and I will have a breathing spell between crisis interventions demanded by
malfunctioning. And do you know what I am going to do then? I am going to learn
how to do what those jocks on the block were probably really doing under the
hoods of their cars when I was a kid. I am going to learn how to give the car a
tune-up.
Perrin French is a Palo Alto
psychiatrist with a part-time private practice limited to adult owners of
Austin-Healeys. He was the first to describe an acute form of claustrophobia
suffered only by Healey owners and to point out the connection between this
condition and the inaccessibility of the Healey parts. He has pioneered the
movement to include automobiles in family therapy sessions, being dedicated to
the premise that any truly comprehensive look
at “the whole patient” should include an assessment of his or her automobile if
that patient is an American.]
Austin-Healey Magazine January 1981
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