>The reason I'm mentioning this is - I haven't a clue about frogeyes. I have
>a GT6, so I know roughly where to find the engine (In the front right ?)
No, in the front centre. :-)
>Anyway this is what we know about the car.
>1959 ex-florida re-import (I'm in the UK), Easy restoration, all steel,
> 1275 engine and g/box, front discs. hood is complete. cost 2200 sterling.
This is either good or bad, depending on what you want it for.
If you're looking for a car to drive, the front discs and 1275
make a vast improvement over the original drums and 948, but
of course they're not original. The hood isn't that expensive
but the hood sticks can be hard to find. (If memory serves, they
should be painted a light bluish grey to be correct, but I haven't
had my Frogeye for some years now.)
>Now as to the bodywork ... what areas to check ?
Start with the rear spring mounts. Frogeye rear springs are
quarter-elliptic, mounted to the unibody at the front only, and
in such a way that mud and road salt (not a problem in Florida,
if the car really did spend all of the last three decades there)
can easily get trapped there and rot the shell. Since all the
rear suspension loads go through this mounting spot, it's
critical that it be in good shape.
Next, look under the mats in the interior. Pay special attention
to the area behind the seats -- roughly the front part of the
spring mounting, since the springs mount roughly behind your
left hipbone (assuming the car is still LHD). Look also around
the box-section crossmember in front of the seats; this area
acts as a rear engine support as well as the jacking point for
the car, so it's also critical.
The door pillars will almost certainly be rusted around the
bottom. Look carefully, and use a magnet there to detect
Bondo covering internal corrosion.
>What costs megabucks to replace ?
Nothing, really, unless the car needs major repairs to the
unibody to replace rotted out sheetmetal. Parts are cheap,
but since the Frogeye was the first mass-produced unibody
sports car, virtually every panel except the bonnet and
the doors are structural. (That's why there's no boot lid
on a Frogeye -- the Healeys wanted to ensure adequate stiffness
at the rear. For the Mk II Sprite/Mk I Midget, the team had
more design input from the Abingdon production engineers, who
by that time were well into production on the B, as well as
having been experienced on the ZA and ZB Magnettes, which
were unibody cars, and were able to design a rear that
was adequately stiff with an opening boot lid.)
The single most expensive part on the car is easily the
bonnet, which can cost six or seven hundred pounds (guessing
from today's exchange rate -- they're about $1200 US) to
get new. However, they are available new, as are virtually
all repair pieces for the unibody. Good used engines should
cost less than five hundred pounds; my last rebuilt transmission
for an A-series car cost five hundred dollars, so divide that
by 1.8 or whatever the exchange rate is today.
>Does the Mk1 lend itself to an engine swap with a midget ?
It lends itself to engine, transmission, differential, and
front suspension swap with later Sprites and Midgets
through 1974. (The 1975 and later Midgets used a Spitfire
1500, which might not bother you as you're already infected
with the Triumph bug. :-) If this Sprite has a front anti-
roll bar, then the front suspension was probably lifted from
a later Sprite or Midget with front discs and the drilled
lower A-arms that simplify fitting the anti-roll bar.
If you already have a 1275, though, you probably don't need
an engine swap. The 1275 is the engine of choice for a
street Sprite; if you want to return the car to its original
displacement for show reasons, you'll want a Sprite 948 anyway.
(There were some early Midgets made with the 948, but now I
can't recall whether the identification numbers were different.)
Two other fiddly bits: master cylinder and gearbox. The master
cylinder on Frogeyes and Mk II Sprites/Mk I Midgets shared a
common fluid reservoir and used separate cylinders to drive
the fluid to their respective goals. This is expensive (about
a hundred fifty pounds last I looked!) but can usually be
rebuilt. You can replace the master cylinder box with a
separate brake/clutch cylinder set from a later Spridget, but
I've been told by experts that there's no real performance
or reliability advantage to doing so, and it won't look so
authentic under the bonnet. (BTW, the bonnet should be hinged
at the rear, not at the front like your GT6; it was a common
customization trick to swap the hinges, though, so that the
Sprite could look like an E Type with the bonnet up.)
As for the gearbox, the earlier (Mk I/II) cars had a gerbox
with cone-type synchronizers and a smooth outer casing. There
are at least two ratio sets available; I can't now recall
whether the ratios started wide and got close, or vice versa.
In any case, later cars had a gearbox with reinforcing ribs
along the outside, and used stronger baulk-ring type
synchronizers. They are somewhat stronger internally as well,
and are the gearbox of choice for a 1275 with its added torque.
Sprites used to be the cheapest sports cars available. Over
the past few years, they have been creeping up in value, with
the Frogeye at the top of the heap due to its uniqueness and
scarcity (48,999 produced between 1958 and 1961). The parts
commonality with the 300,000 other Spridgets produced until
1979 makes them economically feasible as a DIY restoration
project, but the appearance and character of the Frogeye
bonnet and the cute D-Type-like (no, really, the Jaguar D
was the inspiration for the Frogeye) rear makes them a
sentimental favorite today.
You'll want to get the following books:
"Sprite/Midget Guide to Purchase & DIY Restoration," Lindsay
Porter, Haynes/Foulis Publishing. Excellent book on where to
look for problems, how to repair things yourself, and what
colours were original. Buy this book before you buy the car.
"Compete Original 948-1098 Austin-Healey Sprite/MG Midget,"
Robert Bentley, Cambridge, Mass. USA. This is a reprint of
the original factory manual with editing comments by the
Bentley folks. It's useful for original specs and the
factory's view of things (illustrations, parts diagrams,
procedures, tools, etc) but in practice the Porter book deals
with ratty old cars that are held together by mud and grime as
much as by bolts and welds.
"More Healeys: Frogeyes, Sprites, and Midgets," by Geoff Healey.
This book was out of print for a while, but it's worth looking for
in motorsports book stores or used book stores. Geoff (Donald's
son) was the head of the Sprite project, and this book tells all
about the development, engineering, and competition history of
the Sprite. You might not enjoy all of it, though, if you're
a dyed-in-the-wool Triumph enthusiast; the Healeys (in spite of
DMH's service at Triumph before the war, designing the Dolomite
and winning some impressive European rallyes in Triumph sports
cars) had some trouble with Triumph engineers when British
Leyland killed the British sports car market starting about 1968,
and Geoff paints an unflattering picture of a few Triumph
managers. (But then, we all know about engineering managers... :-)
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