G'day
To be honest the Healey chassis is quite crude and mostly held together by gas
spot welds. The metal gauge is quite thin, but what makes it strong was its
top hat construction. In otherwords an inverted U with a flat plate welded
along the bottom. It makes the Austin-Healey chassis almost Rolls-Royce
quality in comparison.
There are no subframes in a Healey chassis, just two alloy uprights and steel
outriggers along the outside to which the metal and timber are connected.
There are also cross braces in the middle and tubular cross sections at the
front.
The connection of the bodywork is even worse with nails driven through the
metalwork into the timber frame. The timber is held together with straight
slot coarse thread coach screws, not unlike what I can buy at my local
hardware store. Except they were never plated when new and rust dismally.
However remember that this was in those post WW2 days when cars were just not
available and DMH could command quite a high price for his cars. A rolling
chassis alone was 850 Pounds while a complete Elliott saloon was 2,610 Pounds.
Of course the 66 2/3 % sales tax on cars above 1,000 Pounds didn't help. The
average weekly wage in the UK during 1948 was 3.9 Pounds or just over 200
Pounds per year.
What made the Healey better than other cars was the way it handled. It did and
still handle like a modern car, no doubt due to its electron alloy drop arm
front suspension. This would have been extremely expensive to build.
Hoo Roo
Patrick Quinn
Sydney, Australia
-----Original Message-----
From: healeys-bounces@autox.team.net [mailto:healeys-bounces@autox.team.net]
On Behalf Of Jackson Krall
Sent: Thursday, 28 May 2009 1:41 PM
To: healeys@autox.team.net
Subject: Re: [Healeys] Healeys
And that would answer a question that I had after looking at the Healey
chassis under restoration on the Classic Restorations site. The chassis is
constructed using spotwelds while I recall reading that the Healeys didn't
get
an electric welder until the 1960's, which I took to mean that they were only
using gas up to that time.
Best
JK
--- On Wed, 5/27/09, Peter Svilans <peter.svilans@rogers.com> wrote:
>
> << Westland did not make the chassis >>
>
> Geoffrey Healey, in The Healey Story p.35 outlines
> how five serious faults
> were apparent in the early production chassis. The
> rectification
> modifications were to have been made but Roger Menadue
> found that this had not
> been done, apparently put off till the next production
> series of chassis:
> " DMH was very annoyed and sent Len (Hodges) down to
> Westland Aero Parts, WHO
> MADE THE CHASSIS
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