Hi all,
I'd like to ask for your help to compose an article for Austin-Healey
Magazine on the subject of improving the safety and reliability of Sprites.
Here's what the headline and lead will look like:
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Improving Safety and Reliability
Owners’ recommendations for improving the safety and reliability of Sprites
We recently polled a group of Sprite owners for their suggestions on what an
average owner could do, with limited time, tools and expertise, to improve
the safety and reliability of Sprites. We received many good suggestions
based on actual experience, and we’re happy to share them with you here. As
always, we hope you’ll find some food for thought and benefit from others’
experience – that’s why we have a club!
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This parallels a recent similar effort with big Healeys. We received many,
many good suggestions and ideas and that article will be published later
this year. I'd like to do the same for Sprites. To give you an idea of the
format for input, here are a few typical entries in the big Healey version:
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Fred Hunter (fhunter@kcnet.com) of Parkville, Missouri responded:
“Bearing in mind that these items should be ‘doable’ in a weekend, and
should be safety/reliability related:
1. Check spokes for any loose ones and tighten if necessary.
2. Install a hidden ‘ignition ground’ switch for theft prevention.
3. Install a fire extinguisher in a USEABLE location.
4. Jack car up (use jack stands, too) and eyeball every inch of the fuel
line from the tank to the carbs, looking for evidence of leakage. Don’t
forget to examine the fuel gauge sender unit and gas tank filler neck on
some models for leaks, too. And check condition of gas filler cap gasket.
This next one is obvious, but how many Healeys are running around without
this:
5. Buy a quality set of jumper cables, find a nice cloth bag to keep them
in, and LEAVE THEM IN THE BOOT – PERMANENTLY -- one set of jumper cables per
household simply doesn’t do the job. EACH VEHICLE you own should have it’s
own set (unless you know exactly which vehicle is going to have a battery
problem before it happens!).
6. Buy a nice little used scissors jack & handle (such as come with a
Honda, Toyota, Nissan, etc.) from a Japanese car wrecking yard, find a cloth
pouch for it, and keep it in the boot in place of the original jack.
7. Make yourself up a set of four little hardwood wheel chocks, and put
them in the boot in, you guessed it, ANOTHER little cloth bag.
And how many of us actually own a set of real highway flares and keep them
in the boot always?”
John Soderling (Jsoderling@aol.com) of Pleasanton, California responded:
“This may not be the most important safety item, but I’d place it in the top
five: Install a third brake light. With the small Healey tail/brake lights,
low vehicle profile, and faster and heavier traffic than 30 to 40 years ago,
getting rear-ended is highly probable. With no head restraints the
likelihood of serious neck injury is high.”
Olin Kane (kanes@flash.net) of Albuquerque, New Mexico responded:
“One of the smartest and cheapest things you can do to improve the
reliability of the Healey is to transistorize the SU fuel pump. Its costs
about $5 and you get to keep the ticking sound (but now it just keeps on
ticking).”
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So, please let me hear from you! I'll compile the responses and give each
contributor a chance to review the whole article before we go to press.
Thanks in advance!
Cheers,
Reid Trummel
AN5L44376 "Lucky"
http://www.healey.org
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