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An Austin Healey in China

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dirk

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On the 15th of July in Amsterdam started the endurance rally Amsterdam - Beijing for classic cars. The route is through Europe, Turkmenistan, Kazachstan and China. One of the participants is Harm Altena with an Austin Healey Mk III (car number 25). He is my cousin and on August 1 he arrived in Yining (China). As far as we know this is the first time an Austin Healy is in China.
The car was prepared by his brother Jan (Altena Classic Service) and until now they haven't had much problems. They had special attention for the expected heating problems as a result of the high outside temperatures. Special isolation of fuellines and extra cooling holes in hood are only a few modifications.

The Healey team has an own website on which the write a daily report in Dutch every day.
There are also photo's and a few short movies on the site ( https://www.kender-thijssen.nl/abr2006 )

The rally can be followed in Dutch and English on https://www.abr2006.nl/
Many participants have a track and trace unit build in the car and you can follow them on Google Earth (see the site).

Every day there is a half hour report on Dutch television (RTL7).

Although the finish is already on friday, I thought other Healey drivers would like to know that there finally is an Austin Healey in China after so many years.

Dirk
 
Very cool. Thanks for letting us know. Put in a link with more photos (my Dutch is a little rusty).
 
Dirk

Thanks for posting - thats quite an adventure...and to think there are some people out there who don't like to take their Healey for a 20 mile run on a sunday afternoon in case it breaks down or it might rain..lol /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/laugh.gif /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/laugh.gif
 
As Harm is the owner of an ICT company, he has a laptop en satellite communication in the car and he uses this to mail his reports. See the pictures on pagina 3.
The photo and videoclip page (until now page 1 to 5) of the team is

https://www.kender-thijssen.nl/asp/content/home.asp?menu_id=793

A few photo's of the preparation are on this page
https://www.kender-thijssen.nl/asp/content/home.asp?menu_id=724

The car has a large 80 liter fuel tank and 2 extra 20 liter fuel tanks in the back.

Tonight they are in Datong and have only 500 km. to go. Tomorrow the end of the rally is in Beijing. At the moment Harm drives together with his son, but the first five days of the rally he drove with his daughter.

I spoke to Jan at the phone last night and all is well with the Healey. Only small problems. The most serious problems were the dynamo that didn't work for four days (a separate accumulator in the car helped out) and one of the rubber bufferstops of the engine suspension was split. Minor problems were solved with the help of chinese mechanics at low cost. E.g. overnight revision of the dynamo $ 20 (although it did'nt work after one day), car cleaning $ 1.


Dirk
 
This is awesome, so reminiscent of earlier days and just what those works cars were made for!
 
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