Re: Fabulous Sprite Photos,er, actually very nice
Thanks for all the encouragement!
A few answers to your posts/e-mails re the Concours d’Elegance, or lack of, points on the car. What started as an auto-shop class, turned (to my delight) into an auto restoration project within two or three weeks hinged upon, I believe, the discovery of a little patch of red paint under the remains of British Racing Green. Everything stopped and we voted to restore the car as best we could to how it left the line in Oct. of 1958. We had already purchased the black seat kit, and reupholstered the (padded) dash, assuming, because it came to us that way, that it was correct. We chased down a good smoothcase and 948 (came with 1098), and it wasn’t until a thorough look at Horler’s book that we realized this was a bigger endeavor than we thought. We simply decided to make a few compromises, as we knew we couldn’t get everything perfect. The seats stayed black, the welded (vs. riveted) rims stayed (we also had wires) the dash just looked too good and they had worked too hard on getting it to look that way, the sliding screen side windows were a month later than the car, we couldn’t find period rubber mats so we went with carpet, etc. There are a few more things, but we did chase down a lot of esoteric parts that were right for our car. The sleuth work has been a great deal of fun for all of us, learning lead work, upholstery, and chasing date codes, water spigot type heater valve handles, and glitter covered knobless door handles has been more exciting than diagnosing wrist pin slap.
They did take apart and put back together a motor & rear end, they took apart but didn’t put back together a transmission, did a rudimentary pass over carburetors, generators & starters, but the fun has been the chase. This is too long, sorry.
Brian by himself