My wife is now a Spridgeteer!

[JodyFKerr]

So SWMBO has been very envious of my daughter's MGB restoration project. To the point that she's been secretly scanning Craigslist.

This morning we stumbled across a '69 Austin Healey Sprite. And it turns out it lived on the opposite side of the city, where we had to go anyways.

A little discussing and haggling later and she has a car. We pick it up next saturday.

This will be her project. She's going to do the work (with a little assistance of course). Next step I need to get her online here to learn more about her car.

Jody

 

[mrsprite]

Nice! Congrats.....it looks like it's pretty solid (at least from the pics). I have a decent set of AH hubcaps.....LMK if you need them.

 

[JodyFKerr]

Thanks. Hubcaps are in the boot. There is some rot, but it's oddly localized to one spot. Passenger side right after the rear wheel. So, there will eventually be a little cutting and welding, but not much.

 

[Guest]

Two Questions:

1. Did you pay for it in full?

2. Do you have the title?

 

[JPSmit]

Well done! And impressed with the family doing this stuff together - doesn't always happen.

 

[69sprite]

Is she planning on keeping the color 'Pale Primrose'?

That was the original color of mine before intermediate owners decided to paint it (badly) two different shade of some sort of 'Italian' red.

My rendition was to try and remove the red... which was tough....and then ended up in the 1969 version of 'British Racing Green'.

BTW... you will find out that 1969 is a 1-off year for a lot of things, so be prepped to pay more for some items.... like the interior panel set. If you look at Moss... that one along costs over $100 more than sets for other years, including the years before and after 1969.

I hope your interior is decent... I am having to look around to either find a good used panel set, make my own, or see what the consequences are of trying to change to another year's panel set.

Good luck and nice car!

Larry

 

[Bayless]

Fantastic. Mine was originally primrose and will be again when I finally finish it.

 

[drooartz]

Excellent! Doesn't look too bad from the pictures. You'll have fun with this one.

 

[aeronca65t]

Nice! I love they idea of saving old Spridgets (I just did one).

Some day, these cars will be as rare as hen's teeth and we'll all be rich!

 

[JodyFKerr]

Two Questions:

1. Did you pay for it in full?

2. Do you have the title?

No and No. I normally prefer to do just a handshake agreement. It's the way my dad and grandfather did business. However, the owner wasn't sure that I'd come back, so I put in a deposit and we wrote up a sales agreement.

I'm not worried so much about the car not being there next weekend. He a proper car guy too. We spent more time swapping stories and showing each other pictures of other projects than we did going over the car. He and his wife appear to be good folks.

 

[JodyFKerr]

Here's the funny thing on the paint. Yes, it's currently Primrose yellow. When the PO started sanding it down in a couple spots he found that it was originally a green car (British Racing Green). I've seen many originally yellow cars painted other colors over the years. I've never seen a BRG car painted yellow.

Now, SWMBO wants to paint it plum crazy purple. We'll see what happens.

The interior in this car is amazingly intact. Worst thing I saw was a crack in the dash. This, for an old AZ car, is absolutely amazing. It tells me it's always been garaged. We should be able to use the carpet, dash, seats and panels as is.

The goal with the car, once we get it home, is to see if we can get it to a running state. As long as the engine is good (we didn't try cranking the engine). Then we can try driving it around for a while. SWMBO needs a serious refresher course on driving a manual transmission. So if she's going to burn the clutch or what have you I'd rather she does it before we do any serious restoration work.

 

[68_sprite]

Congrats to your wife on a nice find. Hey, if she wants plum crazy, I say go for it. Have her look at House of Kolors... it is the OPI of car paints. I am sure she will understand.

<span style="text-decoration: underline">https://www.houseofkolor.com/shimrin2/group/S2-10_PAVO_PURPLE_FX_KARRIER_BASE.html</span>

 

[JodyFKerr]

So, we ended up digging in deeper on the car and realized that reassembly to a working state just wasn't worth the time. So, we decided to start the "frame-off" restoration on it. As with my daughter, I'm making the wife do videos:

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Since the intro piece we've put the basics of the car back together, or at least back in the right places. Then, once "assembled" we started the dis assembly.

First was the lighting. A lot of wierd bodging and damage here. The headlamp buckets themselves were toast. Luckily i had NOS in my parts stash. The rest of the lights were ok, but the front signal light bodies are in really rough shape. One was actually pop-riveted to the body. Anyone have these handy that they'd part with (message me prices and such). It's the Lucas L686 base.

Today she was doing stuff with the kids, so I went ahead and removed the exhaust (to be recycled) and pulled the fuel system. The tank looks good, the line back to front looks good. The original fuel pump is no more, there was a facet replacement down there along with some seriously dodgy wiring and even electrical tape wrapped around the fuel pipe to seal it!

Finished up the day sandblasting the headlamp buckets, headlamp seat and license plate light plinth and putting a coat of primer on them.

 

[JOeyKnapp]

Sounding good so far! What are you using for your sandblasting? (machine and media)

 

[JodyFKerr]

Sounding good so far! What are you using for your sandblasting? (machine and media)

I finally upgraded my kit this year. I have a 60 gallon 6.5 horse compressor that puts out 15.8 CFM at 90psi. Hooked off of that I have a pair of media cabinets. My old table top unit I've converted to baking soda. So all the aluminum, etc. goes in there. The new standing cabinet runs aluminum oxide or other hard medias for steel and similar. I used to use pressure pots, but I much prefer high volume siphon feed sanding. I feel that it gives me much more efficient use.

Jody

 

[Spriteman65]

Very cool, wish i could get my wife interested in the hobby.