It happened. Our big Healey was running, see the March, 2009 Enthusiast, and had been driven to several MAHC events and to a few car shows around the state. Things were looking good and we were starting to think about fixing the seats using real foam padding and leather covers, not the Salvation Army boat cushions on plywood that are currently in use. When I picked the car up from storage this spring and started to get it ready for the summer season I soon noticed there was coolant in the oil. The block had a crack. Julie and I were the proud owners of a busted car.
The block with the crack is not the original engine for the car. That original motor is still resting in our daughter’s garage. It is an early 2.6 liter 6 cylinder with the integral intake manifold. It has been in storage for the past 5 years with a load of penetrating oil in the cylinders, and it is still stuck. Since I didn’t have the fortitude to start a rebuild on the venerable Longbridge 6, I had to think of an alternate plan to get our car back on the road.
A little research brought me to the 250 cubic inch 6 cylinder engine that Ford used in the 70s for the Pinto, Mustang, Maverick and other models in the Ford/Mercury line. The engine is physically a little smaller, weighs a little less and has a greater displacement than the Healey. So off I went to Joe’s Auto Sales in Vermillion, Minnesota to have a look around. Joe specializes in Ford products and is very knowledgeable about what fits where. He had an engine from a 1975 Maverick out behind the shop that turned freely. I left Joe’s yard that day with the engine and carburetor from the Maverick and a flywheel, starter, bell housing, water pump pulley and clutch linkage from various other Ford/Mercury products.
Once I pulled the pan and put assembly lubricant on all the crankshaft bearing surfaces and on the camshaft lobes, I started to worry about how to put the Ford motor in the Healey. I did not want to cut into the Healey chassis or intrude in any way into the foot well spaces. The installation was completed with only a few new screw holes in the chassis; one to hold the bracket for the clutch slave cylinder hydraulic line on the driver‘s side of the frame rail and four more to hold the ignition module on the fender strut.
I took the bell housing off the Healey transmission and took it and the Ford bell housing to Outlaw Machine in Red Wing. I needed a spacer that was 2.25 inches thick, would fit the Ford bell housing on one side and look like the Austin Healey bell housing on the other side. This one-off took a little time. When I got it home and bolted it up, the splines on the Healey transmission would only barely engage the clutch disk. That wasn’t good. It turns out that the Healey has a longer distance between the flywheel pilot bearing and the clutch plate than a Ford does. The Healey has a long pilot bearing surface on the end of the transmission mainshaft to accommodate this distance. I had taken my measurements using the end of the shaft as a reference so everything was off by ¾ inch.
The fix turned out to be fairly easy. I cut 0.75 inch from the pilot end of the Healey mainshaft, mea culpa, it is my transmission, and went back to Outlaw Machine to get 0.75 inch milled off the Ford side of the spacer plate. The job setup was still in the computer so that operation went pretty fast. Now I have a spacer plate that is 1.50 inch thick and fits neatly between the Ford bell housing and the Healey transmission. The only other things needed were to cut about an inch off the clutch arm to keep it away from the driver side foot well and to countersink a Ford bell housing bolt that interfered with the transmission body on the lower left side. The engine and transmission bolted together like they were meant for each other.
The clutch is a Ford 10 inch pressure plate squeezing a Healey 10 inch disk. The throwout bearing is a Ford unit sliding on the input sleeve from a Mustang transmission. Healey motor mounts are used with adapter plates for the Ford block. The steel adapter plates are 0.25 inch thick and have bolt holes drilled in the appropriate places for the block and the motor mounts. The clutch slave cylinder is positioned on the left side of the engine and bolts to a plate that is also bolted to the block. The slave is upside down with the inlet and bleed ports interchanged. The Lucas generator is located near its original spot on a mount adapted from a Ford AC mounting fixture. The Ford ignition system uses the Maverick distributor, an electronic control unit from a Bronco and a coil from my old F-250. The start button activates a SPDT relay that bypasses the ballast resistor during starting. A 14 inch Flex-a-Lite belt driven fan with a 1 inch spacer is used for cooling a Griffin aluminum radiator. The Motorcraft 1 barrel carburetor was rebuilt using a kit from CarQuest and the automatic choke was removed in favor of the Healey cable. A custom 2 inch exhaust is routed under the oil pan from the right side of the engine and over the left frame rail to the left side of the car. The engine has no provision for a cable drive tachometer so the tachometer’s mechanical guts were removed and replaced with an Auto Meter 2891 Mini Tach. Incidentally, the staff at the CarQuest store in Red Wing are very good about having or getting the parts I have needed for this project.
It drives great. The torque is much greater than stock. Starts in 2nd are easy and it is even possible to start in 3rd and use 3rd and overdrive around town. The engine is lighter, consequently the front of the car feels much lighter in the steering. I have made several 10 mile trips, remembering what Ma said back in the 60s, “ don’t drive that thing any further than what you want to walk back”, and the cooling system, oil pressure, and the engine in general have performed well.
There have been some teething problems. When the engine was first started, it only ran on 4 cylinders. Two intake valves were stuck open and the pushrods had dropped out of their spots. Lots of penetrating oil and elbow grease got the valves moving and doing their jobs. Timing the engine was fun with no timing marks to be found, so I went back to the days of finding TDC using a screwdriver in the #1 hole then using the timing specs found on the valve cover sticker. It runs cool and doesn’t ping. The clutch is still very stiff, there will either need to be some adjustment of the hydraulics, some strengthening of the actuating leg or both.
A few items remain at this time. The original differential has a 4.11 ratio and I hope to find a modern unit with a ratio around 3.0 - 3.5 that can be adapted to the Healey chassis. The differential change will also necessitate a change in the speedometer.
We now have our very own “Nasty Boy” Healey 4100-6. At least as nasty as we can be with 6 cylinders of Maverick power fed by a 1 barrel carburetor. That is what happened in Red Wing this summer. The seats are still boat pads over plywood.
