Feature article from the May 2012 Hemmings Sports & Exotic Car. Photography by Terry Shea
Replica, clone, tribute, doppelgänger–call it what you will, but if you are going to build such a car, particularly one modeled after a very successful factory rally program, it's best for everyone if you run it hard. Real hard.
Fortunately, that's exactly how North Carolina's Hans Huwyler drives his 1959 Austin-Healey works rally replica. Loud, raucous and either too hot or too cold, depending on the season, the Big Healey has seen around 10,000 miles of TSD competition and a whole bunch of racing laps around the track since its transformation by a previous owner.
Paul Watkin, a native of Vancouver Island, British Columbia, bought the car in 1989. When his job transferred him to Alberta, he took the car with him to finish the restoration. A little rough, but complete, the 1959 Austin-Healey offered up its guts to become what Paul describes as "probably one of the first cars in Canada, maybe North America, done as a works rally replica. I was always a rally fan, a rally freak, if you will. The old BMC rally cars were something that I always wanted to do."
The basis for Paul's retro rally dreams was the series of rally specials that came from the British Motor Corporation works team at Abingdon, with their distinctive white or black hardtops bolted to Colorado Red bodies. The rally works project, led by Marcus Chambers, BMC's sporting director, was the first to push the limits of the homologation rules then in place, to give every advantage to a car that had no business being as competitive as they made it. Somewhat crude mechanically with its pushrod engine, heavy compared to some of the competition and very low-slung, the Big Healey should have done everything but mark BMC as the premier works rally organization in the 1960s, when the likes of Pat Moss, the Morley brothers, Rauno Aaltonen and Paddy Hopkirk racked up a handful of significant outright wins and dozens of class wins in major international events once the car was fully sorted.
From the time the first six-cylinder Austin-Healeys were delivered in 1957, until 1965, when it was clear that the Mini had become the focus of BMC's rallying efforts, Chamber, and later Stuart Turner, led an all-out effort to constantly improve the car's performance. Some of those efforts resulted from improved components on the road car, while sometimes racing ingenuity cycled back to the road version. It was the breeding improving the racing even as racing improved the breed.
The first 2.6-liter six-cylinder models suffered from poor breathing, with the four-port intake manifold integrated into the iron head, making just 102hp, not much more than the torquey four-cylinder powerplant it replaced. Starting in October 1957, BMC phased in a proper six-port head that significantly improved breathing. With larger valves and flat-top pistons that increased compression from 8.25 to 8.7:1, peak output was up to 117hp and 149-lbs.ft. of torque. Mid-year 1959, the 3000 Mk I debuted with a larger 2,912cc engine with 9.0 compression, increasing power to 124hp and torque to 167-lbs.ft. Like so many other elements of the Austin-Healey sports car, engine development continued right up to the final iteration, with the ultimate 3000 Mk III, AKA the BJ8, good for an honest 150hp and 173-lbs.ft.
When Paul purchased the car, it was already equipped with the larger engine and it was made to run fairly readily despite the rough overall shape of the car. The first 3000 Mk Is used a pair of SU HD6 carburetors. The 3000 Mk II was equipped with a trio of SU HS4s, which were replaced mid-cycle with a pair of HS6s; later Mk IIIs had a pair of HD8s. Paul's hybrid solution was to use a ported three-carb intake with the HD6s along with the hotter 3/4 camshaft from the BJ8, a part that was first installed on the rally machines several years before making its way to the street cars. With a virtually open exhaust and timed to take advantage of the much freer breathing, Paul estimates the car made "over 150hp" when he was done with it.
Another significant change that BMC and Healey implemented to the 3000 was the inclusion of front disc brakes from Girling. They make a significant upgrade for cars originally built with drum brakes, for road racers and rallyists alike. The works rally cars had used four-wheel disc brakes for some time.
But more than just the mechanical bits, Paul modified the body to match. Starting with a red car with a white hardtop, he was well on his way. He removed the front bumper and fabricated large, slatted vents in the front fenders as the later–and more successful–works rally specials had in order to shed heat from the engine and headers. When Paul installed the six-tube header, he had a bit of a disadvantage to the right-hand-drive works machines in that the steering column had to share the left side of the engine bay with the header and that three-carb intake. Packaging was very tight and required slightly shifting the engine mounts to the right.
Later works rally cars rolled with a significant hump in the trunk to accommodate an additional spare, a sort of "Continental Kit" for the hillclimb set. With no works seconds to speak of, Paul fabricated a decklid from steel, heavier than the aluminum used by BMC, but every bit the proper look for the car. Just as the factory added a vent from an Austin Mini van to the roof, so did Paul, a necessity in the cramped, not-so-well ventilated Healey cabin.
With the intention to do long-distance rallies as well as track work, Paul installed an engine-oil cooler, high-output alternator, high-performance ignition and an external battery cutoff switch. Although the works cars relied only on the optional hardtop for rollover protection, Paul made the smart choice and installed a four-point roll bar in the Healey. Keeping the car pointed in the right direction are a pair of anti-roll bars, 3/4-inch front and 1/2-inch rear, mounted with urethane bushings.
Paul tried to keep the modifications and improvements to mostly period-correct actions in the guise of asking himself what the factory would have done. "BMC, when they were rallying, they took things off the shelf to make their cars," he says. "For instance, the aluminum valve cover came off an Austin Princess. The Princess Six had the aluminum valve cover. The tin one just doesn't hold up. You want to be able to take it off and put it back on so you can adjust your valves and do what you need to do and never worry about the thing crushing when you are tightening it down. It all had to be done with parts found on the shelf," for reasons of homologation rules as well as low budgets.
The works replica was not intended to be 100 percent authentic, but to instead largely follow the spirit of the BMC rally program. When it came time to upgrade the brakes, Paul used slightly newer calipers from an Austin Marina to give the car more initial bite when braking. Marina manufacture did not start until 1971, but using British Leyland/BMC parts certainly seems in the spirit of the car.
When Paul completed the car, its first major event was the 1994 Shell 4000, a revival of the trans-Canadian rally that originated in the 1960s. While not a continent-crossing endeavor, the TSD competition was still a test for man and machine that included paved, gravel and dirt sections. He ran it again in 1995 and then followed with vintage racing at tracks and airports circuits in Alberta. When other projects caught his fancy, including a Ford small-block powered Healey, he sold the car to a U.S. executive in the forest industry who eventually returned to Georgia, where our story picks up again. The current owner, Hans Huwyler, purchased the car in 2003.
A native of Switzerland, Hans bought his first 3000 Mk I second-hand there in 1965 as a teenager, fresh off witnessing the BMC team in action at the International Alpine Rally. "I saw Healeys at the rallies in Europe and that's where I got the bug," Hans says. "I had to beg my dad to make the two-and-a-half hour drive from where I grew up to where the rally came over from Austria into Switzerland. We watched the rally go by and I thought that was the wildest thing. The roaring works Healeys left an unforgettable impression, which I still hold today."
Hans has owned several Healeys in the ensuing years, so he knows the cars well. He rallied a 1964 3000 Mk II in the Historic Rally des Alpes for three years in the early 2000s. When that car found a new home with a Swiss collector, Hans went on the lookout for another Big Healey.
While the car was still in decent shape from Paul's restoration and transformation, it needed some work, and, again in the spirit of the works' rally effort, Hans had a few improvements up his sleeve. The interior got the serious rally car treatment when he relocated the fuse box inside the cabin. He fabricated a center-console panel with an ammeter and a fuel pressure gauge along with toggle switches for the windshield washers and spotlamp. Twin Heuer rally clocks, a Halda Twinmaster and a flexible map reading light installed by Paul remained, along with an auxiliary 12-volt plug. Hans modified the hood with rear-facing vents, as was done on earlier works rally cars for releasing heat from the engine bay. Hans also installed a Denis Welch Motorsport rear disc brake conversion that uses the calipers from a Jaguar XJ6 or XJS. Hans also purchased 72-spoke Dunlop wire wheels with 15 x 185 Vredestein tires.
Hans immediately set out running in long-distance rallies, including the Carolina Trophy, a competitive, nearly week-long TSD rally he ran from 2005 through 2008 with his co-driver, Ross Schlabach. Picking up the outright win in 2007 and 2008, after coming very close the first two years, convinced Hans he had the right car. "The car offers not what one would describe as a smooth ride, but rather an adventure, especially when doing five-day rallies requiring six- to seven-hour daily stints on narrow and rough mountain roads in any kind of weather." But when the side-shift transmission failed in 2006, leaving them without third gear, they were in a jam. "I had a BJ7 transmission from another Healey I had owned and I figured it's got to fit in–it has the same input shaft, everything is the same. So, I said, 'Let's go home and see if this thing fits.' We took the transmission out and put that center-shift in it and it fit, but the transmission tunnel didn't fit so we didn't cover it. It had a few places where you could see the road. It's actually a much stronger transmission." That transmission swap, an update BMC installed on all cars built from November 1961 on, was an all-night affair that got them back in the rally the next morning.
Hans's Austin-Healey might not be a true clone of the works rally car, but it's truly an authentic replica in the spirit of the works rally team, a mix of off-the-shelf parts and custom fabrication all effected with a keen eye toward the original. When this Healey roars around the back roads of the western Carolinas, as Hans is wont to do awaiting his next rally adventure, there is no question that spirit runs strong.
SPECIFICATIONS
ENGINE
Type — OHV straight-six, cast-iron block and head
Displacement — 2,912cc (178-cu.in.)
Bore x stroke — 83.4mm x 89mm
Compression ratio — 9.0:1
Horsepower — 150 (estimated)
Torque — 175-lbs.ft. (estimated)
Main bearings — Four
Fuel system — Three SU HD6 carburetors
TRANSMISSION
Type — Four-speed manual
STEERING
Type — Worm and nut
BRAKES
Type — Unassisted, hydraulic, four-wheel discs
Front — 11.25 inches
Rear — 10.4 inches
WEIGHTS AND MEASURES
Wheelbase — 92 inches
Overall length — 157.5 inches
Overall width — 60.5 inches
Curb weight — 2,500 pounds (estimated)
from Hemmings Daily – News for the collector car enthusiast http://ift.tt/29gJk61
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