This car, along with the Rover SD1, is our daily driver. It covers some 400 miles per week on average and has been a reliable, fun little car.
It was a bit of a spare-parts car, with a 948cc motor and smoothcase gearbox instead of the small journal 1098 and ribcase box it is supposed to have.
It also has quite comfortable bucket seats that apparently come from some small English Ford; a Sebring fibreglass nose, Bosch alternator/regulator and non-standard interior trim.
Having said that it is far from an original car, it reliable, quick (it has a potent little 948 motor!) and great top-down motoring.
Here is the story of "James":
Well, it had to happen. Finally my dear and long suffering spouse has issued the ultimatum most dreaded by those who collect LBCs --
Not that this was the first time mind you, no, I have studied all the dirtiest, sneakiest means of both keeping every single car and acquiring new ones. (You know the stuff -- its the wrong time to sell - wait until spring; there is a glut on the market now - wait until there aren't as many for sale; it is a bargain! I can sell it for a profit almost straight away!; I need a new 3.9 diff and this car has one on it and if I buy the car, keep the diff and sell off the rest of the bits I will be in front by X dollars rather than behind by Y dollars!; etc etc). But this time it seemed different. I guess the 12" carving knife, the manic, bloodshot eyes, the screaming hair, the twitch on the left side of her face, all this gave me the impression that this time, she just might be serious! At least I could mishear the "some" and grudgingly agree to sell one car (under protest of course (even if the protest was only mumbled -- I didn't want to be another John Bobbit!). It would be much easier if I hated her and could get a divorce, but alas this isn't the case.
Mind you, it was a close thing, but in the end, I knew that it probably was extreme, now that we (he says optimisticly) own 14 LBCs, and no judge would have much sympathy for me :-( The list is 2 running bugeyes, 5 parts spridgets, 5 running spridgets, an MGBGT and a Rover SD1).
So in the end I decide to sell "James" the MkIIA sprite. James was named by our 4 year old son -- he was named after the red engine in "Thomas the Tank Engine" -- there is a book "Colours" thay goes "Thomas is blue, James is red, Henry is green" etc. So the Rover is Thomas, one of the BRG sprites (MkIII) is Henry, and this one is James.
I bought James at a used car auction, funny place for a sprite - most of the bidders were buyers for car yards and there were only a few "general public". I was there to buy the SD1 (which I did) and the sprite turned up by surprise.
It had a new, but little sloppy, Monza Red paint job, a fibreglass sebring front, bucket seats out of some english ford (still mounts on the sprite mounts, still slides back and forth OK), a 948 and smoothcase box. (the original motor was a 10CG-prefix 1100 motor, it should have had a ribcase box). The 948 had been worked somewhat by a local tuning firm, it puts out very good horsepower indeed.
The body was remarkably good, very little rust, some signs of an accident at the front left (hence the glass bonnet no doubt), but it seemed to be a good repair and seemed straight. It was a bit and pieces car, there was no doubt, but it ran, had good oil pressure, no blue smoke on startup etc. So I took a punt and bidded for it. I was hoping for a real steal, but there was another person who was interested (drats) and while I got it for a very good price, it wasn't a give-away.
When I got the car home, I did all the usual stuff, changed all the fluids, filters, checked timing, tappets, changed plugs, air filter (actually I changed to a high-performance filter housing and filter) etc etc. I then took it for a test drive and found it was fine on smooth roads but it bottomed out very easily and was a b*tch to handle on bumpy corners.
OK, I think that either a) there *is* a serious rust problem at the rear spring mounts (this is a notorious place on 1/4 elliptic cars and difficult to see until you pull the springs out. It is also a difficult repair) or b) all the bushes are shot badly or c) the rear shocks are dead dead *dead*.
First things first, I checked the bushes -- all new. Next I pulled off the shocks, something didn't look right, but amazingly it didn't hit me at this point, drained the shocks and replaced the contents with ATF. One shock was low, the other was totally empty! I marked them L/R when I pulled them off, and when I went to re-install them I discovered the big mistake -- the shocks were put on upside down! I didn't even realise this was possible, but it sure explains why the rear end was so bad! So with the shocks back on, full on both sides, the car handles like a dream! (I later discovered that the previous owner had tried repeatedly (and obviously unsuccessfully) to fix the problem, gave up in disgust and sold it cheaply at auction (to me!).
I never bothered checking the spring mounts as the car was working *great* now.
The other thing I was worried about was the mechanical fuel pump -- these pumps are attached to the exhaust side of the block, near the front of the engine. It was not the sprite-style pump, but rather a Morris Minor style pump. The difference being that the Morry pump has inlet at the front and outlet at the rear, whereas the sprite has both inlet and outlet at the front. Since James had a LCB exhaust, the fuel pump outlet was *very* close to the exhaust. In fact it was so close that the DPO had dented the exhaust pipe just to get it to fit!!! Even so, there was only 1/8" between the rubber fuel line and the exhaust pipe. The pump casing was about 1/4" away from the pipe... and the pump was leaking quite noticably!!!! At least I could fix the leak until I decided whether or not to fit an electric pump of some kind.
So first things first, get a fuel pump repair kit, with new seals, washers, valves and diaphram. Clean it all up, install all the new bits and put it back on the motor. Since the good wife was driving the car to work the next day (Geelong, about 1.5 hours freeway drive from where we live), I decided to check that all was well before I let the car loose on her. A quick blat up and down the street and it seemed to work OK.
After dinner, I decided that I should look adjust the mixture setting before Kerry drove it the next day (it pinged a little under very heavy load and the plugs were a little light) even though Kerry is a very sedate driver. So I richen it up a couple of "flats" (these were SUs) and take it for a test drive. It was already about 10pm (we had a late dinner!) and I decided to take it for about an hours jaunt just to give it a good test :-) It was a beautiful night, mild temps, clear sky, full moon, so I decided to head up to some nice windy hilly roads about 40 minutes away.
About 20 minutes out, just after I hot-tailed it from a set of traffic lights, the car just died on me. I pulled to the side of the road and thought what might be wrong. Luckily I did bring some tools with me and so after pulling a plug and checking spark was OK, my reasoning went something like this:
"The pump definately works; the sparks work; the car runs fine when cold; I richened the mixture; It doesn't work when hot; therefore back off the mixture a bit"
It wouldn't start so I couldn't check for black smoke to verify/dismiss this theory. So I turned the mixture back one flat. All this took a few minutes by the time I pulled out the toolbox etc etc. Anyhow, when I tried to start it got going after a few cranks and I was off again.
The car seemed OK on the fast straight road up to the windy road turn off and so I decided, yep, lets go for it. This road starts up a hill with lots of tight blind corners with no real pull-off area. Not a place you'd choose to pull over, so of course that is where the car dies on me again! Arrgghh! I can't roll back down the hill because there is a blind corner just behind me. So I lift the bonnet and take another look. Spark - yep, fuel at the floats - No!!! Fuel pump working (finger over the tube, feel the [air] pressure) - yep. Hmm. that sets the brain ticking, I figured that it was vapour lock. Why should it happen now, on a cool clear night, when it had never happened before?
Of course the reason was the fuel leak! It was acting like an evaporative cooler, keeping the pump cool even when it and the lines were in a very hot location! Now, that I'd fixed the leak, it was very marginal and whenever I gave it a bit of stick, the increased exhaust temp pushed it over the edge.
So after 10 minutes or so the pump eventually starts spurting fuel. Put it all back together, start her up and off we go. I don't tempt fate while I am on this dangerous road and cruise back to the main road (4 lanes). I decide to do one final verification step and gun it up a hill (the plan was to coast over the top of the hill and down the long shallow hill -- long enough to cool things down and restart OK). The trouble was that it died too quickly -- before the top of the hill. Damn. This hill was too short to really help and besides, it was divided road, I'd have to coast down in reverse. So I wait for it to cool down again. I don't bother lifting the bonnet this time, I was confident of my diagnosis, I just waited for what I thought was a sufficient time and rolled it down the hill and try and bump-start it in reverse. It didn't work, I didn't wait long enough :-(
So I wait another couple of minutes and try to start it on the starter (which has had a very hard time so far..) and it won't start, I've almost flattened the battery. Things don't look good. It is well after midnight, I don't have the mobile phone, I forgot my wallet. It looked like a long walk home (and mega embarrasment).
My last chance was a small side street that led down hill from the lowest part of the main road. It was a "no through road" which meant that if it didn't work this time I would be walking, no question. So this time I wait a *long* time extra and get it started by pushing down to the road. I jump in, get some speed up, let out the clutch and it doesn't start until the very last moment (only another 2 or 3 metres before the bottom of this hill. So I cruise *very* gently around and when I thought it was safe again, headed back up this hill to the main road. I wasn't game to head straight up the big hill again, so I went the wrong way for a bit before I U-turned and went back home and arrived at about 2am. This was only supposed to be a quick test drive and I was gone for 4 hours!
Needless to say Kerry drove the Rover the next day...
So I pinched the correct type fuel pump off one of the parts cars, put all the new seals and stuff in it and installed that on James. This also allowed me to reroute the fuel line from the pump to the carbs so that they are no-where near the exhaust pipes. I haven't had a problem with vapour lock since.
The one time the car has let us down in action (Kerry in fact) was when the plug fell out of the Bosch voltage regulator (it has a Bosch alternator also). I wasn't in town (I was interstate racing my spridget in the 6 Hr relay race at Eastern Creek), so it was the worst possible timing. Kerry didn't have a clue what was wrong, I was uncontactable and a 1.5hr drive turned into a nightmare, with the car being left by the side of the road. It didn't help matters much when Kerry thought I sounded more concerned about the car being left abandoned than Kerry's trauma (honest it isn't true honey).
So when the axe was about to fall on one car, James it was. Not so much because I didn't want to keep it (I love the car, it is great fun to drive and reliable as you could want), but rather because I knew Kerry would derive some satisfaction from both its dissapearence (She has a *long* memory!) and from a profitable sale.