The last update I made to the “ongoing saga” was back in 2001. It’s now January 2007 and the history of the car to date is pretty much that I started driving it and any notions of continuing the restoration went out of the window!
There are a number of organized get-togethers for owners of old British cars here in Georgia, including the British Car Day (originally held at Chateau Elan but as of 2006 is now held at Berry College in Rome – a much nicer facility), and a few organized (and not so organized!) blasts through the North Georgia Mountains. Basically, once I got the car on the road I used it for the odd commute to work and attended all of the events that came along.
A couple of highlights over the years were a blown head gasket in March of 2003, which I managed to fix over a weekend out of necessity more than anything, because it so happens that the Sprite was my daily driver from about February of that year through to June due to a head problem that I had with the Jag at that time. See more details of that “interesting” episode on the Jag page.
Here’s a picture showing the nice path that the combustion decided to produce between the first and second cylinders:
Over time (and unrelated to the head gasket episode), the blue smoke that was always present – first in little wisps – from the tailpipe gradually formed into pretty major clouds. It was after a drive in the mountains in 2004, during which I had to pour a couple of quarts in to replenish what was being burned and thrown into the fresh mountain air (sorry!) that I decided it was time to retire it for a bit while I checked out the cylinders to see what was going on. Some very brittle rings (a couple of which crumbled when I pulled the pistons out of the block) and some major scoring on two of the cylinders quickly confirmed that a rebuild would be necessary. I happened to come across a 1275CC engine with only a few miles since a rebuild, so I figured that installing that would be a better bet than putting the money into the 1100. I put some new rings and bearings into the 1275, as it hadn’t been used for a number of years and I wanted to check that everything was OK, then I started porting the head a little to smooth out the airways a little for increased efficiency – and that’s pretty much where I still stand as of January 2007.
Some home improvements, the purchase of my TVR and, you know, life in general put paid to any progress that I should have made since then.
Anyhow, I have big plans – including rounding out the rear wheelarches (a look that I prefer over the square ones), installing a single HIF44 SU carburettor instead of the stock pair of 1 1/4s, and installing some Audi TT style roll bars. There’s a paint job too, of course (and I’ve decided to stick with blue rather than go with BRG which was my original intent), and probably a couple of racing stripes for good measure. I guess we’ll see…
