On Mar 28, 9:36*am, "Ed Huntress" wrote:
Yep. The Healey 100 was supposed to be a 100 mph car.
that was the way it was advertised. Might be what the 100 was for?

That was the claim. An early stock 100-4 was rated at 90 hp, in a car that
weighed 2,200 lb. I won't dispute what John says, and maybe my exposure was
to bad examples, but the ones I knew about were not fast in stock form.

--
Ed Huntress- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

Only 90 hp, but tons of torque.

So much so that the earliest ones - the BN1 version - were sold as 3-
speeds even though they had a 4-speed transmission. What should have
been first gear was blocked off, because with the low ratio and the
torque of the engine it was too easy to break an axle. And, with the
light weight of the car, starting in second was easy. You could start
it in fourth if you wanted, with only a bit of clutch slipping.
Second, third and fourth (first, second and third as labeled) were all
synchro, but the low first gear was not. The shift pattern as sold
was very odd. First, third and reverse were all back, only second was
forward. I still remember sitting in it (stopped) one day, pondering
how odd the pattern was, thinking that there really should have been
something ahead of the labeled first - where reverse would have been
on a typical US three-speed. So I played with the stick a bit, and in
it went. Whoa, what do you do next? I pushed down the clutch,
started the engine, and let the clutch out just as slowly as I could.
Still, it took off with a jump and scared the hell out of me. I found
out that mine - like lots of others - had been modified by filing out
the shift gate to allow selecting the low gear. The BN2 cars had four
speeds with closer ratios.

The handling was also better than you recall. There were some "loose"
ones, but that was often due to actual looseness in the front
suspension. The front shocks consisted of a casting bolted to the
frame, with arms on each side that served as the upper wishbone. Four
small screws mounted the casting to the frame, and it was not uncommon
to find the outer ones stripped or broken and the inner ones loose,
with the shock flopping around.

I wish I still had it. Storage in a dirt-floored barn did a job on
the underside, though.

John Martin