The Nut Behind the Wheel: Spring 2000

By Ron Phillips

Some time ago in this column I mentioned my best buddy, Bob. Actually, I have another best buddy, Carroll, who, like best buddy Bob, is currently restoring an Austin-Healey. For two completely different individuals, they are a lot alike! It’s no surprise that it has literally taken them years to restore their respective cars. It took me 13 years to restore my 100.

Why so long? In all three cases, we did the bulk of the work ourselves. Other pursuits, like work, wife, and life took up all those other precious hours we could have spent moving the projects forward. In the realm of do-it-yourselfers, however, we are a few of the successful ones. Our cars either do run now or will in the near future. But as I look back on my own experience, and having participated many times in their restoration projects, there is one big issue that could have saved us all a lot of time, trouble, frustration, and a few dollars. I’m talking about ORGANIZATION!

I believe all three of us are pretty organized in our day-to-day affairs. In each case, I know as we disassembled our cars, we all took notes, used lots of baggies, collected precious old parts in boxes, and even labeled some of the parts as to what they fit and how they came off. But in all cases, this was several years ago. Boxes break down. Baggies disintegrate. Memories fade.

Finally, we all neared the day when, after chassis repair and refinishing (which always seems to take years), we finally started putting things back on the chassis. It’s at this point that nuts and bolts and the best you got of each part comes into play.

We’ve now all learned that many of our components have manufacturing date stamps on them. For the purists, it’s important to retain the case, cover, or cap that has this date, even if the insides have been donated by much newer stock. At least, many of us think this is important, and go to great lengths to get it right. How right usually is a balance between a truly working component that won’t fail on the road versus the originality of the item. In any case, it is prudent to save each electrical component taken off your car and make a reasonableness test as to whether it came with the car or was replaced. In Carroll’s case, a 1956 generator didn’t come stock on his 1953 100. Just throwing the component in a box with all the other ones like it won’t get you back to the original either. Only careful organization of notes on disassembly, or careful observation, packaging, and labeling, will get you back to what came off the car.

About all those boxes. In each case, Bob, Carroll, and I had moved our homes or businesses during our restorations. That means that all that careful organization into labeled boxes and baggies probably got scrambled in the move. Certainly in Carroll’s case this was true. When it came time to put things back together, like pinning the transmission of his BN1 to the original circular mounts, Carroll hadn’t a clue where the set pins were. Worse, he didn’t know what the size of the bolt should have been, as we didn’t have an original to look at. It was even worse than that. His very early car most probably had British bolts. The modern mount replacements use SAE replacement bolts. We had neither. Another project was left on hold until the right stuff could be procured. The way out of this particular problem was to use a thread gauge and a measuring caliper to determine what was right. But here was another delay in the restoration process.

If you are interested in concours, then it’s really important to pay attention to the original fasteners as you remove them and to keep them with the component you just removed. That way, you can either replace them with new of the same type, or in extreme cases, have them replated before reattachment. Many years ago, a member of our club did the replating thing and he showed me the finished product. All the nuts and bolts he had removed from his Healey came back from the plater in a large bag. While delivered to him as good as new, they were not sorted, separated, and thread chased as he had done before sending them in. This would have been a nightmare for most of us. In Chuck’s case, he had taken good notes and knew the size, thread pitch, and application for them all. I learned a valuable lesson that day. Chuck was successful in reuniting the same kind of fastener to the correct component, in spite of the time it took, because he had good notes. If you haven’t been so farsighted (or the previous owner hasn’t either), there is a chart in the concours rules that helps to decode the kind of bolt, nut, and washer referenced in the parts lists. The original part number holds the key, and, together with this decoder page, this information would be invaluable to your restoration if you hadn’t organized your notes sufficiently to allow re-assembly with the same type or kind of fastener.

Finally, in this day and age of the computer, any spreadsheet program can be of great benefit to help you organize not just your spare parts inventory (we all know you have them!), but to organize the disassembly and re-assembly of a complete car. I wish I had done this in 1983 when I started my 100’s restoration. Who knows how many years it would have saved? Just be sure you adequately describe a particular item, its location on the car, and that you note where you put it or in which box and baggie it can be found. While you are at it, label the box and baggie, too, so when looking up the item on the computer, you can go right to the correct location and find it. By the way, this is exactly how industry does parts warehousing! Additional notes like the manufacturing dates of components and disassembly notes can also be kept here. Be sure to make backups of the data as computers change and you can bet the one you are using today will not be the one you’re using 13 years from now! Remember, CONSTANT VIGILANCE!