Larry Jensen

and Gidget…

a 1958 Austin Healey Sprite  AN5L/5502; the 5001^st Bugeye produced.

I come from a small family; in fact, I am the only one in my family that is a Utah native. The rest of my family comes from Van Nuys, a suburb of Los Angeles. Growing up I was told many stories of the cars my family had and some of the funny stories about the cars. Dad had an affinity for practical cars driving an El Camino that he used to deliver newspapers in between playing quarterback throughout his school career. My favorite story was when he got into a little fender bender with another high school kid and his main offensive lineman was in the passenger seat with dad. This lineman was described as 5 foot 8 inches tall and about 6 feet wide and when he got out to confront the poor kid in the other car, I was told that the kid about cried. Mom had her fair share of car stories as well; her older brother Orval had left for a stint in the Peace Corps and had left his Morris Minor at home. When she was 15, my mother and her best friend decided to “borrow” Orval’s Morris Minor, with no license and definitely no concept of how to drive a manual. They drove the car to Bob’s Big Boy without ever shifting gears, 5 miles in nothing but 1st gear. Mom would joke that she didn’t understand what the extra brake pedal was, you know the one on the far left of the pedals that only slowed the car down a “little bit”. They also didn’t know how to shift into reverse so she drove and parked the car in a manner where she only had to go forward. While I wasn’t there, I can hear the grinding of gears in my head. Ironically as I was getting my driver’s license it was my mother who took the time to teach me to drive a stick.

Orval Buck, my mother’s older brother and owner of the ill-fated Morris Minor, is an amazingly talented and brilliant individual who lives life on his own terms. In the 50’s he was very much a beatnik, and to this day Orval sports the most amazing handlebar mustache. He joined the Peace Corps in the mid 60’s, going to Chile where he would meet his wife. He had a great career as an engineer for Hughes Aircraft, and he’s amassed the world’s second-largest collection of Chilean war medals, many of which he snuck out of the country under the Pinochet regime. But one of Orval’s secret passions was his 1958 Austin Healey Sprite in Primrose Yellow.

This 1958 Austin Healey Sprite started its life being built in the Healey factory on October 16^th, 1958, and was originally purchased by a small-time Hollywood actor William Bendix. The Family story goes that Bendix bought the Sprite sight unseen and had it delivered to his house, supposedly he never drove it because he couldn’t fit into the car. Two years later Orval was friends with the kid who mowed William Bendix’s lawn and told Orval about the garaged Sprite. Orval was able to purchase the Sprite from Bendix for $900 cash. My father tells the story of when he took Orval there to get the car and he watched Orval produce nine 100-dollar bills which was likely Orval’s life savings as a 20-year-old at the time.

Orval drove the sprite everywhere and he drove it with care love and passion. One of Orval’s favorite Sprite stories was him getting into a street race with a guy driving a Corvette. Since they were racing down Topanga Canyon the horsepower difference was negated and Orval was able to beat the ‘vette with the go-kart handling of the tiny bugeye. By 1964 my family had moved to Utah since Dad had been recruited to play Quarterback for the University of Utah. Orval made a near cross-country drive in the Sprite that year driving from Los Angeles to Minnesota where a lot of the family was originally from. According to Orval, he made the trip by putting the spare tire in the front seat so he’d have more room for his belongings in the boot, he slept on picnic tables at night in public parks and even made a few days stop in Salt Lake to visit my parents. This was the first time the 1958 Austin Healey Sprite was in SLC, but not the last. Orval tells of a point in the drive where he encountered a woman driving a Jag E-type, they drove together for many miles until the Jag decided to flex its muscles and leave Orval and the Sprite in the rear-view mirror.

As a little kid growing up, we would go visit the rest of the family in Van Nuys, visiting my grandparents and Orval and his wife Tina. I was always fascinated with the cars and was always underfoot of my grandfather and Orval as they fixed things around the house and their cars. My father was a jock and not very mechanical, I have always joked that my father’s idea of a toolbox is a credit card and a list of people who owe him favors, usually, I was at the top of that list. When visiting Orval one summer I would hang out in his garage around his cars playing with the tools and poking around all the mechanical bits underneath the cars. My grandmother found this cute and took a piece of wood and wrote “Larry’s VW Garage” and would place the sign anywhere near where I would pretend to work on the cars. In the early 80’s I’d hear stories that Orval was rebuilding the engine on the Sprite and upgraded the wheels to wire-spoke rims. I can only fathom what that must have been like, Orval tells stories about how his wife/my Aunt Tina would help remove the bonnet and hold parts to help Orval. This alone is mind-boggling to me since Tina is 5 foot 5 and weighs a good 98 pounds soaking wet, she is the most soft-spoken gentile petite woman I have ever encountered. How she helped remove the Sprite’s bonnet is beyond me, When I removed the bonnet, I employed the muscles of a couple of large strong teenage boys and there were always a lot of “colorful” words spoken throughout that process.

Flash forward to late summer 2021. The pandemic was starting to ease up a bit but much of the world was still living the lockdown lifestyle. Me working from and the kids doing online school from the house, and my wife Melissa working from home as well as a couple of friends of ours who live in remote locations would come to our house to work remotely since they did not have access to reliable internet for work. We very much were living the pandemic quarantine pod lifestyle. We had decided to take a trip to Disneyland, but rather than fly we rented a 12-passenger van to drive us and our quarantine friends to Disneyland. Just before we were leaving for the trip my mother informed me that Orval and Tina were selling their house in Ventura, California, and were downsizing to a condo. Orval had just turned 80 and was finding it difficult to maintain a full house, Friends helped them when they could but since Orval and Tina never had any kids, they felt it best to get rid of most of their positions and downsize.

My first response to my mother was “What are they going to do with the Sprite?” Mom answered “I think they are going to sell it” I replied “Next time you talk to them get me a number”

Back to the Disneyland trip, while driving by Death Valley and the “Baker Grade” I got a phone call from Orval, over the next few minutes as we caught up on each other’s lives we started to talk about the Sprite, we agreed on a number and I told him that I would start to make arrangements to get him a check and arrange for transportation of the car from Ventura California to Salt Lake City Utah. This was going to be my first car that its primary purpose is NOT basic transportation, (cough, cough… mid-life crisis?) Standing in lines for rides at Disneyland I was on the phone to transport companies, my insurance company, just thinking through every possible logistics to get the Sprite to Salt Lake City.

I was fortunate enough to connect with a transport service through a broker. The transport guy only carried one vehicle at a time. For this run the transportation guy had a round trip fully paid gig to transport a Ferrari from SLC to Beverly Hills for some work to be done, since Ferrari paid for the full round trip but was not sending the car back the transportation guy was able to bring my sprite back to SLC for me. As you can tell by now, I am very close to my family, my uncle and grandfather were dearly special to me and I credit them with teaching me to have a mechanical and logical mind. So, when the transport trailer was opened to reveal the Sprite inside, I was overwhelmed with emotions as the smell of my uncle and grandfather’s garages hit me like a ton of bricks. Sadly, off the truck, the car did not start so we rolled it into my garage to be sorted out.

At this point, my automotive mechanical abilities were limited to a few minor repairs here and there on the variety of cheap cars I ran through when I was much much younger. After checking a few things on the Sprite that I had read in manuals and posts online I went out to do a little tinkering on the Sprite. A couple of squirts of some starter fluid and BANG, the little 948 engine roared to life !!!

As I tried everything on the car I beeped the horn, Holy Cow that was the cutest darn car horn I ever heard. It fit the petite size of the car perfectly, the sound was almost cartoonish. My wife and I giggled at the sound as I kept hitting the horn like a 5-year-old kid. Eventually, I said we needed to name the car; we name all our cars and the names have hidden meanings. My daily driver of a Volvo SUV is named “Flo” because I took a chance to get the car by driving to Vegas and buying it sight unseen, I went with the “Flo” and it worked out. We decided to name the car “Gidget” The name fits the small size of the car with a smiling front end, plus Orval and my parents all attended High School with the actress Sally Fields who was in the TV sitcom “Gidget” at the time.

What a blast I had driving the car for a few months, every time the car would have an issue, I would hit the books and scour the internet for solutions and tutorials. When vapor lock occurred more times than I cared for I read up on how to switch to an electrical fuel pump and that worked amazingly. My confidence soared each time I fixed something on the car.

Eventually, I found the BAHC and connected with a member named Glen Schimmelpfennig, I was invited to the BAHC Christmas party, and when I met the members, WOW what a great bunch of people. Kind, accepting, warm, funny, and willing to provide help and technical assistance. The next day I called Orval and told him all about the BAHC and he was so happy that I had found this club.

On a club drive in June of 2022, the Sprite suffered a major failure, without tearing into the engine the noise the engine made was once that made people say “spun bearing”. So, I had the car towed back to my house and we pushed it into the garage. I didn’t let it sit long. After creating a plan to remove the engine and determine what if anything I could fix. I had never rebuilt an engine before, but with some extensive reading and research I felt ready to tackle the job, I borrowed an engine hoist and an engine stand removed bits, and pieced slowly and tagged each one. Eventually, I got the engine stripped down to the block, and indeed one of the main bearings was gone. I ordered a new camshaft, opting for a fast road profile. When I took the block, head, crankshaft, and new cam to a machine shop we discovered that the block was a very early 948 and only had TWO serviceable bearings for the cam, the third journal was simply polished into the block. Not wanting to do this twice the machine shop said they could bore out the third journal and make it so that the block would accept three new bearings, not a cheap process but hey the kids don’t need to go to college, right? Just kidding, the work was done beautifully. New pistons, new bearings, basically any part that was consumable or wearable was replaced. I even spent a good amount of time getting the cam timing correct, looks like kids you do use math equations in the real world. Once I had the engine back together it looked brand new to me. The best part was that when I had everything back together the engine fired up on the first try. I spent the rest of the rest of Spring 2023 driving the car until the transmission had started to make awful sounds and the clutch wouldn’t shift correctly.

I pulled the engine again and got the transmission out this time as well. I discovered two issues; one the carbon throw-out bearing had shattered. I read this was a common thing since the quality of some of the modern reproductions of the throw-out bearing is very substandard at times. To address that I purchased a kit to convert the throw-out bear to a modern roller bearing. But the transmission was going to need some love. As I got deeper into the transmission tear-down plan and started my list of parts to purchase, I realized that the cost of the parts was quickly approaching the cost for me to purchase a rebuilt smooth-case transmission, yes, several people tried to talk me into getting a 5 speed or even a rib-case, both of which would have required much more modifications than I was comfortable doing. I decided to purchase a rebuilt transmission from the Bugeye guy and installed that. On the second drive with the new transmission, disaster struck again, this time in the form of a defective clutch plate. The new clutch plate had a failure in the metal casting that held one of the spring bolts in place. Not sure how fast the item was going but at idle the part broke and turned into shrapnel that punched a significant hole in the new bell housing. So, pull the engine again, wash rinse repeat. After pondering how to address this I decided that the fastest course of action would be to simply buy a second rebuilt transmission and then maybe get some help to replace the bell housing on the first one since removing the bell housing would require that I disassemble everything inside the transmission and I would need to reseat the main bearings I felt this was the best option for me.

Orval may have been an engineer by trade, but his passion was being creative, Orval over his lifetime has taught himself to draw, wood carvings, and even a little bit of amateur luthier. Soon after Orval bought the Sprite, he painted a couple of cartoon characters on the center panel below the dashboard. I asked Orval about the Characters and he said they were from his favorite TV show at the time “The Untouchables” I love this personalized touch and the cartoon machine gun makes me think of the little popping roar of the little 948 BMC A Series.

Driving the car is so much fun, I love to pick up my kids from school in the car, and I drive it to go play golf; yes, a full set of golf clubs can get into a Bugeye boot. It’s funny to watch my teenage son get into the car, he’s 6 foot 4 and has size 16 shoes, it’s not his height, it’s the fact that the footwell area of the Sprite doesn’t quite accommodate such large feet.

I feel so lucky and grateful to have acquired this car, it’s much more than a car to me. It’s a significant part of my family’s legacy that I get to be the steward of, it represents the fact that I have been able to learn a new life skill that I have now been helping to pass my knowledge along to others. But if the roads are dry and the weather is anything above freezing there is a good chance that I might have Gidget out for a spin. BEEP BEEP !!

Jon Hanson

The early days….
It was back in 1969. I had just completed my undergraduate work at Oregon State University and was off to a summer job at the Pacific Missile Test Center at Pt. Mugu in Southern CA, with plans to return in the fall to begin graduate work. Up to that point, my only car had been a 1931 Model A Ford that I had purchased for $50 from a junkyard (big mistake) when I was a freshman in college. After several years I finally got it on the road. During the course of this restoration, I managed to get the rear end pinion gear on the wrong side resulting in three reverse gears and one forward gear….it ran like hell backwards! Lack of knowledge and little money did not speed this little project. By the time I graduated, it was time to sell the Model A (after fixing that pinion gear issue) and get something better suited for freeway speeds.

I found a 1955 MG Magnette , otherwise known as an MG-ZA, at a local dealership in Corvallis in late spring of 1969 for I think around $300. This was a funky little car… four doors, cool hardwood dash, small motor and a musty smell likely due to the damp climate in Corvallis. It sort of looked like a Jag Saloon that has been through the wash and shrunk down a bit. I packed it full of stuff and headed off for Southern California for the summer of 1969 and felt like Master of the Universe. The car made the distance with no problems. I stayed in S. CA for the next three years at which time (1972) I returned to graduate school. Over that time, I sold the Magnette and got a VW fastback (junk) and then sold that and got an Audi Fox (really junk). The MG was the first British car I owned and the last one until eight years later.

I confess that up to this point, I had not been much of a car fancier primarily because what few funds I had went toward tuition. So my cars were for transportation only and my entertainment was on the cheap… mostly exploring the high country in California and Oregon. The picture below is Yosemite in 1974 taken the summer before going back for my final degree from OSU.

The disease (Healey) strikes!
After completing college in 1977, I went to work at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) located in the East Bay area of California. I had recently had occasion to drive my sister’s (Eugene, OR) Austin Healey and absolutely fell in love with it. And now that I had a “real job”, I could actually afford a fun car. So over the next few months, I began the search and finally found one in Berkeley – a 1965 BJ-8 (original and unrestored) that looked pretty complete and all numbers matched. I wrote the check on July 12, 1980. Little did I know what was in store for me!

I threw caution to the winds and, two weeks after the purchase, drove it to the West Coast Austin Healey meet at Mt. Shasta, not knowing if it would make the distance. It did. The picture below shows my Healey at the Mt. Shasta ski area with my sister’s Healey (red on black) in background. Mark Miller of the Oregon club is standing next to me. The car ran great on this trip but demonstrated a significant addiction to oil. Shortly thereafter, I pulled the engine for a complete overhaul.

The picture below shows the engine coming out. The fellow on the left was a neighbor by the name of Bob Squire who lived a couple of doors from me in Danville. Bob, at the time, was restoring an MG-TD. He had told me that he “worked in some foreign relations capacity at LLNL”. He did not like to talk much about what he did even though we van pooled into work together. I was later to find that he was Director of Strategic and Tactical Studies and Analysis at LLNL – a group that developed policy regarding nuclear first strike issues during the cold war and advised the feds accordingly. Little did I know! There was a PBS special called “First Strike” that came out in 1979 … Bob was interviewed on that documentary. The fellow on the right is George Sutherlin who, as I recall, was a supercomputing guru at the lab. George was also a fellow van pooler

Now back to the topic at hand…the engine turned out BEAUTIFUL and the engine well was UGLY! Putting that engine back into the car would be like hanging Bose speakers on a ten dollar amplifier….I simply could not bring myself to do it. So during the next week, and remembering the Model A pinion gear thing and the importance of taking notes, I took a load of pictures as I disassembled the car. I seriously questioned my sanity as I surveyed the end result scattered on the garage floor! The picture below (May, 1982) shows the frame loaded up on a trailer on its way to San Jose for The Dip.

Over the next several years and in my spare time, I went through everything with exception of the overdrive…”don’t fix it unless it is busted”. I should note that at this time, I had no club affiliation and no one to question if I got stuck. I had to figure out what needed to be done from a factory shop manual, factory parts book and the Haynes Manual on Healey restoration. That is the beauty of these cars…they are pretty basic. Oh…and by the way, the pinion gear was deployed correctly this time.

Restoring the Healey served as occupational therapy as I was getting pretty disillusioned with the job at LLNL. During the course of the restoration, I decided to change careers and move to Salt Lake City to work for a geotechnical firm. Since the car was in a rolling chassis stage, we rolled it up into a Mayflower moving van along with all of my other stuff, and off to Utah we went. This was in August of 1982. I completed the car in 1985 and, with the suggestion of and help by Dave Maxwell, took it to Monterey where it won 3rd in its class at the 1985 West Coast Austin Healey Meet Concours d ‘Elegance. The picture below is the Healey at the 2010 Thanksgiving Point Concours d‘Elegance – on the road 25 years later and still “lookin’ good”. Wish I could say the same!

I terminated my affiliation with the geotechnical firm that brought be to SLC two and a half years after I started work there and have been an independent consultant since that time (1985).

Epilogue
Things do change … but my steadfast Austin Healey has been a constant… a reminder that anything can be accomplished if you if you set your mind to it and take it one step at a time. I have had a great sense of satisfaction over the years, both in successfully completing the frame-up restoration but, more importantly, with my affiliation with the Bonneville Austin Healey Club. The friendships established and the fellowship derived with this group cannot be measured. Who would have figured back in the winter of 1983 that the club would still be going strong 41 years later!

Now if only the Healey would quit dripping oil on my garage floor!

Jim
Thornton

I was a teenage greaser.  You know, like John Travolta in the movie Grease.  I had the hair, believe it or not, but I couldn’t sing.  That was when you rolled a pack of Dad’s Lucky Strike cigarettes in your shirt sleeve, pulled your pants down low around the buns and drove a lead-sled.

My first sled was a ’51 Chevy.  Following several wrecks, I sold it for parts and picked up a ’50 Ford flat head V-8 with overdrive for $100.00. The term lead-sled was coined as a result of removing all the door handles and emblems, then filling the holes with lead.  The car was also lowered to within a few inches from the ground.  Little did I know that skills I developed in driving a lowered lead-sled would come in handy when I got a Healey.

But then in the middle of my high school days everything changed.  I am sure there must have been other influences but the only one I remember was the Bugeyed Sprite being introduced to the world.  It was love at first sight.  This was the coolest car ever.

I had a plan.  To avoid the Draft some of us joined the Army Reserves.  I would save all my pay checks and buy a Bugeye when I got back.  After six months earning 57.00 a month – I came up a little short.  But I was hooked and had to have a sportscar.

Convincing my step-father was another issue. I was under 21 years of age and he had to cosign. I finally got him to go with me, just look, at Sports Car Center in Salt Lake.  There was a used Austin Healey on the lot and a brand new 1962 MG Midget on the showroom floor.  His exact words, “Why the hell would you buy a used car that is the same price as a new car”.  Don’t argue – he’s open to the idea – I drove the Midget home.

One year later I was 21 years old.  I inherited a little money as a result of my real father being killed in WWII.  I drove back to Sports Car Center and negotiated the first major purchase on my life by myself.  There was another used 1960 BT7 Healey on the lot.  I tracked down a salesman, told him I wanted to trade my Midget for the Healey, and could he write it up.  I paid a lot of money and it was the beginning of a life long love affair.

Affair – that leads to the next step in my life.  I met ‘what’s her name’.  I don’t mean my wonderful wife Sheryl.  She comes along later.  What’s her name and I got married and had a son.  The Healey was my daily driver.  I remember we placed an ad in the newspaper offering to car pool anyone needing a ride from Sandy to downtown Salt Lake.  For an entire winter some poor girl laid in the back seats of my BT7 for a ride to and from work.

I held onto the Healey as long as I could.  But inevitability I had to make another big decision.  I sold the Healey.  In hind sight I should have kept the Healey instead of ‘what’s her name’.

Next chapter – all I have left is my son.  The Healey is gone. The house is gone.  What’s her name is gone.  My only vehicle was the RenaultDauphine I bought for 10.00.  The last time I saw that car was when I left it in a parking lot with a dead battery. From there it was a $50.00 MGA Roadster, then a MGA Coupe, to an MGB and a company car Pinto.  Each of these had its own personality and its own long story. Except the Pinto, this car had no character whatsoever.

Remember I mentioned my wonderful wife, Sheryl?  I was driving the MGB when we met.  After a few dates she said, “If you don’t replace the missing door window and fix the heater, I’m out of here”. I did and we got married.

The next few years flew by while we bought our house, started a business, and raised our three children. But I never lost sight of Austin Healeys.  Finally in the late ‘70s I bought another Healey 3000 to restore. I completely disassembled it and there it sat for the next few years because I didn’t know how to fix it. 

In the early ‘80s John and Henry Morrison placed an ad in the newspaper looking for fellow Healey enthusiasts. About 15 people showed up, including myself, and that was the beginning of the Bonneville Austin Healey Club.

I bought another wrecked 1960 Healey from a guy getting divorced and desperate for money.  Using parts from the first 3000 and Dave Maxwell’s talents this would become the black BT7 I drive today. For the next few years several Healeys, or parts there of, came and went.  I remember two 100-4s sold to Henry Morrison that went to Albuquerque.  Ernie Reno bought the 100-6 parts car.

Sheryl’s New 100-6

Then I read another newspaper ad (I’ve got to stop reading the paper). I found a 1959 100-6 that had been sitting in a garage for 15 years. ‘Sheryl’s Healey’ sat in my warehouse disassembled for a few more years. And then along came Dave (Maxwell). He said, “Let’s git her done”.  This Healey, which won first in class at Utah’s Concours d’Elegance, was rebuilt from the ground up by Dave Maxwell.  As good as he is I know he could not have done it had I not been there to keep his coffee cup full. Healeys have been my passion for a long time.  I’ve never owned a Bugeyed Sprite but having his and hers black and white Healeys aint bad.  Thanks to my friends – Life is good.

Jim & Sheryl’s Austin Healeys