Home • What We Do • Gallery • About • Contact • Shoals British Car Club Web Site
 |
It all started with a Sunbeam Alpine. I was a teenager and the car was a year older than me. The Alpine was a parts car that belonged to a co-worker of my father’s. We retrieved the car from a cow pasture and started an amateur resurrection. Being a parts car, quite a few parts were missing. We acquired a used drive line from another Alpine and after nearly 2 years of hard work and mowing grass to fund the project, the car was one the road. It ran for all of two weeks before the #3 con-rod bearing decided it was time to quit turning and welded itself to the crankshaft. As I was to discover, weak bottom ends were a common problem on Alpines and the crankshaft had already been previously ground. It was time for a new crankshaft and no crankshaft was to be had in rural Alabama (no internet yet and the ads in Hemmings didn’t turn up anything). |
| A 2.0 liter Ford (from the famous Ford Exploding Pinto) was transplanted into the car by me, dad, and a mechanic friend who taught us both a lot about cars. I drove the Ford powered Alpine all through high school and college and it served me well for many years and many miles. Interest in British cars continued to grow and I worked on various marques over the years, including MG, Triumph, Austin Healey and Jaguar. The Sunbeam was eventually sold (after 13 years of use) to be replaced by my current car, a '74 Triumph TR6. I also own a 1970 MGB GT and my wife has a 1963 Triumph Herald. |
|