Luv2Wrench

Thinking back to when I bought the shaper I now remember it wasn't originally green. The previous owner's son (whom I bought it from) said his dad bought it, painted it green and then likely never used it. I do have a bit of history on the shaper. I have a bill of sale from when the previous owner purchased it from J.T. Clayton in 1941. Mr Clayton was the inventor and maker of "Whirlwind" Sirens. I don't think Mr Clayton was the original owner as the "dealer tag" on the shaper is Joseph Beal & Co in Boston. Long story short... I don't think the shaper has been used since 1941 and it doesn't look like it was used much before that.

I can't say for sure but under the green there is a gray. It could be the gray is a primer but I don't think so. I will say that whomever painted it green took it apart to do so. There are only two places it isn't green. The underside of the ram and on the side under the tray supports. The clutch wheel might be gray as well but it is pretty hard to tell. The plan was to paint it and the planer black like the milling machine. I'm reasonable sure the planer was originally black. As I get more into the shaper I'm more impressed with how good the condition is. While I don't see "frosting" everywhere I don't see the wear that I'd expect. I've just about have the entire machine disassembled and I haven't run into any issues. It really looks like it was rarely used.

It been a busy week. I finally got the Racine power hacksaw finished. Adjusting the mechanism that lifts the blade on the forward stroke is a bit tedious particularly when you don't have a manual that describes how it is supposed to work. I think I have it setup correctly now. I do need to find some weights for the bar as I can see it bounces a bit on the cutting stroke. Getting the power sorted out was also difficult. The motor I bought for it spins at 3450 rpm which was a big mistake on my part. I thought I could slow it down with the VFD, which you can, but it loses too much power. I was able to get the speed down to the correct range by having the motor drive a cross shaft at 6:1 ratio and then the cross shaft drives the motor at around a 5:1 ratio for a total reduction of just less than 30:1. I can then use the VFD to slow or speed up depending on the metal being cut. I'm now starting on the Hendey shaper. My plan is to drive it and the planer from the cross shaft that came with the planer. I'll be using the 3HP 3 phase motor that I just finished putting on the Hendey milling machine as I've since replaced that with a 5HP 3 phase motor. While looking for 3 phase motors on eBay I ran across a great deal on the 5HP motor and it was only a 2 hour round trip drive from my house. I figured why not upgrade, more power is more better... right?

The motor is 3 phase and I'm running it off a VFD (variable frequency drive). It is a 1740 rpm motor that is reduced down to 266 rpm at the spindle via the pulleys and flat belt. 266 rpm is the middle of the range the Hendey would have operated in 100 years ago off the line shaft. Its stepped cone pulley would've had a low of 121 rpm and a high of 409 rpm. It also had the option of a two-speed pulley off the line shaft which would've reduced that speed range a bit. With the VFD I can vary the frequency from around 25Hz up to 100Hz which gives me a range of 100 rpm up to 450 rpm which matches up pretty nicely. Since the back gear is also available the spindle will go as slow as 20 rpm. The feed system uses the Norton quick change gearbox and varies the feed from a low of 3 thousandths per revolution up to 160 thou per revolution. Both X and Y have feed which can be reversed on the fly. X and Y feed can operate independently or together.

Hendey-Norton 1B Universal Milling machine restoration is now complete! I did some cuts with it this weekend and I'm very pleased with how it performs. Next up is the Hendey shaper.

I need a set as well. Atlanta GA

I've been making pretty good progress. The power hacksaw is complete and awaiting a new motor. The Hendey horizontal milling machine is mostly complete. The spindle has a few round nuts that someone butchered up pretty bad trying to get them off without the proper tool. Unfortunately they are now unusable and one place on the spindle threads was damaged. I used a thread file to restore those threads so that's fine. I need to make some replacement nuts on the lathe. One of the issues I have with my Hendey lathe is the backlash is over 50 thou. I will fix this one day and I work around it by having an indicator on the side of the cross slide. A while back I heard about the TouchDRO project which is a little computer board that hooks up to scales (glass or capacitance) and connects to an Android device which then runs an app and gives you a full featured DRO. The cost is very reasonable and I've been planning on putting it on the lathe and mills so I went ahead and bought glass scales for the lathe along with the TouchDRO. I got the cross slide axis hooked up tonight. I'm very happy with how it mounted and installed. The X axis (aligned with the lead screw) will mount to the back of the lathe which is a bit inaccessible right now. In about a month I'll be removing everything from this room to run more electrical, add some lights, finish drywall and paint. During that process the lathe will be out in the open and I'll install the X axis at that time. The DRO has a ton of features. On the milling machine it will be really handy. It is a good bit mo re functional than even some of the top of the line DROs. Some cool features include laying out a drill pattern (8 holes in a circle type thing) and seeing it in a graphic "preview" of the workspace. You can interactively navigate to each of the holes with the graphical display showing your progress. I 3D printed a case for my Android tablet. The case design allows for a power cable inside along with holes for a VESA mount. I bought a VESA mount and attached that to the bar that holds the power switch for the lathe. The swing arm on the mounts and swivel at the connection to the back of the tablet case makes it easy to position. I'm happy with how it turned out. It is right there easy to see and easy to use but not in the way. I still need to calibrate the scales but it is working fantastic right out of the box. I'll get started on the nuts this coming week and should be able to get the Hendey milling machine completed fairly soon after that.

Do you have the results to see how much it failed by? Can you keep trying until it passes? If it is close this will probably work. I know that my car likes to throw a CEL with rapidly changing in January but cures itself by February when I have to take it in for testing. I wouldn't be surprised if your issue was just weather related and could even have been the testing machine being affected by weather.

Yes it is.

It is interesting you say that. The saw came with a base that the previous owner constructed. I didn't like the base and planned to get rid of it. My thought was that it was ugly, way overbuilt and you had to raise this handle to get the front wheel up so it would move. Now that I've gotten the saw to work and I understand its weight and the momentum of the arm moving back and forth, I understand why it was built the way it was. I now love the base. Of course it was still ugly so I painted it black.

Thanks for looking over the layout. The power hacksaw is on wheels and I'll pull it out when I use it. I didn't think about a stand, that's a great idea.

Getting ready to start the Metz restoration again! I paused the restoration because I didn't have the tools (machine tools), money or experience I needed to finish the restoration properly. As mentioned above, my brother funded the restoration of the 1952 MG TD which allowed me to get a ton of experience. During the 5 year restoration I spent a ton of time looking for machine tools and I was able to acquire everything I needed. Of course all of them need restorations! Those restorations have already begun with the first project being a Van Norman No 12 horizontal/vertical milling machine. I will also be rearranging the shop so that the back third is a proper machine shop. I will be extending the shop some to help out with this but that will come later as the weather isn't that great right now. So here's the list of the work that needs to be done in the order I'll tackle them. Racine power hacksaw Hendey Horizontal mill Hendey Shaper Hendey Planer Add DRO to Hendey lathe Add DRO to Van Norman ------------------------- Monarch Junior lathe Monarch 10EC turret lathe There's a lot of them and it will be a lot of work but I do believe all the machines are "functional". As such the restoration will mainly consist of figuring out how to apply power to them. There's a good chance the Hendey shaper and planer will be powered off a mini line shaft. It just so happens that their drive pulleys are on opposing sides. The shaper's is on the left and the planer's is on the right. I'm planning on positioning the planer along the rear wall and the shaper to the right of it. That will have both the drive pulleys together and I can have a motor on the floor and a small line shaft above. The planer came with some line shaft stuff and I think it can be adapted. I plan to make a hole in the wall for the table so I can save some space in the machine shop. For the rest of the machines I'm using 3-phase motors with a VFD. The VFD allows me to reduce the speed of the motor such that I can directly drive the machine. In addition I can vary the speed of the machines as needed for various materials and operations. The two Monarchs (below the dashed line) are not necessary for the Metz restoration to begin so I'm not sure if I'll be restoring them now. The Junior has a taper adapter attachment which might prove useful. The 10EC is ridiculously accurate which would be useful for the wheel bearing work. Technically the shaper and planer are not strictly needed but since they'll go in the very back of the machine shop area they'll need to be restored first. Since this is a car forum and not a machine tool forum I'll limit the posts about the machine shop restoration to one post for each machine complete.

I tried to remove the beam to get at the nuts but couldn't get it free. I then tried the nuts on the ends and they came off easily... I might have heard one of them laughing at me.

I saw that this morning, kinda strange timing! The rod ends are pretty much already destroyed without me even getting near them. Any chance you know the Moss part number?

This afternoon and evening I attempted to remove and straighten the tie rod. As I was attempting that I noticed that both the frame rails are damaged. It appears as if the car hit something head on but with the frame only. This explains the bent tie rod and why it was driving like a crab. It also explains why it was hard to turn at extremes, the tie rods were rubbing up against the damaged areas of the frame rails. When I have the car stripped and on the rotisserie this will be something I can address. The frame rails are boxes and they will not be too difficult to cut open and repair. It will certainly be tedious and time consuming and wasn't something I was planning on. I'm not particularly happy about this. I did look the car over prior to buying it but I failed to see the damage as it is mostly hidden when the wheels are pointed straight. I was mostly looking at how bad the rust was and only look at the frame rails in general. To make matters a bit worse, it does look like one of the spring perches has started to fail to the point it is touching the tie rod. I feel at this point that anything short of a complete restoration of the front end, including straightening the frame rails would be a bit of a waste of time. I don't feel like a day or two of work is really going to make any difference. Unfortunately it appears I have bought a wreck and I'm just going to have to deal with that next year. I still love the car and I'll make it great again. I like to think of this as I'm adding to my skill set.

I set up parallel strings to measure the toe in/out on the car. The rear wheels had zero toe as did the front left. The front right was over 1/2" toed out. Over 15" (diameter of rim) that is about 2 degrees toed out. Further inspection found that the tie rod on that side was bent. That effectively shortens the length which, for this car, turns the toe out. I think removing the tie rod, straightening it out and aligning again should fix that issue. A concern though is that something happened to bend the tie rod so there is likely other damage. This and a further inspection of the front suspension confirms, at least to me, that I shouldn't be driving this car. The spring perches, for example, are very rusted and should one of them break it would be catastrophic and make it very difficult if not impossible to steer. The plan right now is to fix the tie rod and take another short drive in the neighborhood to see if that solves the problem. If it does, great, if not it isn't something I'm going to continue working on. I talked to my engine guy and he said to fog the engine and not worry about the rings at this point. I am a little disappointed because I really did want to drive the car around. I did a fair amount of work to get the engine running, the rust stabilized and the interior reasonably comfortable. It certainly would be fun to drive around but I just don't think it would be safe and rebuilding the front end is just not something I want to do at this point. I'm in desperate need of more space in my shop and that is my number one priority. Once that is finished and I have a fully functioning machine shop in one part of the shop and room to work in the other, then I'll finish the 1913 Metz 22 roadster restoration. At that point (mid 2024) I'll be able to take my time and give the Nash Healey the complete restoration it needs and deserves.

@ojh. Thanks for the warning and fortunately I didn't open it. This project has crossed into what I like to call "feature creep". The goal was to get the car running and if possible, driving. That has definitely been accomplished. A "reach" goal was to be able to drive it around and enjoy it until I finished restoring the 1913 Metz 22. It looks like that isn't practical at this point as a little further digging revealed that it really needs a complete front end rebuild. In addition I really don't trust the wiring and I would always be in fear something would go wrong with that. Now that I know it also needs a front end rebuild (which isn't trivial on this car) I'm ready to move on and tackle those issues when I do the full restoration. I need to talk to my engine guy to find out if it is OK to stop right now given that the rings haven't seated. I fairly certain he's going to say that's really bad and I might be back to trying to figure out how to get it to drive straight long enough to seat the rings. Wish I had a dyno at home! I might look into getting a flatbed to take it to a shop with a dyno and doing a few pulls there to get the rings seated.

Took the first drive today! I didn't go very far as it doesn't drive straight. It wanders left/right and it quite hard to turn the steering wheel. I plan to rebuild the front end but I was hoping to be able to drive it a little bit before that. It definitely isn't safe as is. The engine seems strong, gearbox is very smooth and the brakes work, so that's all a positive. I think I'm going to try and diagnose the issue(s) and see if there is something I can do right now so I can drive the car a bit more. My goal was to get the car running and driving before I started the rotisserie restoration. I wanted to have a better feeling for what condition the car is in. That was mostly accomplished but I really would like to drive it over 30mph. Does anyone know who made the steering box? Healey made the chassis but not sure about the steering box? Any tips for rebuilding?

So today was the big day for starting the engine. I filled the sediment bowl and both carb bowls with fuel. On the first hit of the starter it backfired through the carbs. Fortunately I now understand that (usually) means the dizzy is 180 degrees out. I pulled the dizzy out, rotated the rotor 180 degrees and put it back in. This time it roared to life!! It really, really roared because I had the throttle direction backwards and turned it wide open! Obviously it is just running in the driveway so I have no idea how well it performs under load but it sure did sound good! A couple of notes about the video. When it first starts and I turn the throttle the wrong way you'll see a cloud of mist go by. That's coolant that had leaked out and was collecting on the fins. The radiator has since been fairly well behaved. Most of the dialog that you can't hear in the video is between my son and I. We're discussing how the exhaust manifold is not leaking and then leaking. I note that it has 60lb of oil pressure. We are both relieved that after some period of time it became obvious that the fuel pump was indeed working and it wasn't just running off the fuel in the bowl. There's a terrible racket when I'm on the left side of the engine, that's the wind from the fan causing audio distortion. The fan puts out some air! The exhaust pipe/manifold leaked in various places. By the end of the run it appeared to have stopped. I'm not sure if it "fixed itself" or if the expansion from the heat sealed it and it will leak again when cold. Definitely something I'll need to track. I've got a fairly long list of things to do before I take it on the road. Right now it has no seats, steering wheel or throttle linkage and those seem pretty important. I'll also need to *swap the battery leads*. Can't believe I missed that little detail. The Nash Healey is positive ground like the MG TD. I wasn't aware of that until @ojh.pointed it out above.

Thanks! So to be fair to myself, I did not forget that it was positive earth. I didn't forget that because I actually didn't know that! I hooked it up negative ground and it ran fine. I LED lights I bought or not polarity sensitive however the flasher is so I'll need to get positive ground version instead. Wizard Cooling is where I'm getting the radiator. They built one custom in the past and kept the templates. They'll be building mine for me and I should get it in about 4 weeks. https://wizardcooling.com/i-30502954-wizard-cooling-1952-54-nash-healey-aluminum-radiator-50052-100.html#!make%3DNASH||model%3DNASH-HEALEY||year%3D1954 They have one in black as well but it was a good bit more expensive. I'll paint to top/sides of mine and be fine. Thanks for the offer of the gas tank straps, I think I'm good with how I have them mounted.

Hope everyone has had a great Christmas and Holidays so far, everything has been great for me. I've managed to get a bit more work done on the Nash and I have it to the point that I'll be trying to fire it up tomorrow. I spun it over this evening and it built up oil pressure so that's a good sign. Of course will all good news there seems to be some bad news... and the radiator supplied that news by immediately leaking as I put coolant in. I'm so glad I had it flushed and the leaks fixed /sarcasm... and yes, same damn radiator service place that screwed up the MG TD tank. I had to go back to them because there really isn't any other place around me. Fortunately I found a new replacement radiator online and I hope it will be here shortly. I was shocked to find that a modern replacement is available because the NH radiator was a one off design. The replacement is very close copy and looks to be very high quality. It is a bit pricey at $559 but given the rarity of the car, I feel super fortunate that I found one. I imagine getting someone to make one would be very expensive.

Love the guides, that's a super tip I'm sure I'll be using soon!

If you document the car and post the photos here they will be found in the future. Search engines are incredible these days. I can't tell you how many details I've found during my searches and most of them came from very obscure corners of the Internet. One thing that helps these pictures to be found later is to describe them well as it is generally the text that will get index. I know often when I look at a picture someone took I'm often wondering why they took the picture from that angle, what are they pointing out, etc, etc. A picture may be worth a thousand word but sometimes it is the words with the picture that give it the right context and provide extra value. The photos and details you've provided so far will be a gold mine for someone in the future.

I very much agree with this, I think it provides critical details for those in the future as to how the car/parts were created.

The engine is back in and the clutch disc releases!! It was an epic battle to get the engine in. The nose of the NH is very long and the engine sits well back in the bay and as a result it requires a long reach on the engine hoist. I have what I think is the longest available (short of spending $6K) and it isn't long enough. I can't use the overhead chain hoist because it doesn't lift the engine high enough before it runs out of travel. It was super frustrating as I would get the engine down in the bay but not be able to get it far enough back. I'd take it back out and adjust the leveler. Repeat process and fail. Eventually I found just the right combination of where I attached the front/back of the leveler and the chain length to the main bar. This creative use of the engine leveler enabled me to get it in but there's no way I'll try it after the car is painted. Once it was in I checked to see if the clutch disc would release and of course it wouldn't. I was basically in full on panic mode at this point because I couldn't deal with having to pull the dang thing back out, look for some phantom issue and then try putting it back it. I had my son depress the clutch pedal and I looked up from underneath and I could see that the throwout bearing barely moved the forks on the pressure plate. It was at that point I realized that since I replaced the clutch disc I would (obviously) need to adjust the linkage. Once that was adjusted I was able to turn the engine over by hand with the car in gear and it not drive away. I could hear the disc scraping as I turned the engine over and I guess this means I should add another turn so the it pushes it further in. I'll worry about that tomorrow as I'm exhausted from messing with it today. Not a very interesting picture but one I would've paid a considerable amount of money to see mid-way though this afternoon!!