A friend had this car in his garage waiting for someone to put it back on the road… how could I resist. A previous owner had converted this steel wheeled car to wire wheels. This caused the rear wheels to rub on the wheel wells when you went around a corner. This happened because they didn’t change the compete rear end. The splines of the wire wheel axles are shorter than the originals and the rear end width is shorter than the original steel wheel. This caused the axial splines to only set about half way into the pig. People mentioned this tends to twist the splines off under hard acceleration. The splines were twisted when I pulled them out. To correct this I found someone that would build a correct rear drive train for the wire wheels. A complex answer to a past problem. I do like the look of the wire wheels on this car.
I also recovered the dashboard, cockpit surround, and cleaned up the paint job. Also installed a new grill and trim and had the wire wheels re-trued and fitted with new tires.
Additional photos available at the 1964 Austin Healey Sprite Gallery.