This entry was posted on Saturday, July 18th, 2009 at 2:41 pm and is filed under Austin Healey. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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July 18, 2009
Rover asked:
Anyone have any experience of this car? Any hints or tips to look for when buying or driving one? I am 22, always owned minis but am now looking for something similar with a folding roof and the sprite comes to mind. My budget is £8k, £10 at a top-end push.
Anyone have any experience of this car? Any hints or tips to look for when buying or driving one? I am 22, always owned minis but am now looking for something similar with a folding roof and the sprite comes to mind. My budget is £8k, £10 at a top-end push.
Cheers!
How to Grow Weed
read comments (10)
July 20th, 2009 at 11:42 am
Always carry a tool kit in the boot.
July 21st, 2009 at 4:13 pm
Bugeye Sprite Check trans and they all leak oil, I guess to mark thier Spot. They handle like a preagnet roller skate but are fun to drive.
July 22nd, 2009 at 3:22 pm
Its an MGB on a low budget. Great car. Watch out for electrics. When old – not too good. Brakes too. Get a car which has been restored and looked after. A lot of them were used in competition and the engines and diffs could be suspect.
July 22nd, 2009 at 7:29 pm
Hope you are a good mechanic!
I had one of these, all true, does leak oil, had it 10 days and engine blew, always going wrong.
Apart from that I LOVED it! sound like a racingcar, always turning heads. Had roof slashed twice by jealous people I presume.
July 26th, 2009 at 1:16 am
scroll down the page some cool austin’s
July 28th, 2009 at 3:50 am
Your love very old Morris Garage cars and you don’t have to drive them every day. Because you can not the 1275 cc Austin Healey Bug Eye Sprite if you even can find one it needs major restoration. The joke is why do english people drink warm beer? because they have Lucas Refrigerators! You will be working on it all week to drive it on Sunday. Why not something more fun like a lotus super seven? In the USA there are more examples than England However the left hand drive might be a problem. The Sprite was easy the glove box and the instrument panel was the same shape just replace the steering rack and pedals under the dash.
July 28th, 2009 at 3:51 pm
I owned one in the early 1970s and found it cheap and reliable.(Don`t know where these people got all their oil leaks from) Though it was a lot younger then than it would be now! Any that have survived to now should have been well looked after,as they are quite expensive now. Lots of parts still available for A series B.M.C. engines (as you would know being a mini owner) Don`t know about suspension parts-quadraliptic springs and Armstrong,lever arm shocks.(check the socket the spring fits into-liable to corrosion) Nice to drive and handle better than the Mk1 Midget-Mk2 Sprite onwards(after they went over to semi-eliptic springs) Good luck finding a good one!
July 28th, 2009 at 5:02 pm
Not many sprites around by the look of things.
Why not look at the MG Midget? Same sort of size and handling as it’s based on the same platform. Not quite as cute, but you will probably get one a fair bit cheaper.
A quick look at suggests you might need to be at least a bit of a mechanic to keep one running, but I reckon it’ll be worth it for a smart little car like that.
Have a word with some of the members on the above site, see what they think you should be looking for. They know about Sprites too.
It would be a labour of love (and no small amount of cash) for either car, so I think you’d better really want one.
Plenty for sale here some well below your budget, but as they need various amounts of work to keep them on the road, the rest of your budget may be spent doing them up. At least then you’d know that it was as sound a car as it could be.
Parts available from
July 30th, 2009 at 3:55 pm
Nice car but im thinking you might be getting one with some work needed on that budget. They are not an everyday car like your mini’s unless you spend even more money on uprating things on it. Plus they are not so readily available.
The the mgb is nothing like it what so ever! Slow no handling and looks awful! Any corner will Kill you. lol
You can try an MG midget as they are more common. If you are after something different try the Austin healey sprite same thing just badge change and rarer, but again they too will need some modernising. Brand new shells are available for around £3500 from MGB hive subject to availability
Have you considered another mini, convertable?
August 1st, 2009 at 11:45 am
I had a new one – that dates me doesn’t it!
It was an early model with the 948cc engine an utter gutless wonder. I had to sit there chasing the engine and pretending I wasn’t!
If you get one without a boot lid I hope you have a good back. getting stuff out of the back by crawling over the seat is the stuff of pain.
The best tip I heard was an American guy who fitted a 4.2Litre engine. he noted it loosened up the drive train very quickly. He did not say how he stopped it!
It was really an Austin A35 sports. To turn the heater on you had to lift the bonnet and turn a tap on.
Oil Leaks are usually from the cover on the side of the block where the push rods go. As these are under the exhaust they are forgotten. Just twink them up – all A series engines suffer this fault.
RoyS