Don Manning's BJ8
'This BJ8 is one of the final batch of Healeys that were shipped from the factory to the Bay area in the fall of 1967. I purchased this car in Sacramento, California in 2005, and drove it to White Rock, without incident. When I purchased the car, there was an identical car in the club, with the exact same colour scheme inside and out, and it turned out that it was the previous car in the production run.
This car was awarded a Silver Concours at the 1988 Rippling River West Coast Meet, when it was owned by Jim Briske, the previous owner. From the records that Jim provided to me, I am the fifth owner of the car since new, and aside from a respray, it remains an original car. For that reason, I have kept to keeping the car as original as possible, refreshing such things as the hood (I still have the original), replacing the exhaust with Stainless, replacing the servo with one that is as close as I could find to the factory spec servo, refreshing the brake system, and many other items over the years. My current project is replacing the steering wheel, shifter knob to match the dash, and restoring the dash, keeping as much of the original trim as I could, and replacing switches as needed with OEM parts I was able to locate. I learned the hard way that I must maintain this car to a level that it is always as dependable as possible, Karen and I experienced a few occasions in my former BN7 that I would like to forget as the car always seemed to fail me at the worst possible times. May this car always remain my cruiser on the open highway.
I am very fortunate that Karen is familiar with Healeys, and we have taken the car on many trips over the years to many meets, including Nelson, Tri-Cities, Silverdale, Union, Whistler, Harrison, Parksville, Penticton and other places and events in between.