2025 January Meeting Notes

St Johns Austin-Healey Club
Jacksonville, Florida

a chapter of the

Austin-Healey Club of America

St. Johns Austin Healey Club Member Meeting Minutes for Jan. 6, 2025

In our first member meeting since Nov. 4, 13 club members gathered at the home of Ben and Lisa Procter in Palencia Monday evening. Again taking the reins as club president was Mike Foster, who has previously led the club for two years and presided at the meeting that began at 7:25 p.m. In addition to the Procters and Mike, those attending included Bill Young, our immediate past president and a founder of the now 50-year-old SJAHC and wife Judy, Bill and Char Maroney, Dave and Angela Morton, Bob Pippin, Tony Martini, Erling Onsager and Ron Keysor.

Mike thanked Bill Young for his two-year stewardship and 50 years of participation. He also thanked the Procters for hosting the gathering. The couple likewise had provided their home for the club’s 2023 Christmas Holiday celebration.

The minutes of the Nov. 4 meeting were approved and Treasurer Paul Sandefer’s monthly financial report was given. The club’s bank balance at the end of December was $xxxxx, an increase of $200 from the previous month. This money was in the form of member dues reimbursed to us by our parent national organization, the Austin Healey Club of America (AHCA). Paul was not present last night as he had another obligation.

Membership chair and world traveler Bill Maroney said that just 28 members have renewed membership at this point (membership in 2024 was 36, with two of those local club members). He provided some detail about his well-recognized diligence in encouraging those who haven’t responded to do that.

Bill Young, who succeeds Rick Stevenson as club delegate to the AHCA, said Steve Bell, who hold the title of “Regalia Coordinator” for that national organization has offered to attend a SJAHC member meeting to experience how we operate. He happens to be a Florida resident, Port Charlotte. Members agreed that Bill should tell Steve his presence at a future gathering is very welcome.

Among the other topics were the annual St. Valentine’s Day luncheon, site and other details still in the planning, and a shop meet scheduled for the morning of Thursday, Jan. 16, at the Mandarin home of Bob Pippin. Bob, by the way, is the co-chair with Tony Martini of the club’s activities planning. It was assumed that issues Bob experienced with his Healey’s brakes addressed at a shop session last year had been solved, but not so. Possibly the (front only) brake rotors on his car have glazed, it was suggested, so he will be buying a new pair that will be installed (if they arrive in time). Members will receive email updates this as on all planned club activities in advance but closer to the event dates, or that is our intention.

The next club meeting is set for 6:30 p.m on Monday, Feb. 3, at Fionn MacCool’s Irish Pub located at 145 Hilden Road, Ponte Vedra. This restaurant been favorably mentioned after hosting previous club dinner meetings and is located in a small shopping center just off U.S. Hwy. 1. That choice was suggested by Dave Morton, our club’s new vice president.

Finally, there was the opportunity to discuss car issues. In this case it was Ron Keysor’s ’60 BN7, the victim of a series of breakdown traumas, the last on Sept. 27 when a recently installed PerTronix ignition unit expired on the drive through Green Cove Springs. The owner/driver was heading for a club luncheon at St. Mary’s Seafood in the vicinity of World Golf Village, Costco, etc. The PerTronix unit that had been in the car for the 12 years of ownership had more conveniently failed while the car was being backed out of the garage in Orange Park hard by the St. Johns River a couple of weeks earlier. This was possibly because the owner had negligently, knowing better, left the ignition turned on overnight a month or two previous while fussing with an electrical problem.

Enter Bill Young, who knows a bit about both Healeys and electrical stuff. He first tested and established that both presumed dead PerTronix units were indeed. He then resolved to put a standard set of ignition points in the car. Ignition points, everyone familiar with them knows, gradually pit and eventually require replacement. But they don’t die instantly without hope of a fix like happens with electronic units, even those as widely used as are PerTronix fitments.

Bill’s immediate challenge was finding replacement for the little electrical bits missing from the BN7’s distributor. All of the fittings found in an original distributor, not just the points, were absent on this car. With a PerTronix there are just two bits, a couple of small screws and two wires exiting the distributor through a grommeted hole thence to the coil. Along with getting the missing parts, Bill found the BN7’s distributor did not take the standard Healey points, in this case using an elliptical screw for adjustment. After solving these issues, including making two long trips from Switzerland (not that Switzerland) to Orange Park, the maestro got the points replaced, a 40-amp breaker switch that had somehow detonated someplace in this trail of puzzling incidents, and the car runs perfectly. Ron said thanks to Bill and hopes he is grateful for the opportunity to write still another article for the AHCA publication, Healey Marque.

(And further to this long blab, Keysor offers for sale a Powerspark Standard Electronic Distributor he acquired for about $150 including delivery from a firm by that name in Staffordshire, UK, a couple of months ago. This is a complete, brand new, electronic Healey distributor. Unused!! And likely made in China. $100! )

And by the way, the meeting adjourned at 8:25 as members resumed chatting and enjoying the ample refreshments provided by the meeting hosts.

-30-

R.Keysor, secretary.