Okay, my 2 cents worth......
Having owned and restored many big Healeys over the years, including a BJ7
for about 2 years, and a BT7 II tricarb for 9 years (both drivers) I must
comment about a few issues here.
The BT7 II had its factory original top and sidescreens and simply did not
leak...anywhere. We've driven that car in some incredible rain storms, and
with my wife being well in tune with the procedure to put up a top and fit
sidescreens, we could assemble the whole thing together completely in about
90 seconds.
The tricarb setup was not an issue whatsoever, having been rebuilt and
properly set up. Each spring it was a simple matter of undoing the 3 suction
chambers, wiping things out to clean any residue collected since the
previous spring, add the dashpot oil, check the idle balance with a piece of
tubing....which never seemed to change or need adjustment, and carry on for
another season of trouble free driving.
The car was late enough that it had the centre shift gearbox, and it never
gave any troubles either. Oh yes, and the tricarb always gave much better
gas mileage than any other 6 cylinder model. Having been on a number of long
distance trips with other Healeys, one time we kept track of our mileages,
all running together, straight highway between fill ups. The tricarb would
get a consistant 27 MPG, while a BN6 was giving about 20, an early BN7 was
giving about 23 and a BJ8 about 24. These were all with stock diffs and
overdrives.
Now to the BJ7.
Though a very nice car, it always had a lot of places to leak around all the
bits of roll up window seals that never quite sealed well. In the rain, when
making a right turn, the water would pour in the area of the left forward
quarter vent to top seal, and vice versa for a left turn. No amount of
adjustments or seal replacements would seem to remedy the problem.
One nice feature was the fact that on a really hot blistering sunny day,
actually putting the top up, the rear window could be uncliped to allow nice
flow through ventillation .
There was no appreciable improvement in performance, likely due to the fact
that the BJ7 was a somewhat heavier car than the BT7.
Finally, as another lister mentioned, the roadster lines are so much lower,
nicer and cleaner, and my BT7 hardtop transformed the car into a
delightfully snug litle coupe.
Given equal choice between these two, I'll take the BT7 every time.
Rich Chrysler
> On 7/19/06, D HALL <dthall@btinternet.com> wrote:
>> Hi everybody; I am actually in the process of deciding between a BT7 and
>> a
> BJ7. Whilst I appreciate that both have got disadvantages and advantages,
> if
> they were both inthe same state of health, what would you choose? I just
> want a decent motor that I can restore and get some fun from it. Best
> regards David Hall
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