ROGER SIELING’s reply about the Falcon Sprite’s steering wheel, and other progress he has made:
“The wheel that is on the Sprite is the wheel that was on the car the car when it was found in the farm field in 1971. It was originally a wood rim wheel, but the wood rim was badly damaged and mostly gone. The rim was badly damaged and bent out of shape. I found and bought a leather lace on that I sewed on a few stitches at a time. I had finished the stitching job on that wheel by early 1974 and I fitted it onto my Bugeye, but I was not happy with it and promptly went back to the stock Sprite wheel”.
“1990 found me stripping apart the Falcon Sprite and for the next 3 years, my Saturday warm weather ritual was a 40 mile bike ride and then home to clean, prep and paint Sprite parts”. I think it was 2007 when I took the Sprite’s nose to a friend with the idea we’d cut out the bad parts of the body, fit it into his mold for his Mk1 Elva, but after that didn’t work, I took him the whole chassis and some pieces I made to inset into his mold to handle the fact his mold had no provision for head lamps and the bonnet opening was much shorter than the Sprite. This took a while to get everything lined up, but you’ve seen photos of the two body panels side by side. Steady slow progress continued until the accident in 2014 that set my world upside down. But progress continued.
The purpose of this biography was to give you an idea that things work out. I have a friend who is into pre-war Rolls and he introduced me to the shop who did the final work on the body. I am very pleased with his work. I am left w/ some smoothing and surface prep before paint and moving on the engine. The original LeMans block is not going to be usable, so we are going ahead to use my old autocross Bugeye block. That way, I can build around a replacement 948 block w/ a steel red crankshaft I’ve had since 1969. But this way I can utilize the LeMans head and 1-1/2″ SUs and matching intake“.
MICHAEL LEMPERT ON THE FALCON SPRITE STEERING WHEEL:
” The Falcon started with a wood rimmed wheel and quickly changed to another very similar wheel. The were made by Bluemel’s. It was the same wheel used by Morgan and the ’62 Plus 4 TOK 258. It was around 16.5”. The exact same wheel was later fitted to the Sprite Sebring cars but in a reduced 15.5” diameter. A version of it was also sold through the Healey Sprite tuning catalog. The wheel on the car now is a Carlotti wood rimmed wheel. It has the leather wrap because all Carlotti wheels had their rims fall off. That’s another story. I only know of one steering wheel of the larger size with mount for Sprite. Obviously, it parted from the car at some point before or after it was abandoned in the field. I knew a fellow who said he had it (he was in the north-east) and sold it on eBay to a fellow in Japan. I stumbled across the fellow in Japan and have pictures from him of the wheel. I am as certain as anyone could be that it is the same wheel. I don’t expect the fellow to part with it.”
Mike Lempert Wheels
