Future Barn Finds

by Jake Voelckers

Fall started a few weeks early in 2023. That’s when my brothers, Adam and Evan, and I started discussing our second annual trip home to New York. Last year was the first time we met up there in the fall, just us, at our childhood home. We planned to gather parts we needed from the British car boneyard, take some fall pictures, and spend real quality time together.

This year was going to be a bit different. Someone hatched the idea of clearing out “The Barn” and using it to store cars we planned to work on and get running.

The long-term goal we’re working toward involves “snaking” cars. To do this, each of us needs a running car in New York that we can drive through the countryside whenever we’re there together. Snaking is the term we coined for driving British cars down the road in succession. Western New York has some great snaking roads, especially in the fall.

The short-term steps toward the goal, however, were daunting. The Barn. No one ever really went to the back of it because it was full of stuff our dad stored there. In fact, it was difficult to get past the first ten feet. No lights. Broken glass. A pile of TR7 intake manifolds. A-series engines strewn about. Spitfire gearbox housings. Essentially, garbage. Single shoe-wide trails between piles of rusty metal that would reach out and snag your clothing.

The Barn is a 30×50-foot old pole barn that came with the 200-year-old farmhouse we grew up in. Concrete floor, metal roof, high walls. Full. We were going to reclaim it together.

The day arrived when my son Nick and I drove up from Virginia, while Adam picked up Evan at the airport in Philadelphia. They were headed to New York to load up the first car that would make it to The Barn: a 1980 MGB LE with 8K miles. Two others were also en-route via car transporters: a ’76 Jensen GT and a ’69 MGC roadster. The last two cars were already in New York at British Auto: a ’54 Austin-Healey and a ’69 MGC GT.

All five cars needed a home in The Barn. We were only in town for about five days. It had to happen.

Clearing Out and Cramming In
There was a lot of pre-planning, but some work we did on the fly. All of it was done together, which was the best part. Quality time as brothers, and a great opportunity for my son to be around his uncles. We dug in on day two and made some good initial progress. The weather held out for the first few days as we filled up the dumpster. We hauled out stripped B-series engine blocks, TR7 motors, 40 propane tanks, a washing machine, 100 canning jars, stacks of old shipping boxes, and so much other stuff. Evan rented a front-end loader to help fill up the dumpster, which Adam used to pull out a tree that was bothering him near the front door.

While Adam and Evan organized metal shelves with good car parts into the now cleaner back of The Barn, Nick and I worked on the electrical. The Barn had lights, but they hadn’t worked in years. He and I drew up a new circuit to install ceiling lights and drops for electrical outlets. We wired it so The Barn could run off a generator. Nick spent a lot of time 12 feet in the air pulling cable and installing junction boxes.

Mid-day on day three, I took a break from cleaning and headed down to the shop mailbox to pick up a package. Weeks earlier, Adam had found some NOS Austin dealer key fobs in Nebraska on Craigslist.

I worked it out with the seller, and he agreed to ship them to New York. He said that his mom had worked at a Leyland dealership back in the day and these ended up at his house. He had four left, one for each of us. Evan has a BN4 and got the square Austin-Healey one. Adam has been looking for an Austin America, that one was his. I got the bullet style with wings. Nick doesn’t have a Bugeye yet, but maybe someday—he got the Sprite fob. Something for each of us to take home and remember what we did together on this trip.

The Finds
With power, light, and space in The Barn on the evening of day five, we finally started arranging cars inside. The MGC GT had a locked rear wheel, and was generally a pain to push, but it made it in. The Healey rolled in and did multi-point turns to get angled right between poles—having no engine made it easier. The Jensen drove in and leaked brake fluid all over the floor from a blown front line. The MGC roadster joined the herd, and the LE made it in early the following morning. Plenty of room, plenty of hands to make it happen.

We’re always on the lookout for barn cars and we do run across some occasionally. The Healey came from a barn where it was stored for years. The LE was also like that, stored but maintained. Amazingly, it started up with some fresh gas. A true 8,000-mile car. The running joke is that we’re creating future barn finds with all of these cars but nobody will want them! It’s a weird assortment of semi-uncommon cars, but we all like them. It’s a common interest we were raised with and still share. The time spent together, laughing at and ripping on the short-comings of British cars, and trolling for rare parts to make them better is special, irreplaceable.

Our dad owned British Auto for over 30 years and we each spent time with him there, learning to work on and love these cars, and to deal with the stuff that would come into the shop. These days, I try to include my kids in helping with the cars when they’re willing. I hope one day they’ll have genuine interest in having one of their own and the tradition will continue. These cars are a great way for a dad to connect with his kids, and for brothers to stay close.

The Jensen

By Adam & Evan Voelckers

Evan noticed the Jensen GT one day. He thinks it winked at him and their long-distance relationship began. Even though it was located several states away, he kept an eye on the Jensen for over a year, occasionally talking to the owner and getting to know it little by little. He played with the idea of owning such a unique car, letting the idea take root, until he knew he had to have it. He purchased the GT sight unseen as sort of a mail-order arrangement, and their courtship officially began.

As a teenager, Evan remembered our dad mentioning that there was a hatchback version of a Jensen Healey with a 5-speed transmission. The vision of that car stuck with him. One evening, after being camped at a desk all day, he found himself trolling for British car projects and stumbled across the Jensen GT. The car was a running, driving example which had not been restored or messed with. However, the car had serious rust issues. Evan didn’t care. He wanted to get the unique bird, tweak the carbs and let her rip, tater chip. And that is exactly what he did after spending a few hours in the car drinking hard seltzers and fantasizing about a sleeper Jensen GT with a turbo configuration slapped on from a later Lotus. After replacing the rear float chamber valve, both carb diaphragms, then a bit of tuning, the 16V Lotus engine was ready to be redlined until the timing belt snapped. Evan wanted to see what the aluminum four-cylinder engine would do, so he slapped the temporary Utah registration on the car and blew out of the driveway down an old country road with his foot to the floor. The engine sounded great and was eager to move the shooting brake along. He felt bad asking the car to wake up too quickly, but also knew of the intangible relationship between man and machine. The car ran great and continued to surprise him. For the next two days he tinkered and drove the car around Upstate New York. The car now sleeps in The Barn and will be receiving two 40 DCOE carburetors the next time he’s back. Perhaps he can ask a little more of it. Time will tell.