This is “Molly,” our 245th Bugeye, and this weekend she departs on a big adventure. Amanda and Vic have flown in from Texas and they will begin their drive from to Connecticut to Austin this Sunday. This will be the second longest maiden voyage a customer has made in their new Bugeye. (Rick drove his from our shop to Seattle by way of Arizona, and he holds the record).
This reliability run puts our departure checklist to the test. We carefully combed through this car all week long to make sure no stone was unturned. We checked everything, and then checked it again. When we were all done, the charging system smoked on the final test drive!
Argh!
The regulator points stuck closed despite the fact that we had checked and cleaned them earlier in the week. Regardless, the smoke came out.
The best reliability solution we have is to upgrade to a genernator, which is what you see installed above. Along with it, we installed a dummy regulator (below), which is really a 50 amp fused junction box. That should be the last time the charging system fails, now that the offending Lucas regulator is banished for ever. Click here if you want a genernator for your car too!
We’ll have updates next week regardling Molly’s 2000 mile. We’ll keep you posted!
