An often-overlooked and challenging aspect of body work on a Bugeye involves the body seams on the nose and back deck. The beading strip along the top fills the seam between the fenders and the center sections of the body, and these strips are often damaged or corroded. Before paint, these pieces have to be right. They have a factory profile (shown below) and it is nice to restore that original look. Make sure your body shop doesn’t sand the top of these strips as they will quickly lose their factory profile.
In addition to the long pieces on the tops of the panels, shorter pieces were used to cover seams below the tail lights in the rear and below the marker lights and turn signals both front and rear. This covered every seam running down both sides of the car.
The only real reason this would be missing is if it were damaged or removed in the restoration process. Sometimes it’s ground off on purpose; some Bugeye owners like the look of seams that have been totally welded shut and do it on purpose. Sometimes we even find cars with the short pieces under the marker lights missing, casualties of prior body repair. While you can do this, we prefer to leave the beading installed as it was intended, and now we offer a kit that can help you do the same!
Our new full body beading kit provides you with enough T-shaped beading to re-seam the entire car! Included in the listing is several photos of everywhere the beading goes. You’ll have to cut the pieces to length yourself, as each car may have slightly different measurements; be sure to measure twice and cut once! You can find the full beading kit here. If you need to replace a missing section, we also offer single sticks and half sticks of the beading material, which you can find here.
