It is no small feat to restore any automobile from the ground-up. The Frogeye Sprite unibody tub (or monocoque for our friends across the Big Pond) is a stout little foundation, but that doesn’t stop these little buggers from taking abuse. After roughly 65 years, one accumulates lots of scars.
This car featured here is no exception. It looked like a pretty sound car with its peeling paint attached, but once we blasted the structure and removed all the paint and filter, we were left with quite a massive project. Most of these cars need floor work and other structural work to the floor pan, and this tub was no different. Several layers of floor were present on this one and they all needed to be removed before the repairs could commence.
Many of these cars also need rocker panels, as this one did.
This car also needed a lot of gap adjusting to make sure the doors would fit nicely with uniform gaps. The pictures below show how one of the door gaps was massaged into position; this has to be done for both gaps on both doors.
This car also had a massive hit in the right rear corner that dislocated the license plate depression in the back of the car. Filler was used to fill the void from the prior repair, so we cut out everything. We cut out the crumpled up trunk floor in that area as well, and then welded in all new sections to bring this car back into spec. Click “read more” to see the process in action!
Restoring a Bugeye tub is a massive undertaking, particularly when you also fill all the errant holes and smooth any wrinkles on panels throughout the car. Sequential pictures of how we’ve addressed gaps and bumps and things to make this car wonderful once again tell the story. Soon it will enjoy a massive body work smoothing, which is to say that the fabrication work going on now will next get coated with primer, sanded, and filled as needed to bring every curve into compliance and sculpted into the perfect shape so that the final paint can go on. Then we will begin assembly.
When you see how much work goes into just laying down the foundation, you can start to understand why ground-up restoration can get expensive in a hurry! And still, we celebrate every day the fact that we have the opportunity to turn this car into another rolling piece of art.
It all starts with the fabrication work that you see in the photos in this post. Check out some of them above and take a look at the slideshow below for all of the pictures we have so far!
