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(if a car is not pictured here, it has been sold)

Don’t do this to your Bugeye Sprite!

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We had a 1275 “A” series engine come to the shop attached to a Bugeye this week that was making an unfamiliar grinding noise that got a little bit worse when you stepped on the clutch. We determined that it was coming from the bell housing and figured there was a clutch issue.

We were also having irregular difficulty starting the car, and we were suspicious that something in the engine was binding. Much to our surprise, when we removed the bell housing we found the flywheel ring gear displaced on the flywheel. The ring gear had become a saw that was grinding into the oil pump cover.

We’ve never seen this sort of problem before. A new flywheel and oil pump cover fixed the problem and the engine is going back together next week.

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Let Bugeyeguys sort your online auction purchase!

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This car came to us after its owner got the high bid on a popular online auction site. We have been going through it for them for the past few weeks in an effort to make it roadworthy!

2023 will probably be written about as the year that online auctions became an even more massive force in classic car sales. More new online platforms are emerging every month for people to purchase antique cars, sight unseen, while relying on social media to vet their vehicles.

This windshield crack was disclosed in the auction. It looked fine, but the car is not really drivable without repair, which we’ll handle for the new owner.
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Oil Toil

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It seems that no matter how hard we try, every classic English sports car leaks oil. I’ve seen many forum posts over the years where people claim to make a leak-free car, and certainly some of them leak very little, but it just seems inevitable that these old cars will leak, no matter how hard you try. And even if you stop them from leaking, it seems just a matter of time before they start leaking once again.

In this post, I wanted to show you some photos of a particular Bugeye engine that just arrived in our shop. This one is leaking more than usual, and in this case it makes a lot of sense to try to reduce or stop the leaking all together. (We’re always optimistic, but we’re also realistic).

Of note in this case is the head gasket leak. We’ve added ultraviolet dye to this engine, so you see a bright green trace wherever there are leaks (a UV kit makes it easy to see exactly where we have leaks). Take a look at the green trace on the left side of the engine. This is directly in line with the oil galley that feeds the head up through the rocker arm pedestal, and the oil as it travels from the block up to the head sometimes leaks at this location. Unfortunately, once it starts leaking, you have to change the head gasket.

We will remove the head to inspect. it could be a bad head gasket or the head is not flat (or block) or too much combustion pressure with an excessively high compression ratio, for example. Or maybe the oil pressure relief valve is not working or set too high… these are all things we will investigate when we get the engine out of the car.

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Contact us at customercare@bugeyeguys.com or call (203)-208-0980 Monday - Friday | 8 am - 5 p.m. EST