Around the shop – Page 24

Once Upon a Time…

March 3, 2023 by bugeyeguy

Once upon a time, before the invention of cable television and Internet grocery shopping, human beings would routinely go outside, hook up a flat tow bar to the family station wagon, and drag their sports car to the race track for a weekend of fun. At the track, they’d remove their windscreen, tape-up the headlights, put some more air in the bias plies, don a helmet (one with perhaps less protection offered than a modern bicycle helmet), and head-out onto the track to test the bond between man and machine.

Vacaville, Vineland, Bridgehampton, Road America, & Mid-Ohio were all popular destinations. It was easy to be an amateur racer back in the day; there was little barrier for entry. Whether you had a TR3, Lotus Eleven, or a Bugeye Sprite, you were eligible and welcome to compete.

The halcyon days of sports car competition are in the rear view mirror, but they are fondly remembered even today; even if you weren’t there with your own car, or a kid following around your dad in the paddock, you’re still a vintage racer at heart, and you understand.

Our new Vintage Racer shirts are inspired by an actual weekend in July, 1958. On that day, the racers and spectators scattered about the field probably didn’t think it was a particularly special moment in history. It was just another fun weekend to kick the tires and light the fires… but to us, that was a moment in history that means a whole lot.

This is the 1958 poster that inspired our new shirts

July 6, 1958 was just a few months after the launch of the very first production Sprite (AN5L/501), and thus the Frogeye was still quite novel, which makes the car’s appearance on the poster (that inspired these shirts) all the more special!

Click the image (or click here) to order

Celebrate with us by pre-ordering your very own vintage racer t-shirt. Choose from crew neck or long sleeve varieties. Shirts will be available to ship in 4 to 6 weeks. Click the photo above to reserve yours today and let your racing spirit shine!

Click the image or click here to order your long sleeve Vintage Racer shirt

Bugeyeguys new product showcase: “Leaf” spring box rust behind!

February 24, 2023 by bugeyeguy

New product alert!

64 years of a spring box open to the elements created this tapestry of oxidation and crud that ruined not only the leaf springs, but also damaged the spring boxes.

A common ailment regarding the rear suspensions on Bugeyes (and other 1/4-elliptic Spridgets) is the penetration of moisture, dirt, road grime, and road salt in the spring boxes, causing scenes like the one depicted above of incredibly rusty (and structurally compromised) leaf springs, and, in some cases, completely rusted out spring boxes. This is a vulnerability on all Bugeyes, whether restored, all original, or modified. Now, we finally have a solution available to help curb this problem.

Our NEW Spring Box Dust Shields will help keep debris out of your spring box and prolong the life of your leaf springs… and floors!

We are pleased to be able to offer in our parts catalog our NEW Spring Box Dust Shields! These dust shields will cover the open backside of the spring boxes on your Bugeye (or any early Spridget with 1/4-elliptical leaf springs), keeping debris out of the area. This will prolong the life of suspension components like mounting plates, U-bolts, and the leaf springs themselves, as well as reduce the likelihood of cancerous corrosion taking hold in the floors around the spring box! Each plate is made from stainless steel to be corrosion resistant, so no worry about the covers rusting!

In the photos above, you can see the new plates in action. We have found that each spring box is in a slightly different position relative to bracketry surrounding the area, so you will have to trim one of the “ears” on the plate to fit into the opening properly. This can easily be done with a cutoff wheel or similar device; once the initial fitment is complete, installation is a breeze! Just remove the u-bolt securing your spring, slide this plate in until flush with the rear bulkhead of the car, re-install the u-bolt and tighten. That’s it!

Get your pair by clicking here or visit our parts catalog for all your Spridget suspension needs!

Nick’s Tech Tips: Rubbing your nose raw!

February 24, 2023 by bugeyeguy

Follow your nose!

We recently had this green Bugeye brought into our shop for service, and on a test drive it exhibited a rattle coming from the front of the car. This is not uncommon among Bugeyes that come through our doors; 60-plus year old British cars sometimes make noises like that, and our job is to investigate where they come from and see if we can do anything to mitigate them. In this instance, upon lifting the bonnet we found a smoking gun that led us to the culprit.

If you see a mark like this on the inside of your nose, check your clearances and inspect your nose bits!

When we opened the bonnet, we saw a rub mark on the aluminum radiator (circled in the below photo). There was a corresponding rub mark on the underside of the bonnet, in between the headlight buckets (circled in the above photo). Our aluminum radiators are designed to fit in exactly the correct location as the factory radiators; they aren’t any taller or wider than a stock brass radiator. So why did the bonnet and radiator make contact on this particular car?

Well, there are a couple of reasons this could be. The most common seems to be that almost every Bugeye that comes in here has been in some kind of fender-bender, accident, or has otherwise been the victim of some kind of damaging event that bends parts of the front end, such as the front frame horns, where the radiator mounts. These are sometimes bent upwards, creating a scenario where the radiator could realistically hit the nose. However, in this instance, the answer was much simpler.

There are six main components to the latching mechanism on a Bugeye’s bonnet. Potentially the most important ones are the bonnet locating pegs. These pegs are fitted to the underside of the bonnet and are designed to fit into two corresponding holes on each frame horn, which guide the nose into its moorings and help center it on the car. For some reason, on this Bugeye, these pegs were missing entirely! Not only would this create an issue with centering the nose, but it also made the nose sit about an inch lower than it would with the proper pieces in place, creating the rubbing issue we saw on this car.

A pair of properly installed bonnet locating pegs, as seen on Seabiscuit.

The bonnet peg locating hole, where the bonnet peg rests.

The moral of this story is: check your clearances! When installing a radiator on your Bugeye, it’s worth taking the time to lay down a small piece of masking tape at the highest point on the tank, closing the bonnet fully, and then opening the bonnet again. If the tape has a mark on it or looks like it has been pinched between the bonnet and the radiator, then your part will rub and adjustments will need to be made, either to the height of the radiator or the height of the bonnet. And make sure your bonnet pegs are intact!

Should you be missing your bonnet pegs, or any other bonnet fastening part, check out our parts catalog or click on the photos below to get the parts you need today!

False start=rear end

February 17, 2023 by bugeyeguy

This is a post about safety for your body, (and your Bugeye’s body too)!

For years, I’ve been inviting our customers to take responsibility their rear end (and for the car following behind). That sounds like an audacious presumption, since there are lots of idiots on the road and we can’t be responsible for what’s in the rear view mirror, but that is exactly my point. They are out there and (potentially) aiming at you– so please pay attention, and you have a fighting chance of staying out of harm’s way. If this sounds like an annoying and unreasonable task, stay with me on this, it doesn’t have to be… it has become second nature for me to “watch my six,” and hopefully it will also become easy and second nature for you too!

This is what a Bugeye repair (not by us) looks like. Even a slow-speed hit can stove-in your rear end, and in this case, a tremendous amount of dollying was required to straighten it out. And lots of filler too (which was just removed on this car for another go at making it straight…

The energy relationship between a Bugeye and an F150, for example, is always going to be more impactful than if you’re driving late model car. That is to say, the crash protection on the back of a Bugeye is nonexistent, and modern SUVs and trucks can significantly damage the back end of a Sprite, sometimes to the point of totaling the car, even in a low speed crash. So it’s really critical to be mindful of your rear view mirror any time you step on the brake pedal in a Sprite (or in any car, for that matter).

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Don’t do this to your Bugeye Sprite!

February 17, 2023 by bugeyeguy

Check-out these cracked/broken control arms, the likes of which we have never seen before. Please take a minute and run-out to the garage to look at yours to make sure you don’t have this issue. Every Sprite and Midget should be checked.

This is likely an isolated incident… was this Evil Knievel’s car? Did she roll off a tow truck? Or were these parts somehow damaged by excessively tight straps in a transport truck? Maybe these arms were already broken when removed from a crashed wreck for this disk brake conversion some time ago. Regardless, this is a serious issue that we hope is isolated to just this one particular car. Please let us know if you find any cracks on your car.

This Bugeye was brought to us for sorting after purchase in an online auction. Auction pictures don’t always tell the whole story, and the peanut gallery watching and commenting on the auction doesn’t always catch serious issues.

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Lawton leaves for camp!

February 17, 2023 by bugeyeguy

I’m always amazed at how difficult it is to get a sold car out of our building. I suppose most people in the automotive industry are anxious to get vehicles out the door immediately after a sale, but in our world it seems quite the opposite. We want to make absolutely certain that every broken thing has been discussed (and hopefully addressed) before we ship a car. We are dedicated to continuous improvement.

It’s common for online car purchases from others to arrive with a long list of problems, and we work very hard to make sure that our product arrives with no problems and works properly. We’re not perfect, and not everybody wants to invest in all the repairs that we suggest, but we work very hard to keep refining our pre-departure processes and to keep making our cars wonderful.

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