Around the shop – Page 27

The Eagle Has Landed!

July 15, 2022 by bugeyeguy

Last December, I announced at our company holiday party that I had purchased the first production Bugeye Sprite. Never did I imagine that we wouldn’t be opening the box with this car in it until mid-July 2022, but here we are! Seven-plus months after its journey began, AN5L/501 has arrived, and this special Sprite does not disappoint.

501 is a car that has been restored to Concours condition while also being made into a driver at the same time. This is perhaps one of the best interiors we’ve seen in a Frogeye, one that is both accurate and usable. The builder of the tunnel mat included the ribs that would’ve come on the original rubber mat on the tunnel into a hardura piece and did so with great skill and artistry. Many other small details involving the interior were done with the utmost precision, as well.

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Shelby Says Sayonara!

June 24, 2022 by bugeyeguy

Shelby is ready to depart!

It’s always particularly special when we get a car back in our shop that we previously prepared because the car inevitably leaves with new improvements each time through. In this case, Shelby has been here for two prior owners and now is ready for Vernon in Oklahoma, the third owner to push the car to new heights.

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When Bad Things Happen to good Bugeyes

June 17, 2022 by bugeyeguy

From our “never seen this before” department, here’s something ugly we found this past week. As ugly as this situation was, this car has actually been this way for a lot of miles.

On this particular Bugeye, the car has been driving with no rear washer on the control arm mount. This allowed the control arm to wiggle in its mount! That’s not desirable because it results in alignment changes with every bump and turn, and a less than stable front suspension. It’s amazing that there were no real issues as a result of this omission; I can assure you the suspension is much tighter now that we’ve installed the proper control arm washer and bushings in their rightful places!

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Being A Little Nosy

June 17, 2022 by bugeyeguy

Nose jobs are a part of our daily routine.

Every Bugeye nose has been through the war and has been smashed in its own unique way. Bonnets don’t usually fit the way we might like, and so we have all sorts of tricks to try to get them back into shape so they look good on the front of your Sprite.

One of the drastic measures we sometimes need is to cut off the mounting receptacles that live on the front frame horns. This is often necessary when the bonnet “chin” (beneath the grill) gets pushed aft from a hit and the locking pins cannot be engaged in the receptacles on the frame horn. By moving the actual receptacle on the horn it’s sometimes much easier than to reshape the bottom of the front of the nose (and the resulting body and paint work).

Sometimes these frame horns are bent from even the slightest previously unreported fender-bender. This causes the pegs for the bonnet to no longer line up and create all sorts of headaches.

And that’s exactly what we’ve done here for “Benji,” a car that we’re preparing for Steve in West Virginia. In this case, we sliced off the mounting flanges from the frame horns to move them aft just enough so that the cones on the nose could engage properly when the nose was lowered. This is a bit of a drastic measure, but it’s something that we often have to do to get these noses to open and close and lock properly, which is critical so that you have a nice parallel line at the “A”pillar, where the nose/wing meets the body of the car.

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The Quest For Gold!

June 10, 2022 by bugeyeguy

As I write this, AN5L 501 should be loaded on its second container ship and on its way from Cartagena, Columbia, to Edison, New Jersey, where we can retrieve it after the long voyage from Australia and begin our quest for concours gold! The gold medal we seek will (hopefully) come when we bring the car to the Austin-Healey Club Enclave in the Pocono Mountains this September, where the car is entered in the Concours judging competition. Our goal at this event is to attain “gold” certification which means that out of 1000 possible points, we are able to attain 950 or more, as determined by a team of four judges and a roughly two-hour stem-to-stern inspection.

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All about the “L”, Part 2

June 10, 2022 by bugeyeguy

You may not remember that I had a chance to buy AN5L 501 in about 2012. At that time, the car was a basket case. It was also located in California, so I was not able to physically inspect it, nor did I have an abundance of photographs. There was also an additional anomaly… the number plate. The vin plate pictured above read “AN5 501.” But left-hand drive cars for export were all supposed to include an “L”(for left-hand drive) after the AN5.

This car was stamped as if it was a right-hand drive car, yet it was configured as a left-hand drive car. All documentation stated that the first production Frogeye was built for the USA market, so there should’ve been an “L” stamped into the number plate. Everything else (that I could see) checked-out on the car, but this numbering issue was unsettling, especially once I factored in the magnitude of work that lay ahead and the (at the time) outrageous price that was being requested for such a rough car; so I passed. (See my prior post about the number plate by clicking here.)

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