Around the shop – Page 36

A fully-restored Bugeye that will never leak oil! Video!

October 9, 2020 by bugeyeguy

This beautiful 1960 Sprite is now ready for delivery! And it performs just as the new owner intended, with zero horsepower, a zero-speed transmission and no brakes! And it will never leak oil!

This Bugeye is now a very fancy piece of furniture that will be entombed in a Condo common room in New Jersey, and before you cry “sacrilege,” know that this particular Bugeye was left to rot in the weeds, full of snow, and beyond repair when we acquired it. If you look at the guys hanging their heads in the photo below, the sentiment at the start of this project was “you’re crazy!”

But watch this! Here’s what became of this wreck!

You can see the painted tub below, after a lot of cutting and welding, as well as new floor pans.

The apartment building design team hopes that millennials will use the car for selfies, so perhaps this car will be the star of a future viral video. We built it for maximum traffic, and took off anything that can fall off, wear off, or get damaged. We anticipate a lot of traffic in and out of the car, and we are hopeful this little Bugeye will introduce a lot of new young people to the hobby we all hold so dear.

The car may not have a drive train, but the LED lights look like a fusion reactor, and this was a fun part of the project for us. We have shot hundreds of floor pan photos over the years, but this is the first one illuminated in this way! One 110 plug hangs down by the gas tank, and will plug into a floor outlet underneath the car when it is finally sited in the new building.

We’ll install this car in the Condo in Edison, New Jersey in the coming week, and we’ll get you more pictures as the display is unveiled!

If you want to build your own piece of Bugeye “furniture,” the car below is available, and ready for LED lights and more! Call or email if you are interested in acquiring the rough project car below…

Media blasted restoration in progress

September 11, 2020 by bugeyeguy

This is the TJ’s family Bugeye. We have the car here from Reno for a complete restoration. This is a one-family car that was originally purchased in England new by TJ’s Grandfather and used to tour Europe with TJ’s dad and siblings in the “back seat,” after grandpa had the rear deck cut-out to make more room for the kids.

Note also the special side markers added on the corners of the fenders. These were added when the car was last restored. Grandson TJ has asked that we leave the park lights in place and also leave the cut out in the rear deck, as it these features are a big part of the family memories.

The car looks reasonably solid in the photos above and this is why I have posted a large photo album below. Take a look at what was revealed once the car was media blasted. Much of the car and old repairs were blasted away!

This is one of the big challenges with restoration. To do it right, you have to remove everything before you can get started. And generally, that opens a big can of worms. I’m not sure if anyone in TJ’s family realized how many repairs were done last time the car was painted (which might have been in the 60s).

Now, we will weld shut all these holes and start the process over again. Many of the old repairs were loaded with filler, which was blasted away. We’ll use more sheet metal for a lasting job that will look better next time the car is blasted (in 100 years?)!

Media and sand blasting a tub provides the best foundation for new sealants and paint. The tub is blasted naked, and then immediately coated with epoxy primer (as you see here in gray), to seal the metal before the fabrication begins. Many people take shortcuts and grind away the old paint or use chemical strippers. But unless you thoroughly remove all the old paint, contaminants can ruin your new paint job.

Our next step will be cutting, grinding, and then fabricating patch panels to fill the old repairs properly. Old rocker panel repairs as shown above, for example, will be cut-out completely, and new panels will be welded in place instead.

We’ll post progress photos in the coming weeks!

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1963 Lotus Seven Transformed! Video…

September 3, 2020 by bugeyeguy

Sorting, we are always sorting.

So when a client who previously had us sort his Bugeye bought this Lotus online, we had it picked it up in California and brought it to our shop for sorting. It was running on three cylinders, rattling, vibrating and shaking (all at the same time). For such a nice car, it sure seemed to need a lot of work.

Three months later, the car is a superior, and delightful to drive. These cars are of course super light, and it seems like every bushing that can wear out, did wear out. Once we restored the suspension and the engine and transmission mounts, the car became a dream once again.

Of course this car was never meant to be a daily driver, but it was very satisfying to double the foam volume in the seat base and bottom, which made the ride almost just about plush. Also, we put on a smaller MOMO wheel so you can get your legs into the pedal box without too much trouble.

The tonneau was also quite rewarding to fit, because it would withstand a heavy rainstorm and will also keep people out of the cockpit when the car is parked at the store. We put in the cockpit fittings, templated the cover, and sewed it all in house. And finally, we fabricated an aluminum heat shield for the muffler so the passenger would be less likely to get burned while getting in and out.

You can see a video tour of the car below. We got the pre-crossflow 1500 CC Cosworth running beautifully and now this race car in street clothing is ready to travel to Florida, and it’s new home.

If you have a British classic that needs sorting, we will be happy to pick it up in an enclosed trailer and bring it here for evaluation. This sort of work is quite routine in our building and we would love to help!

Our most exciting new additions yet!

August 21, 2020 by bugeyeguy

We are now quite lucky to have a guy named “Austin” as part of our staff. He is a gifted auto restoration technician, who also happens to be quite sentimental.

Here’s Austin saying goodby to the concours Bugeye we recently sold (our 279th) just before we loaded the car onto a truck for Los Angeles. I had to give him a few moments, gently tap him on the shoulder and remind him that there would be more this nice… and that he could stop clutching the Austin Healey emblem… with his teeth! (Actually, he was adding a tiny spot of touch-up paint… or maybe it was a drop of blood he offered to The Prince of Darkness?)

We are excited to welcome both Austin and Samantha as new members of the Bugeyeguy staff. This husband and wife team are both graduates of McPherson College in Kansas, with newly minted degrees in auto restoration technology. Their contribution here has already been massive, with much more to come!

Many of you have had a chance to meet Samantha if you have called for parts, and you might get a chance to meet Austin too, when he is done tucking-in and whispering sweet nothings to the fleet of Bugeyes in our building.

Welcome Austin and Samantha! We are so lucky to have you on our team and we look forward to great fun and great memories ahead! Thank you for your dedication to quality and service, for our customers and their cars!

Don’t do this to your Spridget! (How NOT to upgrade your car to wire wheels.)

July 16, 2020 by bugeyeguy

Below is a photo of the wire wheel adaptor kit for Spridgets that is readily available from many catalogs. This kit is so unsafe, it really only has one useful application, and that’s right here, on a display car that will be entombed in a building and will never drive again.

The original wire wheel front hub assembly works beautifully, and is bulletproof. But notice how this aftermarket piece bolts on the lug nuts and those mounting nuts prevent the wheel from mounting properly to the taper. We have had several of these come to our shop with loose nuts under the wheel, a recipe for disaster. We remove them permanently, and have found a perfect use for this kit, right here on a car that will never drive again.

They make things look great! But if you have this kit on your car, don’t drive another mile until you check the torque on the nuts under your wheel that hold the flanges to your drum. Better still, get a new set of wheels and go back to bolt-on. Much safer! In fact, send us a picture of this kit on your car and we’ll give you 15% off a new set of minilights rims. We need you to stay safe and this is potentially a lot more dangerous than any virus!

Above you can see the new lowered stance on our display car (scroll up to see the “before” picture). It has been a lot of fun to design a car that will not drive again, with the priority being maximum durability for people climbing all over it. We painted it with more durable Imron, and this week we lowered the front end so that it looks like an engine is present, even though most of the driveline is gone. Engine and transmission removal was only way we could get the car to no longer leak oil!

If you are just joining us, this is a car we extracted from the weeds and “restored” to permanently park in a 300 unit condo building in New Jersey. Above you can see the “widow-maker” wire wheel kit now installed.

Here, Austin tries out the white wall option… do you like it? We might want to add more bling, perfect for a car stuck in a speak easy for the rest of its life.

Above, Kenny fits the template for the panel in front of the butt-guard. We’ll need access once we mount a transformer in the boot so the lights glow around the perimeter of the car.

You’ll also notice the black vinyl covered cockpit trim installed. This is not factory correct, but we did this to stop oxidation from the many hand prints we anticipate, again, for more durability.

She’s coming along, and looking great!

How to fix a Bugeye Sprite race car

June 12, 2020 by bugeyeguy

This wonderful 1275-powered racer came to us with a vexing problem… it ran fine in the paddock, and after nearly a lap, she began to break-up and eventually stall.

We started with the basics… ignition, timing, fuel, etc. When we went to check the valve clearances, we found that one rocker arm had popped out of the pushrod (see photo below).

Binding guides would do that. As the guide heats-up, it constricts the valve stem, the valve timing goes wonky, the engine gets quite confused as the valves start dancing to a different drummer, and you’re done. We have seen this before on road cars. The jumped-out rocker was a good clue.

We removed the head, honed the guides (which were definitely too tight) and built it all back up. The push rod was bent at the site of the pop-out, so we changed those. We also removed the plastic oil pressure gauge line and replaced it with a copper one, which you can see below with the proper shock coil for vibration.

Next, we tightened everything up, re- tuned, then went for the ride shown in the video below. As you can see, now this racer is ready for full track session.

A Spridget is an awesome first race car. Their easy to use, forgiving, and relatively easy to fix. Everybody needs one! (And vintage racing needs you).

We’ll keep looking for more race cars we can sell. This one lives near Lime Rock Park in Connecicut and the owner’s dream is to run in the Labor day Fall Festival this year. We hope to see him there!

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