Life with Bugeye

100,000 Mile Oil Change!

October 7, 2022 by bugeyeguy

Proper routine maintenance is a critical part of British car ownership. An important aspect to this is regular oil changes. Over the years, we’ve been asked by a number of Bugeye owners about whether they actually need to change their oil because so much leaks out and burns up! The answer to that question is yes, it is important to change your oil at regular service intervals, and there is a very clear reason why, even if it burns a quart every week. You can see that reason here in these photos.

Inside this oil filter housing bowl is a mountain of sludge and debris.

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501’s Quest For Gold: What Was The Point?

September 30, 2022 by bugeyeguy

The judging team hard at work judging AN5L 501! What did they find?

When car AN5L 501 underwent the judging process last week in our effort to obtain Concours gold certification for it, we had an idea of what the process might look like because we have been through it before. However, we were quickly flooded with questions among our wonderful followers as to how the process works, what we got right and what we got wrong, what our score was, etc.

Lying Down On The Job! Even 501’s undercarriage got a close inspection from the Scrutineers.

Unfortunately for some, the Concours committee and Austin-Healey Club have asked us to refrain from sharing the actual score we received when the judging process was completed, and we will respect their wishes. All that matters is that car 501 is a Concours Gold certified car, and that is what we set out to achieve. But what we can do is discuss with you what some deductions were and why they occurred, as well as share an inside look into the judging process live in action!

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501 Update & Some Cool Green Cars!

September 2, 2022 by bugeyeguy

Each day we spend with car 501 is another day closer to completion. In preparing this historic Bugeye for the Austin-Healey National Enclave later this month, we have run across multiple cases in which a concours correct part needs to either be fabricated, modified, or is completely unobtainable altogether. Such was the case for the air inlet hose for the heater assembly. However, we have finally been able to find a solution that will meet our needs, and in the process have launched an exciting new product!

501’s engine bay is so close to complete we can almost taste it!

The concours standards call for an inlet hose made of ” thin rubber with a helical spring inside” with a “seam spiraling around it from one end to the other”. The factory original hoses, due to their construction, did not survive the “harsh” conditions of a Bugeye engine bay. In the years since, there have been reproductions on the market but none of them are correct. But we have finally discovered a solution that has the correct look!

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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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Jay Leno’s Bugeye Survivor!

June 10, 2022 by bugeyeguy

Exciting news!

Jay Leno has made a new video chronicling his 1959 Bugeye, which is linked below. Jay’s car has many similarities to “Muffin,” another white Bugeye survivor, just purchased this week by Bob in New Jersey (our 354th). Jay obtained his original survivor and has spent the past few months going through it and this is the first peek at how the project has moved forward. This video is one more mainstream endorsement of the car that we love so much, and you can see how giddy Jay is while he plays with it!

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