Bugeye maintenance

Fuel sender funk

January 28, 2022 by bugeyeguy

We’ve had many posts about Fuel sender’s, but it never ceases to amaze me there’s always a new way for people to mess this up so it’s worthy of one more post. The tank shown has the sender mounted 45° out of whack- and can’t move fully without hitting the tank. I didn’t think you could install a fuel sender this way – and the online auction where this car was purchased would not reveal this so the buyer had to have us fix it.

There’s actually a dent in the tank so that it can go all the way up to “full” the float has to go up to the top of the tank to send the needle up to full. Also interesting about this photo as you can see how much corrosion has happened from fuel leaking out of the top of the cork gasket. You can see the stains and the loss of paint indicating that this one would’ve been leaking badly. Of course the owner complained that the gas gauge didn’t work at all!

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Floppy front end

January 14, 2022 by bugeyeguy

Another day, another worn front end on a Spridget. This post is a not so gentle reminder to go out and grease those zirk fittings on your Spridget front end, to help keep your kingpins from wearing out.

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Loosey goosey – rickety rack

January 14, 2022 by bugeyeguy

Everything changes. We learn this lesson weekly. That which once worked, works no longer. Parts are getting older. Cars get used. Things wear out.

Steering racks never used to be a problem with Bugeyes, we haven’t replaced many over the years, but more and more of them seem to have worn inner tie rods. In the video above, you can see me exaggerating the play we sometimes see. This rack is worn out. Check your car to see if you can discern that your inner tie rod ends are worn out too!

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Keeping up with the Joneses

December 17, 2021 by bugeyeguy

The 948 Sprite engine is a delightful little powerplant, and it works just fine for noodling around country roads, or for running up to the grocery store, or for taking the long way home. But it was designed in an era where there was no such thing as a 500 horsepower new car that you could buy from the local car dealer. It was designed when the everyday bloke had some free time, and didn’t have to rush home to check his instagram account. It was designed during a moment in history when 46 horsepower worked just fine.

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Broken things scoreboard

December 17, 2021 by bugeyeguy

With supply chain issues and pandemic closures, it sometimes feels like the world is broken right now. But we had a jump on everyone else… British classic car world was broken long before the pandemic arrived. Our day is spent with broken things, and our job is to figure out efficient ways to keep everything moving forward nonetheless.

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Bugeye Swan

December 10, 2021 by bugeyeguy

I call this display our Rusty Swan Manifesto.

These are quarter elliptical springs from Greg’s Bugeye, which, as you might remember from last week’s post, were found to be sagging and rusty. Here’s how they look on the floor once Terry extracted them. One great way to make peace with messes like these is to call them art.

We cleaned out the spring pockets, rust-proofed them and loaded in new springs and shims. The photos below show the result. The available springs are all too tall but our wedges fix that issue, so Greg’s car now looks and rides right!

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