Bugeye maintenance

Door Seal dilemma: How do you fix a Bugeye door seal that has fallen off?

May 10, 2023 by bugeyeguy

A separated door seal can ruin the aesthetic of your Bugeye’s interior and also lead to rattles.

Door seals on Bugeyes aren’t perfect. When installed properly they look great and create a soft barrier between the door and the body of the car, dampening vibrations and aiding in door fitment. Unfortunately, after repeated attempts to enter and exit the vehicle and brushing up against the seal, it can pull away from the body, creating something similar to what you can see in the above photo.

Fortunately, it’s simple to repair this malady, and you can do it from the comfort of your own garage. In the video below, we’ll show you the best way to fix your separated door seal:

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10,000 supercharger miles and counting! VIDEO

May 5, 2023 by bugeyeguy

This Bugeye gathers no moss. The owner uses it. A lot.

He got this Sprite in the 70s from his dad, and the car is still in the family all these years later. We fit our Spridget supercharger kit about 10k miles ago, and the car was back this week for a front disk brake conversion, new leaf springs and adjustable control arms, so that we could better align the two front wheels.

Almost every Bugeye has had some form of front end hit or another given the 65 years on the road, so the control arm mounts are often tweaked and no longer true. This car had quite a camber asymmetry, which the adjustable control arms allowed us to iron out.

If you would like your car sorted, or your camber equalized, or your car supercharged, please give a call or send an email. We’ll pick up your car and fix it. You’ll be hitting the 10,000 mile mark in your car in no time!

Check out the video tour above… we prepared the car for its drive back to Boston today. We expect the car will enjoy another 10,000 miles before its next series of upgrades!

If you’d like to install some of the products you’ve seen in this video today, click on the photos below or visit our parts catalog by clicking here!

Camer Adjusting Control Arm (Sold Individually)

Feeling bushed

April 21, 2023 by bugeyeguy

I bet your king pins are wiped-out. The Sprite Haynes manual encourages you to squirt-in some grease every 3000 miles, but the original Sprite “glovebox” handbook suggests a 1000 mile interval, and I encourage you to follow that guildline. From what we see in the field, it seems like few people do.

Check out the swivel axle in the video below… this car came for a disk brake conversion and upon disassembly, we were surprised to see a nearly seized bushing on this swivel axle, which required major effort just to swivel.

On the back of each front swivel axle are two grease zerk fittings. These two zerks are used to provide lubricating grease to the king pin bushings, two brass bushings that are pressed into the steering knuckle on which the king pin rides. After long periods of driving without replenishing the grease, the bushings can begin to seize to the king pins, creating galling and pitting on the king pins and shortening their service life.

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Nick’s Tech Tips: Spring has sprung!

April 21, 2023 by bugeyeguy

Below is a video of the rear suspension in an Bugeye that came to us for its Spring tune-up, with the owner complaining of bottoming out in the rear end. It didn’t take long to figure out why.

In the video above, you can see the quarter-elliptical springs clicking together and making noise. You can also see that the spring is quite weak, and can be easily pushed upward, with minimal resistance. This leaf spring has outlived it useful life.

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Nick’s Tech Tips: Probe Problems

April 14, 2023 by bugeyeguy

With warmer temperatures upon us a little early this year, it is paramount this time of year to ensure your cooling system is up to snuff. There are many ways to do this (installing our aluminum radiator and six-blade fan is our favorite upgrade), but it’s also important that you have a decent indicator of how well your cooling system is functioning at any given time.

We’re getting a little warm here… 200 is OK, 185 is preferable, but gauges are often inaccurate

All British sports cars tend to run hot, so a good temperature gauge is important. They’re not always perfectly accurate (you can check accuracy with an IR temp gun), but they at least indicate temperature trends.

Originally on Bugeyes, the probe for the mechanical water temperature gauge, which is a long brass tube filled with ether (of all things), was installed in the side of the radiator. While this is an acceptable location for getting a baseline temperature reading, it doesn’t tell the full story of how hot the engine is getting, which typically runs hotter than the radiator under normal operating load. It would also render the temperature gauge useless if the thermostat were to stick closed, cooking the engine while the radiator (and temperature probe mounted inside it) were slow to report a problem.

The factory location for the temperature port, as equipped on 501.

A relocated temperature port, as found on Grey.

As a result, when possible, the temperature probe should be relocated to a port on the engine, to more accurately relay the temperature of the coolant inside the engine, allowing for better overheating management.

How do you do that? On original Bugeyes with 948 engines, you cannot, as such a port does not exist in the head. However, if your engine has been switched to a 1098 or 1275 from a later Spridget (or if your 948 has had a 1098 head fitted), there is a handy-dandy port drilled right in front of the foremost spark plug towards the thermostat housing!

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Getting your hydraulics lined up

April 7, 2023 by bugeyeguy

We love just about every British sportscar that was built from 1955-1967 (and we’re easily seduced by earlier and later cars too). But given that we are so stuck in the past, we see more systems aging out with each passing year. None of our bits are getting any younger.

This week, brake lines were in focus while working on a car that had been sitting for the past 20 or so years (like a lot of our favorite sportscars). And when the steel brake lines in this particular car fractured the minute we removed them from the vehicle, we had a chance to reflect anew on the (often) fragile fluid link between master cylinder and wheel.

These original steel lines were so fragile, one turn of the wrench fractured them.

The lines above broke at the nipples without persuasion. These are the original lines, and you can see deep pits and thin walls at the location of the fracture. We have talked previously about moisture in the master cylinder… it not only attacks the cylinder bores, but can damage the steel brake lines as well.

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