Bugeye maintenance

Bugeyeguys new product showcase: “Leaf” spring box rust behind!

February 24, 2023 by bugeyeguy

New product alert!

64 years of a spring box open to the elements created this tapestry of oxidation and crud that ruined not only the leaf springs, but also damaged the spring boxes.

A common ailment regarding the rear suspensions on Bugeyes (and other 1/4-elliptic Spridgets) is the penetration of moisture, dirt, road grime, and road salt in the spring boxes, causing scenes like the one depicted above of incredibly rusty (and structurally compromised) leaf springs, and, in some cases, completely rusted out spring boxes. This is a vulnerability on all Bugeyes, whether restored, all original, or modified. Now, we finally have a solution available to help curb this problem.

Our NEW Spring Box Dust Shields will help keep debris out of your spring box and prolong the life of your leaf springs… and floors!

We are pleased to be able to offer in our parts catalog our NEW Spring Box Dust Shields! These dust shields will cover the open backside of the spring boxes on your Bugeye (or any early Spridget with 1/4-elliptical leaf springs), keeping debris out of the area. This will prolong the life of suspension components like mounting plates, U-bolts, and the leaf springs themselves, as well as reduce the likelihood of cancerous corrosion taking hold in the floors around the spring box! Each plate is made from stainless steel to be corrosion resistant, so no worry about the covers rusting!

In the photos above, you can see the new plates in action. We have found that each spring box is in a slightly different position relative to bracketry surrounding the area, so you will have to trim one of the “ears” on the plate to fit into the opening properly. This can easily be done with a cutoff wheel or similar device; once the initial fitment is complete, installation is a breeze! Just remove the u-bolt securing your spring, slide this plate in until flush with the rear bulkhead of the car, re-install the u-bolt and tighten. That’s it!

Get your pair by clicking here or visit our parts catalog for all your Spridget suspension needs!

Nick’s Tech Tips: Rubbing your nose raw!

February 24, 2023 by bugeyeguy

Follow your nose!

We recently had this green Bugeye brought into our shop for service, and on a test drive it exhibited a rattle coming from the front of the car. This is not uncommon among Bugeyes that come through our doors; 60-plus year old British cars sometimes make noises like that, and our job is to investigate where they come from and see if we can do anything to mitigate them. In this instance, upon lifting the bonnet we found a smoking gun that led us to the culprit.

If you see a mark like this on the inside of your nose, check your clearances and inspect your nose bits!

When we opened the bonnet, we saw a rub mark on the aluminum radiator (circled in the below photo). There was a corresponding rub mark on the underside of the bonnet, in between the headlight buckets (circled in the above photo). Our aluminum radiators are designed to fit in exactly the correct location as the factory radiators; they aren’t any taller or wider than a stock brass radiator. So why did the bonnet and radiator make contact on this particular car?

Well, there are a couple of reasons this could be. The most common seems to be that almost every Bugeye that comes in here has been in some kind of fender-bender, accident, or has otherwise been the victim of some kind of damaging event that bends parts of the front end, such as the front frame horns, where the radiator mounts. These are sometimes bent upwards, creating a scenario where the radiator could realistically hit the nose. However, in this instance, the answer was much simpler.

There are six main components to the latching mechanism on a Bugeye’s bonnet. Potentially the most important ones are the bonnet locating pegs. These pegs are fitted to the underside of the bonnet and are designed to fit into two corresponding holes on each frame horn, which guide the nose into its moorings and help center it on the car. For some reason, on this Bugeye, these pegs were missing entirely! Not only would this create an issue with centering the nose, but it also made the nose sit about an inch lower than it would with the proper pieces in place, creating the rubbing issue we saw on this car.

A pair of properly installed bonnet locating pegs, as seen on Seabiscuit.

The bonnet peg locating hole, where the bonnet peg rests.

The moral of this story is: check your clearances! When installing a radiator on your Bugeye, it’s worth taking the time to lay down a small piece of masking tape at the highest point on the tank, closing the bonnet fully, and then opening the bonnet again. If the tape has a mark on it or looks like it has been pinched between the bonnet and the radiator, then your part will rub and adjustments will need to be made, either to the height of the radiator or the height of the bonnet. And make sure your bonnet pegs are intact!

Should you be missing your bonnet pegs, or any other bonnet fastening part, check out our parts catalog or click on the photos below to get the parts you need today!

Don’t do this to your Bugeye Sprite!

February 17, 2023 by bugeyeguy

Check-out these cracked/broken control arms, the likes of which we have never seen before. Please take a minute and run-out to the garage to look at yours to make sure you don’t have this issue. Every Sprite and Midget should be checked.

This is likely an isolated incident… was this Evil Knievel’s car? Did she roll off a tow truck? Or were these parts somehow damaged by excessively tight straps in a transport truck? Maybe these arms were already broken when removed from a crashed wreck for this disk brake conversion some time ago. Regardless, this is a serious issue that we hope is isolated to just this one particular car. Please let us know if you find any cracks on your car.

This Bugeye was brought to us for sorting after purchase in an online auction. Auction pictures don’t always tell the whole story, and the peanut gallery watching and commenting on the auction doesn’t always catch serious issues.

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Lawton leaves for camp!

February 17, 2023 by bugeyeguy

I’m always amazed at how difficult it is to get a sold car out of our building. I suppose most people in the automotive industry are anxious to get vehicles out the door immediately after a sale, but in our world it seems quite the opposite. We want to make absolutely certain that every broken thing has been discussed (and hopefully addressed) before we ship a car. We are dedicated to continuous improvement.

It’s common for online car purchases from others to arrive with a long list of problems, and we work very hard to make sure that our product arrives with no problems and works properly. We’re not perfect, and not everybody wants to invest in all the repairs that we suggest, but we work very hard to keep refining our pre-departure processes and to keep making our cars wonderful.

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Nick’s Tech Tips: Adding fuel to the fire

February 3, 2023 by bugeyeguy

Each and every day, we see things that come through our shop that just make us say “Yikes”. Today’s “yikes” moment comes to us from a car we recently brought in for a fuel system service. As you can see in the photos below, this fuel tank sender looks like it was recovered from a salvage dive on the Lusitania. The tank this sender was removed from looked as bad on the outside as it did on the inside.

The arm on this fuel sender isn’t supposed to stand up by itself… this is a bad sign.

It is unfortunate that such a critical system on this Bugeye was allowed to fall into this state of deterioration. (We drove the car onto the lift, by the way.) While this may be an extreme example, fuel tank maintenance is often something a lot of Frogeye owners overlook or neglect, because as long as the car is running, there’s no reason to worry, right?

Bugeye fuel tanks were originally painted black. This one has seen many better days.

Well, as the photos in this post can attest, there are MANY reasons why routine fuel tank maintenance is important. In addition to rusting away into oblivion, a more common ailment that befalls our beloved Bugeyes is a leaky tank. So how does a fuel tank on a Spridget leak?

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Nick’s Tech Tips: A striking problem with your Doors

January 27, 2023 by bugeyeguy

This week in the shop, we encountered a particularly extreme example of what often happens to door strikers on Bugeyes (and all Spridgets up to 1963). Unfortunately, it’s something that can be prevented with the proper maintenance, but when things are allowed to deteriorate, this is ultimately the end result.

Over time, door strikers can go from looking nice and new (right) to a chewed-up mess (left) if your door latches aren’t properly maintained. Note: the screw mounting holes are the same distance apart on the new part as they are on the old one, they look like they are different due to the angle of the photo.

One of our most recent additions into the showroom earlier this week exhibited hard-closing doors and a rattle coming from the body when going down the road on its initial test drive. After some quick investigative work, it was determined that the striker plates were the source of the rattle. The strikers on this particular Bugeye were EXTREMELY worn, meaning the door wasn’t securely latching closed in its intended position, and lateral movement was allowed to occur. This is not only annoying, but also potentially dangerous, as a worn striker can, in some cases, allow the door to fly open on corners when leaned against (or when the car flexes), and this is potentially catastrophic news if your Bugeye doesn’t have seat belts fitted. (We sell 3-point retractable seat belts you can install, they are available here… but let’s fix the latches first.)

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