Bugeye Restoration

A Hole That Will Make You Weep

April 28, 2022 by bugeyeguy

This little hole could be the reason for your failed rear brakes!

We see dozens of soiled brake shoes from axle seal leaks. This weep hole is critical and they are often plugged. Make sure to check yours!

This set of shoes will need to replaced. Oil and grease are two of the biggest culprits for premature brake shoe failure.

Too often, we remove rear drums to find shoes that look like these above. Soiled. Why? Everything leaks in our world, and while the culprit is often a mix of axle grease and hydraulic fluid, sometimes the oil is blocked from exiting the back plate which compounds the problem. You can see the design of the back plate (two pictures down) allows the bearing carrier to sit in a nice little recess with a drain hole, and if that is blocked, the oil that leaks past the axle seal is going to ruin your brakes.

As you can see, over time this “weep hole” clogs with whatever mixture of foreign debris and fluids and reeks havoc on a braking system.

Axle seals can only do so much. When these weep holes are clogged (and they often are), the axle oil will run out of its recessed area and onto the drum, where it will be the same principles of spin-art; soil your brake shoes, coat your drum with oil, or both. Either way, you’re left with no rear brakes and a big mess to clean-up.

If you find yourself with a plugged weep hole, this is one method that can be used to clear it: a pick.

You can see the hole in all these pictures, on just the naked axle housing and also on the car with the backplate attached. Keep ’em clear!

And keep in mind that a failed axle gasket and o-ring will also cause the same effect, even if your weep hole is clear, as will a leaking rear wheel cylinder. You can find our wet brake shoe kit in our catalog, we have the parts to help!

Float Bowl Fiasco!

April 22, 2022 by bugeyeguy

This is John’s Bugeye, which came to us with an erratic misfire under high load. The symptoms were the same as we’ve seen when valve guides are too tight (we’ve written about this in the past). I thought you might like to read about our diagnostic process. We make mistakes too.

Sometimes the best way to solve a running issue is to re-create it! That’s what Tucker and David did in diagnosing this Bugeye.

Under extreme heat and load the engine would break up and misfire. Once we pulled off the road and the temperature dropped just enough, then the valve guides would relax and the engine would run beautifully once again. You could drive the car around town without this issue surfacing but once you were under the highest loads (on the highway, downshifting to climb a hill, for example), only then would this problem resurface. So we did what any good shop would do… rip off the head and send it to the machine shop for a proper milling of the guides to ensure adequate clearance for the valve stems no matter how hot they get. The machine shop verified that the guides were indeed too tight, and they honed them out to make sure the problem wouldn’t recur.

[Read more…]

Flip Nose Finagling!

April 15, 2022 by bugeyeguy

Flip nose kits are extremely popular, and we have installed many for our clients. But every install is different. Every car is different. Every nose has a different crash story to tell.

Ed’s Bugeye from Michigan came with a unique set of challenges, so I thought it would be helpful for folks out there to see a post about this particular flip nose installation.

There is supposed to be a bushing here. This one was ripped out by a previously mounted front bumper.

Reverse View of the issue. Bumper loads tore the bushing out of the front frame rail (common)

[Read more…]

The Wheel Deal

April 15, 2022 by bugeyeguy

Thinking of converting your Bugeye to wire wheels? Please don’t buy a bolt-on conversion kit. Please! These things are still for sale by some vendors (not us!), and they are very dangerous.

If you take off your wire wheels and see this… Give us a call!

Witness the rear axle shown here from Ed’s car from Michigan. The idea is that the splined adaptor bolts onto your lug nuts over the drum. However, every one that has come to us has had loose bolts, and when they come off, the wheel comes off along with it!

[Read more…]

151 broken things and upgrades (video)

April 8, 2022 by bugeyeguy

Old cars are getting older, just like (most) of us folks who love them. As a result, that shiny classic you spy online may look great, but in reality there is always more to the story.

This car looked good enough for our client to “click the mouse” and buy it. He was also wise enough to have it make a pit stop at our building on the way home to Minnesota. We found about 151 issues to repair and improve.

Now, that we’re done, he’s got something!

Check out the tour of the improvements in the video below:

[Read more…]

The Path of Least Resistance

April 8, 2022 by bugeyeguy

If your tach isn’t working, join the club!

There are perhaps 10 different reasons why it quit. I’ll review many of these possible faults in this post.

Tachometers are often non-functional when Bugeyes arrive in our building. The mechanical tachs on the early cars are particularly problematic, because they rely on a number of parts and any one of them can fail. (We sell an electronic tach that’s more reliable and might help you get good information in your cockpit). Our electric unit is also very useful if you have an alternator with no mechanical tach drive. But if you insist on using that original mechanical assembly, this post will help you make it all work.

Above you can see one of our generator/alternators with the tach driven off the back of the unit, just like the original Bugeye and Mark II Sprites. As the generator or alternator spins, it spins the inner cable which transmits the rotational energy to the gauge. If anything gets in the way of the smooth transmission of energy, the tach will stick, jump, or otherwise fail to work.

[Read more…]

« Previous Page