Bugeye Restoration

Suspect suspension: have you checked your king pins lately?

March 15, 2024 by bugeyeguy

New Kin pin bushings are nearly useless unless up/down play is properly shimmed (not so here!)

Most Spridget front suspensions have excess play (they’ve had a hard life). Tightening things up pays immediate dividends, both in performance and sure-footedness. Spridgets (and lots of other cars of the era) ride on a solid king pin. The swivel axle that rides on the king pin has bronze bushings pressed in place, and those bushings are prone to wear, especially if they are not greased regularly, as the pair of videos in this post can attest.

Lower swivel axle bushings need frequent greasing

King pin suspension systems have a lot of parts, many more than a ball joint system does. That means many more opportunities for wear, and for part failures. The threads on the fulcrum pin, constantly turning in the control arm as the car goes over bumps, hills, and around curves, wear out, creating slop in the control arm. The repeated vertical motion wears the thrust washer, creating up-and-down slop. Years of constant contact with the road and turning wears the upper and lower bushings, creating lateral slop. The lever shock, which also serves as the upper control arm on Bugeyes, wears internally, creating a harsh ride and affecting the suspension geometry.

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How to break a Bugeye Sprite Windshield

March 1, 2024 by bugeyeguy

This is a Bugeye public service announcement.

Don’t push your car by the windshield frame, and when removing yourself from the cockpit, don’t use the windshield frame to pull yourself up, or you can break the glass as shown in the photo.

This particular car has a dried and rotten glazing rubber anyway, so it was overdue for a change, but this breakage was completely avoidable.

When pushing your Bugeye, the safest places to push from are from the rear edge of the cockpit and the front edge of the cockpit. These are some of the most rigid areas on the car and no damage will result from pushing in these locations.

Should your Bugeye windscreen need restoration, we can help! Send us your windshield and stanchions and we can repair your windscreen frame, re-tap any stripped threaded holes (a common occurrence after almost 70 years of steel screws in aluminum frames), powder coat the frame and stanchions in silver, and even install new glass for you! We offer this service in our catalog, which you can view by clicking the photo below or by clicking here.

Should you want to tackle this project yourself, we offer all of the parts necessary to do this job. We even sell the glass for the windshield! However, as this is a complicated and expensive item to ship, we do not list it on our website, so call us if you would like to order the glass. Click on the photos below for more information on each component or click here to view our full catalog!

*Windshield glass glazing rubber with lock strip (Bugeyes with 2-stud windshield through 1962)*

*Windshield-to-body gasket (Bugeyes with 2-stud windshield frames through 1962)*

*Windshield post pad set (Bugeye through 1962)*

*Windshield stanchion to frame screw kit (Bugeyes through 1962)*

*Windshield stanchion to body hardware kit (Bugeye through 1962)*

*No-drill windshield post mirror set (takes the place of the rearmost stanchion screw) (Bugeye through 1962)*

Horsing Around

February 23, 2024 by bugeyeguy

The view from the barn-bound test-drive… drives wonderfully with new five-speed, but clearly a new windshield is needed. I phoned it in, and a new windshield and glazing was waiting on sawhorses when I returned. *I have to personally sign-off on each car before it can leave our workshop.*

A Bugeye Sprite is a wonderful antidote for the fast-paced modern world. With no lane-holding, auto-cruise control or back-up camera (and no facebook posts or bluetooth while driving), the focus is pure and basic transportation. Not that there is anything wrong with modern vehicles and their many wonderful high-tech features… it’s just that as the world seems to keep accelerating every year, a Bugeye feels more and more like comfort food. Simple. Unencumbered. Basic. Old-fashioned bliss.

I have had my Bugeye Gumby since 1978, and with each wave of global transformation and population growth, these cars just seem the perfect anecdote for all that ails. If you long for simpler times (even if just on weekends), then a Bugeye Sprite is powerful medicine.

Given this underlying sentiment, I found a new state of nirvana this week when I took a client’s Bugeye on a 60 minute road test (after a two month restoration project) with one goal in mind… to master an even simpler mode of transport. My wife and I head to the UK this May for a tour of a few cottage motorcar factories followed by a horseback trek across Wales. We will ride a total of 100 miles in those five days, ending in Aberystwyth with a ride on the beach. While I have ridden a horse before, I am not a rider (my wife has been riding all her life) so I have a lot of work to do. And a lot of sore muscles to develop!

*This is Beau wearing his tonneau. He leaks no oil.*

To drive a Bugeye to ride a horse left me feeling ecstatic. As the world gets more complicated around me, here was a new way to attain an even higher level of lower-order simplicity. 45 horsepower is good. One horse power is bliss. Give me leather and straps. And an olfactory escape from hydrocarbons.

I wrangled my horse in the field, removed his tonneau and tacked him-up, and rode around an indoor ring for 30 minutes with a coach barking at me to push my heels down and keep my head up. Then, I returned the horse to the paddock, gave him some hay, and proceeded back to my luxury vehicle.

After my ride, imagine the pure delight I experienced upon firing up my far more sophisticated multi-horse steed. No girth to tighten, no pesky straps to fasten and no pile of manure to clean on the barn floor (I’ll take an oil stain any day). I turned the key and my Sprite roared. No squeezing, kicking or clucking is required. Ahhh, the ease with which the foot actuated pedal is applied, instant power and steering no less, unencumbered by the fickle whims of an untamed four-legged creature.

I galloped home in my fine motorcar, feeling quite sophisticated and sublime.

Bugeye body restoration

February 16, 2024 by bugeyeguy

If you’ve had a Bugeye in the family for years and it’s due for restoration, here’s how that process begins.

First, you drop off your baby at our headquarters.

We take out all the parts and pieces and media blast-off all the old scale, paint and prior repairs.

All the secrets begin to emerge.

We fix everything, paint it, build it back up to your specs, and viola! New Bugeye!!!

It sounds easy, but takes up to a year to do it right.

*And after… oh dear. Something’s not right here.*

In the case of Jim’s car shown here, we have just blasted the car. You can see what emerges from beneath. An old right rear quarter panel repair was not quite up to code, which made for a very crooked license plate area on this car. Filler hid this problem, now we get a chance to make it right. It would be a lot of work to restore the original opening properly, and we might just take a short cut and weld in patches to make a new USA spec license late depression, similar to what you see on “Shelby” (one of our past cases, shown below). That choice is left to the new owner.

We’ll comb over every inch of the car and weld fillet into each gap as needed so that uniformity, smooth lines and proper strong patches abound. This car also has brazed on front rocker panel patches, which are vulnerable for future blistering under the new paint that’s to come, so we will cut off the fronts of the rockers and weld in new steel patch panels to create the best foundation and repairs with the most longevity.

We sell rockers and other sheet metal pieces, which you can find here.

And we are happy to pick up and restore your Sprite next. Feel free to call!

How to care for the gears inside your Bugeye Sprite gearbox

January 30, 2024 by bugeyeguy

Here’s a video we first posted in 2014… it’s worth revisiting to help preserve Sprite gears worldwide!

Bugeye gear boxes last forever if well cared-for, but many people are heavy handed with their shift levers and grind going into first or gnash going into other gears. A slow hand helps! I like to think that every old gear box I meet draws my shifter into gear rather than me forcing the lever (and potentially creating wear). This is true when driving all old cars. Double clutching also helps on down shifts, and we have other videos that describe how to do this.

In the video above you can see the carnage from sloppy shifting. Fortunately, a rebuilt gearbox for a Sprite is far less expensive than one for a late model car, so even the most smashed gears can be replaced. But with good care, they are very stout and will last the life of the car and beyond!

Dashing

January 26, 2024 by bugeyeguy

There is no more impactful cockpit restoration opportunity than the Sprite dashboard. These come to us in an infinite variety of “flavors”. Most are hand crafted by our former selves, back when we were young and function was all that mattered. I know I made a lot of dumb decisions back in those days (and I suspect I am not alone). Thus, there is a wealth of padded and over-drilled dashboards out there, often full of improvised switches and work-arounds.

Before: though certainly not the worst we have seen, the dash in this Bugeye was padded at some point in its life (stock was un-padded) and had an extra hole added for a battery cut-off switch, which was no longer needed. The radio hole also needed to be welded as it lacked metal support for the vinyl covering that had previously been installed.

This particular dashboard was padded, with a large cut out switch on the dash, and with a couple of extra holes hidden under the padding.

In this series of photos you can see how we restored this client’s dashboard back to stock. It is beautiful. The dash bar above the dash is also properly covered now in black. The entire effect is stunning, and the transformation very successful. Now, this car looks right, and restored to its original glory.

Upon removal of the dash from the car, all of the gauges, cables, and switches were removed, and the weathered old vinyl and thick layer of padding glued to the face was stripped away. This revealed what we needed to fix. Namely, the radio hole needed to be filled (which has already been done in this photo), one hole needed to be filled-in adjacent to the steering wheel, and another needed to be welded and re-drilled for the washer pump.

The backside of the radio hole repair. After all of the holes were repaired on the dash, we sandblasted the entire dash, added a layer of body filler to smooth out any surface imperfections, painted the whole dash black, and carefully installed a brand new vinyl cover.

After restoration, the dashboard got new cables, switches, and knobs. A new washer pump, new heater and washer switches with knobs, and the original ignition switch are installed already; a new turn signal switch, new starter and choke cables, and a new original-face combination gauge and original speedometer, tachometer, and fuel gauge.

The finished product! A combination of new parts, really nice original ones, and a lot of skill and tender loving care have taken this dashboard to the next level! Let us do this to your dashboard. Call us for details or click here!

If you would like your car restored to this level, please give us a call. We’ll be happy to pick it up and bring it to our shop and transform your Bugeye into the car of your dreams, just as we are in the process of accomplishing with this client’s car. Alternatively, if you would like us to restore your dashboard back to its original perfection, please give us a call for more information or click here to view in our catalog!

We also offer similar services for cockpit trim and windshield frames. Click on the photos below to check out each of these services and to get the wheels in motion on your restoration!

Windshield frame and shanchion refinishing service

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