New Parts Available

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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Bugeye fender-top beading properly configured and terminated

March 10, 2023 by bugeyeguy

The beading on the tops of the Bugeye bodies are sometimes damaged or removed in restoration. Here’s a video about how to restore them to their original configuration. Make sure to get your beading cleaned-up and properly terminated before the paint goes on!

Beading came in a “T” section and plugged into the seams and was brazed in place in the factory that built the original bodies. Some restorers like to cut off the bottom leg of the “T” and attach the flat strip along the seam to recreate the original look. Once installed, make sure to avoid hitting the bead strip with a sander or grinder or you will ruin the original profile of the strip.

Should your beading be missing or damaged on your Bugeye, we offer a full body beading kit that provides enough beading material to do an entire Bugeye, with a little bit left over! Click on the photo below to get yours, or click here to view our full catalog! We can also provide cut sections in case you only need a small strip. Call or email for help!

One car, five different numbers!

March 3, 2023 by bugeyeguy

Every week, we get a new question regarding the numbering system of these cars. It’s confusing. For example, the body panel stamping factory assigned a BAE number, which didn’t match the chassis number, or the engine number!

It helps to understand that each Bugeye was handled by several different factories all over England before it drove to the yard for shipment to the USA. The base chassis was stamped and welded at John Thompson Motor Pressings, and then the car was shipped to Pressed Steel, where the body panels were made and welded onto the tub.

From there it was on to the Morris factory for paint, and then one more leg of the journey brought the painted tubs to the Abingdon MG factory where the cars were assembled. Engines also were made off site, and they would ship-in from the Morris engine factory. So you had multiple players, and multiple numbers from multiple sources, and no unified numbering system.

In the video below, we dig into these various numbers to help you make sense of how all 50,000 or so Frogeyes came to life. And if you would like a heritage/birth certificate for your car, click here!

Five different components builders left their numbers on every Bugeye!

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!

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