We see lots of great Bugeye custom plates. Many are marque related, such as AN5, Frogi, Frogey, frogari, bugeye, buggy, bugi and the like. Then there are the more personal plates, such as the one above.

Remember Dimitri, the singing Bugeye Driver? (Check out a video about him by clicking here). This is his new personalized license plate. An Elixir is defined as “a magical or medicinal  potion guaranteed to induce love.” Thus, his plate is pure perfection to me, as it beautifully defines what moves me each time I drive (or look at) a Bugeye Sprite.

But what makes his plate even cooler is that Dimitri has been singing in the opera titled, “L’Elisir d’Amore,” (elixir of love) for several years now. If you missed his prior post, he has been signing and pushing a mock bugeye around stage for dozens of performances, and now here is his very own magical car that actually drives (most of the time). That makes for one really cool license plate!

Bravo Dimitri!

Send us pix of your Bugeye plates, and we’ll post them here!

We are extremely excited to be building a Bugeye Sprite for Caitlyn Jenner, who purchased this Bugeye pictured above. As with so many of our customers, Caitlyn’s Bugeye memories run deep. Bruce lusted after dad’d Bugeye as a teen, but dad sold the car before Bruce’s 16th birthday. Now, Caitlyn is having us build a “Dad tribute Bugeye,” complete with a number of performance upgrades, and some nice Dad script on the back.

We’ll keep you posted as we transform this car durning the coming weeks!

Remember my slick Bugeye Gumby with the glistening green paint? Here it is, with the paint roughed up down the middle, as Russ the painter gets ready to apply the silver stripes. In order to get a great job, he has to scuff up the green, mask it off, paint the silver stripes over the green, re clear coat it, and then buff all the color back up again.

Along the way, I got to agonize over how wide the stripes should be, and how many pin stripes. We looked at lots of racing stripes, but I kept coming back to Shelby (the blue Bugeye shown), which struck me as the perfectly striped Bugeye. Thus, we have copied that configuration, and now, the tape is laid and the silver stripes will go on this weekend. Russ also had to fit the grill and hood emblem to make sure they will center on the stripes. In this photo, the tape masks the green, so what is blue or yellow will be green, and everything else will be silver. Gumby is already looking better than ever!

While visiting Hudson, NY this past weekend, lo and behold along drove a Bugeye, so I stepped into Warren Street to flag it down. Turns out the Engels were out for an evening drive. They had been to our shop for parts on a prior visit– what a delight to encounter customers on a chance meeting three hours from home.

I asked if all was working on this car, so that I could offer some drive-by diagnostics. The fuel gauge was Walter’s number one complaint. With a turn of the key, I could see the gauge was powering up from pegged to exactly empty. We removed the cap and shook the tank, fuel was clearly present. So I bet Walter that his fuel sender had a plastic float which had been attacked by ethanol, filled up and sank. Thus the gauge reads empty because his float has turned into a sinker.

I wish suppliers world-over would stop supplying these plastic floats, as we keep running into this problem. They are useless, and will sink within their first year in ethanol. We have a brass float solution which is impervious to ethanol. Unless you want
to change your sender twice, please make sure to get one of these brass floats, no one wants to drain and remove their fuel tank a second time because of inferior parts.  Click here to jump over to our catalog and order a new fuel gauge sender upgraded with a brass float.

You’ll also want to make sure to use the Viton gasket set and not cork, or your tank will leak out of the top each time you fill it. We sell complete pressure tested tanks with metal floats and Viton gaskets already installed if you would prefer a complete assembly ready to install. Click here to order a new fuel tank kit (with sender included).

Pit stop over, the Engels took off into a fantastic summer night, their Bugeye right at home on main street in a hip town full of all kinds of vintage coolness.