With supply chain issues and pandemic closures, it sometimes feels like the world is broken right now. But we had a jump on everyone else… British classic car world was broken long before the pandemic arrived. Our day is spent with broken things, and our job is to figure out efficient ways to keep everything moving forward nonetheless.

You might not have looked an original bias ply tire for a stock Bugeye Sprite recently, but they were thin. And slippery. 

They didn’t put much stress on the original caged ball bearings that came on the Bugeye Sprite, no matter how hard you drove ‘em, because the tire was the weak link and slid before the forces exceeded the design limitations of the original wheel bearing.

Fast forward to the modern bug eyed driver (like me) who is ripping around turns flat out with 165 series (wider than stock) tires with maximum adhesion and soft radial rubber and you’ll begin to understand why this post might be particularly important for you. These modern tapered wheel bearings are significantly stronger and a superior design which will help your hubs manage the bearing stress you are regularly dishing out. That’s why on just about every car that comes to our building gets these tapered wheel bearings as shown. It’s a really smart thing to do for your car.

Over the years we’ve had one caged bearing lock-up on one car (fortunately at a slow speed) but for my money I think this is one of the best upgrades any Sprite owner can do. These will fit every Spridget from 1958 through 1980. Click here to get yours today and give your bearings a break!

There is little in life more satisfying than removing a 948 manifold and exhaust system in favor of a relatively massive header and larger center exhaust pipe. Breathing is good. And even if this improvement adds just 3 or 4 horsepower to your little 948 engine, it just feels so good to do this, you may want to give it a try.

In the case of the photos below, you can see the 948 engine in our Bugeye “Mikki,” which we are upgrading before it departs for a new life in Ohio with new a new dad (Rob).

Above is the stock set up. You can see the tiny original exhaust pipe mated to the manifold. That joint between the two is a chronic problem (always leaking) and this is another benefit of fitting the header you see below. You can also see how much more gracefully the gases will flow out of your engine once the header is fit as shown below.

This car is also got larger HS2 new carbs as part of the package of upgrades we’ll do to this car before it leaves our shop. This is an awesome upgrade, as the new carbs are not worn out like most SUs out there in the world, and they are also larger than the stock H1s. So here we will put more fuel in, and more gas out. We cap that off with K&N air filters, so that all this breathing happens unobstructed.

This is our Spridget sculpture of the week!