Our catalog continues to grow! We are excited to help many new late/square Sprite and Midget owners with awesome technical support and parts in the first half of 2023 and beyond! Here are some of our favorite new parts this year!
[Read more…] about Not just Bugeyes! Parts for all your Sprite/Midget needs!It seems that no matter how hard we try, every classic English sports car leaks oil. I’ve seen many forum posts over the years where people claim to make a leak-free car, and certainly some of them leak very little, but it just seems inevitable that these old cars will leak, no matter how hard you try. And even if you stop them from leaking, it seems just a matter of time before they start leaking once again.
In this post, I wanted to show you some photos of a particular Bugeye engine that just arrived in our shop. This one is leaking more than usual, and in this case it makes a lot of sense to try to reduce or stop the leaking all together. (We’re always optimistic, but we’re also realistic).
Of note in this case is the head gasket leak. We’ve added ultraviolet dye to this engine, so you see a bright green trace wherever there are leaks (a UV kit makes it easy to see exactly where we have leaks). Take a look at the green trace on the left side of the engine. This is directly in line with the oil galley that feeds the head up through the rocker arm pedestal, and the oil as it travels from the block up to the head sometimes leaks at this location. Unfortunately, once it starts leaking, you have to change the head gasket.
We will remove the head to inspect. it could be a bad head gasket or the head is not flat (or block) or too much combustion pressure with an excessively high compression ratio, for example. Or maybe the oil pressure relief valve is not working or set too high… these are all things we will investigate when we get the engine out of the car.
[Read more…] about Oil Toil95% of nose fit adjustments on Sprites happen well after the paint has been applied. In the case of this particular car that we are building for a customer in California, we are maximizing the nose fit now before the media blasting and stripping and bodywork begins. This car will be a British racing green rocket turn up in the style of my personal car Gumby, and it all starts with a nice nose job.
In the video above, I explain the procedures with which we are repairing decades of poor nose fit on Arnold and the steps we take to repair a nose that’s been bonked by a bumper!
John Noreika purchased one of our Bugeye’s a few years ago and may be one of our most frequent fliers… He’s probably put about 15,000 miles on the car. This past weekend he did the Juvenile Diabetes rally in Connecticut that included a few laps at Lime Rock Park, in Lakeville. Here’s a great picture from that event.
John is proof that antique British sports cars can be (somewhat) reliable and it’s nice to see him out using his machine. John and all of our other clients who are out on the road with their Sprites help us to continue to innovate and improve upon our processes to make the most reliable products available on the market today. We learn something new every week, and it is that continuous improvement that helps us to make the best product possible, and also to provide for you the best possible parts!
[Read more…] about A Bugeye for street and track!Online auctions have made classic car transactions much more frequent and much more accessible. Some folks are addicted, and even watch auctions on multiple monitors, while bidding on multiple makes at the same time. More and more people are buying cars online without seeing them first, and as a result, more and more buyers are trusting crowd-sourced info to help them click the mouse and buy their next classic car.
When eBay was the place to go for classic cars a decade ago, many of us had a healthy dose of skepticism when we looked at online listings. We knew to take each photograph and every word of the description with a grain of salt. This wasn’t because the seller was dishonest or withholding details purposely (although this does happen), but rather because pictures can hide things, and the seller may genuinely not realize an issue exists.
1958, say hello to 2023!
Here’s the engine bay of our newest Electric Bugeye Sprite “FrogE,” followed the power plant for AN5L 501, the first production Bugeye Sprite (restored to factory-correct standards), and “Gumby,” my own personal expression of how to power a Bugeye Sprite… take your pick (we’ll build it any way you like).
