Restoring a Bugeye Sprite while converting it back from race car to street car.
The last step in painting our Bugeye Sprite? Wet sanding and buffing the paint to a glass-smooth finish.
After all the bodywork, it was finally time to apply the basecoat and the clearcoat.
The last critical steps before our Sprite could head to the paint booth.
Making sure the face of our Bugeye is ready for a close-up/
Guess what? There were lots of holes that shouldn't be there under the hood of our Sprite, too.
Restoration tip: Good bodywork isn't cheap or quick.
To give us more access to the engine in our Sprite, we order and fit a kit that lets the hood flip up and forward.
The worst time to figure out your trim doesn't fit? After spending hours painting the body.
A change in shop ownership had us scrambling to find a new body shop.
Has this project become economically unviable? Yes. Does that mean we're going to give up? No.
Have a lot of holes in that sheet metal to fill? Why not fill welding?
We're working on a 1960 Bugeye Sprite, but this guide should help you replace the floor pan in virtually any classic car.
Before we could finish the install of a new rear quarter panel, we'd need to fix the hole cut by a previous owner to fit a roll bar.
Can you really just glue on a new quarter panel?
With the differential put back together, we could assemble all the parts that make up our Sprite's rear brakes and suspension.
Have a differential to install? Here's how we fitted a limited-slip to our Bugeye Sprite project.
Small problem: Our Bugeye Sprite needs a limited-slip differential. Bigger problem: There aren't any commercially available. Luckily, we know a guy.
The key to a lower Bugeye Sprite? Angling the springs using a wedge.
Intimidated about the thought of rebuilding a steering rack yourself? Don't be. Here's how to do it.
How to rebuild a brake caliper–plus adding upgrading the pads to handle spirited driving.
Since adding power without improving handling would negate any potential gains, it's time to upgrade our Sprite's front suspension.
Here's how we plan to have our Bugeye Sprite's bite match its bark.
A car's performance is only as good as the parts that connect it to the road, so we asked the experts what the best setup is.
We know we want the widest tire and wheel package available for our Sprite, but we didn't know what that package looked like.
Our Bugeye race car came with a lot of extra parts in many boxes, so we needed help to figure out what was worth keeping and what wasn't.
In addition to media blasting our Sprite's body, we also have the suspension and a number of other parts treated as well.
Striped and cleaned, the next step for our Bugeye Sprite was media blasting.
Yes, there really is a right way and wrong way to order parts for your project.
Project car plan in place, it was time to strip down our Bugeye Sprite.
Formulating how we will turn this tired race machine into a hot street car.
Storied history? Championship-winning racer? We'd have to take a deeper dive to figure out what we actually bought.
How we acquired one of our latest projects, a 1960 Austin-Healey Sprite.
All the parts are off of the Sprite, but this is how do we keep them all organized.
One of the best ways we ensure the condition of a project? We media-blast any and all components.
One of the most important restoration steps? Disassembly.
