Inherited my dad’s ‘60 Bugeye

Today I took delivery of a 1960 Bugeye which has been in my family for longer than I have. This was my father's first car which he bought shortly before college in 1964 (I think). Thankfully my dad's still with us, but the car has been unused and undriven since 2010 or so and I guess he finally decided it was time to sell. I'd always told him I expected right of first refusal and so he shipped it down to me in Texas to start its new life. This little car was a huge part of my childhood. It's the car I learned to drive a manual transmission in. It's certainly the germination of my love of convertibles and the reason I've owned Miatas and Z3s and a parade of two seater sports cars my entire life.


I do a fair bit of wrenching on a more modern race car, but the scope of work for getting this thing roadworthy again is well outside my comfort zone. My girlfriend and I are looking forward to the new project. I'm so happy to keep this car in the family.


So far I'm just documenting what I can figure out. It's got a fair bit of rust, the bonnet is misaligned, it's been fitted with front disc brakes and it has a 1200 engine. Engine seems solid and running pretty well, but the brakes are sketchy. We drove it around the neighborhood this afternoon and aside from the ancient rubber on the tires and bouncy suspension it wasn't too terribly scary.


Planning to dig through all the old threads here and learning a lot.











More photos here: https://www.icloud.com/sharedalbum/#B10J0DiRHJf62zd

Looks great! and what a great legacy! welcome.

1275 and disk brakes are common swaps and in no way detract from the car.

looking forward to seeing you in the Spridget section

Not many cars make a Mita look large! Very cool car you have there and welcome to BCF!

Is that genuine bear skin for the transmission cover?
Congrats on keeping it in the family!

I try not to second-guess my dad's decisions with the car. After all, he did swap in the 1275 and I just figured out it's on an alternator and negative ground. But yeah, that transmission tunnel cover is a strange shag '70s abomination. Looks and smells like a fuel-soaked wooly mammoth. I ripped it out yesterday and now the car's sporting a naked, cosmoline-splotched bare tunnel.

Seems way too early to worry about the interior but all the carpet and paneling is on the short list for replacement.

As a brief introduction: I'm Nugget's girlfriend. The MX-5 in the garage is my daily driver, and we're both pretty involved in this car hobby thing.

JPSmit said:

1275 and disk brakes are common swaps and in no way detract from the car.

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I really like the 1275cc motor in the car. It feels like it has the right power & power band for the character of the car - enough to feel eager, not so much as to outrun its gears. On the other hand, I need to do some learning and digging about the Sprite's brakes. The impression I have of them so far is that they definitely work, but they need a significant amount of force and they seem to go from very little braking to locking up a tire pretty quickly. I've already seen a lot of information about different brake options and different tuning/bias adjustment/etc. options, but I need to do a lot more reading.

The first part this car needs is probably tires - it's on ones that seem to be at least 10 years old. It's entirely possible that's part of the brake feel issue, too - 10 year old tires tend to have poor feedback. Next is changing fluids and getting through the tank of "unknown" gas. And from there, we'll do what the car tells us it wants/needs.

equiraptor said:

As a brief introduction: I'm Nugget's girlfriend. The MX-5 in the garage is my daily driver, and we're both pretty involved in this car hobby thing.


I really like the 1275cc motor in the car. It feels like it has the right power & power band for the character of the car - enough to feel eager, not so much as to outrun its gears. On the other hand, I need to do some learning and digging about the Sprite's brakes. The impression I have of them so far is that they definitely work, but they need a significant amount of force and they seem to go from very little braking to locking up a tire pretty quickly. I've already seen a lot of information about different brake options and different tuning/bias adjustment/etc. options, but I need to do a lot more reading.

The first part this car needs is probably tires - it's on ones that seem to be at least 10 years old. It's entirely possible that's part of the brake feel issue, too - 10 year old tires tend to have poor feedback. Next is changing fluids and getting through the tank of "unknown" gas. And from there, we'll do what the car tells us it wants/needs.

Click to expand...

Welcome and with the Miata, clearly you are the brains of the operation! :grin: All the fun, none of the hassles!

Probably we should slide over to the Spridget board soon but, after 10 years, at the very least, you will want to change the brake fluid, possibly rebuild master and slave cylinder (though if they aren't leaking leave well enough alone at least for now) and please please change the brake hoses - including the one at the back in front of the fuel tank. The interiors can persih inside without it changing the outside making for a very dangerous awakening (often the brakes won't release). Your description doesn't sound right but, before you go down the road of diagnosis, do the obvious stuff.

JPSmit said:

Probably we should slide over to the Spridget board soon but, after 10 years, at the very least, you will want to change the brake fluid, possibly rebuild master and slave cylinder (though if they aren't leaking leave well enough alone at least for now) and please please change the brake hoses - including the one at the back in front of the fuel tank. The interiors can persih inside without it changing the outside making for a very dangerous awakening (often the brakes won't release). Your description doesn't sound right but, before you go down the road of diagnosis, do the obvious stuff.

Click to expand...

The brakes not releasing is a little bit less scary than the brakes not engaging, but still not a good experience. I haven't seen signs of the master or slave cylinder leaking yet, but I also haven't specifically checked them. I'll inspect and proceed from there - so nice to have a lift to help with that. Thank you for the advice!

I started a new thread over in the Spridgets forum to document what we're working on.