Project SuperSprite

This is the build/restoration of a 1961 Austin Healy "Bugeye" Sprite. The car is being built to both compete in the Grassroots Motorsports $2006 challenge and to be a fun weekend driver. The car had been found sitting in the same spot for 15 years until I bought it for $500 in late July 2005. Initially, I was referred to the car, and decided to have a look for the heck of it. Naturally, once I saw the heavily hot-rodded Bugeye in it's sad state, I had to have it. It was purpose-built to be an autocross car. The modifications that had been done to the car included a wicked-up 231 Buick V6, Muncie 4 speed transmission, some kind of chevy rear end and 5 link with rod ends. The front suspension is apparently all adapted from elsewhere, MG-B hubs/ brakes, and scratch-built upper control arms with rod ends.
Plans for the car include a resto-mod, keeping the 231 V6, adding a bit here or there, and mostly bringing the car back up to par.

  Indeed, you might have figured that the most daunting part of this project will be the many hours necessary for body and paint-work. I think this makes it ideal for a challenge car, as it needs many hours of labor, but not a tremendous amount of money.

- Kent Finnerty

(kentfinnerty@gmail.com)

THE BUILD:

 UPDATE: December 8, 2006

Ok, so I didn't give anyone an update in the last couple months. The Challenge was the last weekend in October, for results you can check out the GRM website www.grassrootsmotorsports.com. I went, and had a great time, like always, very cool cars, creativity, and antics. The Sprite, however, didn't come with me. I was working my butt off, driving 4 hours each way, every weekend, to work on getting it done. In the end, it ran great, everything seemed to do what I wanted it to. The problem was that the brakes never worked, and up until the last minute, I was still trying to figure it out. At some point it was probably the exhaustion, being covered in brake fluid, gas, coolant, not having a reliable tow vehicle, a last minute problem with the clutch not disengaging, and the fact that I was supposed to be working on school work the whole time anyways that caused me to throw in the towel and just head down to enjoy the event. I've never really failed at anything before, so it was odd territory for me to cover the car up, and leave without it. Anywho, this car was a good example of Murphy's Law. Everything that could have leaked on this car did: coolant, oil, brake lines, exhaust, fuel. And any old part that could have been usable wasn't.

Nonetheless, like I said, I had a good time, and here's some pictures of what the car looked like, all ready to go to the challenge, but not able to stop or clutch properly, enjoy:

Slow progress (September 13, 2006):

So the challenge is but 40 or so days away, and I have much to do. Being back at school now equates to a 4 hour drive home in order to work on the car. We'll see how this goes, at least I work well under pressure.

Here's some of the progress on the interior. The dash is HDPE (High-Density Polyethylene) like I used to make (the incomplete) bodywork for the $2005 Locost. There's about 75 cents worth of it there in the dash. Like I've been preaching, I love plastics for the price, the machinability, and the looks. The layout of the dash: Mechanical oil pressure, electronic water temp, and the little one above the steering wheel is a digital tach. A number of switches have yet to go in, but you get the idea:

I think a theme of this car may be some use of plastics. Here's some more, not yet riveted in place, it was sort of just sitting around and I trimmed it to the right shape with some scissors, put a little heat to it to get it to form, and I kind of liked it there filling the space between the radiator and the engine. Note that I've also got the shocks mounted. The radiator, by the way, was had for $5. I have no idea what it's from, and neither did the seller, but it's bent (doesn't leak) and note that the cap was on the side, so I had to plug it off and get an adaptor to put the cap up high where the system could be bled.

The original brake master cylinder had the reservoir all cracked, and the bore was rusty and basically not usable, a replacement of the actual Austin Healey master cylinder was expensive ($200+). I got this Wilwood master cylinder used for $20, (horrible price considering I had the chance to pay $4 or $5 for them at the dirt track swap meets) and figured I'd make it work. It wasn't very hard; I just chopped off the rod, and welded the end of the Healey rod to it. The only problem was that the mounting holes on the Wilwood one wouldn't work to mount it vertically, so I just tilted it, and figured that I'll just jack the car up on the drivers' side when I fill it with fluid.

I started working on fabbing up the headers. I would have used the ones that were on the car, but sitting for 15+ years, they had actually rusted through and wouldn't have held any exhaust in, and as much as I like exhaust fumes, carbon monoxide poisoning probably isn't that much fun (though I understand it can be quite relaxing). I've really been dreading this. Number one, because it's a very technical process, where you can lose or gain horsepower through very subtle design changes, and number two, there's no friggin room. I'm using galvanized electrical conduit for my header tubes because it was free. Can you use conduit for headers? F if I know. The bends are way too wide, but the diameter of the tubing is about right for the heads, so I'll make it work (did I mention it was free). Oh, and by the way, you don't want to breathe the fumes that come off of welding galvanized metal, so wear a respirator or something: 

The original steering shaft was one long piece, and it was all sorts of in the way of where I wanted the headers to run, so I figured that I'd add some u-joints  and modify it around the exhaust. I clicked on the websites and saw that they want like $50 for an "automotive" or "racing" U-joint. I just grabbed a couple 1/2" ones for sockets, like $5 each when I was at the Chinese tool store (known as Harbor Freight). Now you might be thinking, "But Kent, can you use tool U-joints in an automotive steering column, aren't they different?" And I would reply, "Meh, I dunno, why not, they're cheaper" I welded the pins in so they couldn't go anyplace, and then spliced 'em into the column thusly: 

PAINTED! (July 30, 2006):

 I wiped the car down with a cloth, and sprayed it last week. I used some paint for BBQ grills, it was $10, and I chose it because it said,"priming is not reccomended" and for me, there are no sweeter words, who has the patience for multiple coats?...not I.

Engine back in its' home, now with several hundred percent more shininess! 

Some work has progressed on project SuperSprite:

 (It now has a nice simple abbreviated rear end, a new firewall, completed fabrication on the front suspension, and is about ready for paint and reassembly.)

The open rear-end, the fuel tank is a 7.5 Gallon marine unit, meant for outboard motors, it was $19 shipped on eBay:

I lack "real" sheet metal tools, so this is my impromptu sheet metal brake, consisting of a cardboard tube, a piece of angle aluminum, and 5 clamps. It's not great, but it's the best I can do with what I've got:

Here's a hint at what I'm going for (though I'm not a huge NASCAR fan, ths rear end definately has a bit of resemblance)

Here's an idea of how my improvised A-arms came together:

 Just a little preview of the whole package:

March 24, 2006

My spring break fell on the first week of March (hardly spring), and since I don't drink or get a great deal of satisfaction out of spectating wet T-shirt contests (hold on, I didn't say no satisfaction, I just said not a great deal), I took some time to work on some of the finer details on project SuperSprite between my busy schedule of naps, TV watching, siestas, and even some summer internship hunting. [Shameless promotion: I'm still looking for an interesting internship, will relocate. Note that I'm a "Finance, Insurance, & Business Law" major, though it's not necessary I intern in that field.]

I digress, when the engine came out, I saw about the ugliest firewall imaginable. Aside from having holes all over the place (read: unsafe; a firewall is to be a wall against fire), this one had rivets everywhere, and more dents than a, uh, really dented firewall. The rivets really drove me nuts, as the patch metal was steel. It would have been fine with me had it been aluminum, but why rivet steel to steel? I'm quite picky with having a certain level of quality/workmanship, so I just cut out ALL the metal that wasn't up to snuff. I'll start with some fresh sheet steel, do it right, weld it all in, and put the few holes where I need them, this will clean things up a whole lot.

Note that I also sliced off what was left of the inner fenders, this was just for convenience in measuring, aligning, & generally working on the suspension (you'll see below), they may just get welded back on later when I'm done up front.

There were about 25 holes all over the sheet metal of the car. I filled them in with the welder, and ground them flush. The cowl area was especially bad, as there were holes for wipers, slots for defrosters, and another 7 smaller holes which had been drilled for who knows what.

Here you can see the start on one of the defroster slots. On the larger stuff like this, I first tack-in a backing piece of metal to fill on.

This is after a little bit of grinding on a wiper-arm hole and defroster vent that had been filled-in:

Here you can see the cowl all smoothed-out, now with no holes, nor any hint that there ever were any:

In the previous picture, you can see the seat that I threw in happens to fit okay. What you are looking at is the back seat from the $2004 challenge car. Rummaging for another part, I re-discovered this and thought, since it would be valued at $0, I might see if I could use it (as I already recouped the full value of that car by selling parts off of it past the initial price paid). Here, you can see that the lateral butt support is quite good, though it lacks upper-body and head support, so it might not be the safest thing if I make use of it. A center chunk would also get cut out to clear the center tunnel and make room for the shifter. After having a sit-down though, I must confess, the comfort level was quite high, lovely seats to snuggle into:

Moving on, here is the front suspension setup:

The upper control arm was done from scratch by the previous owner, and, along with the shock, attached to this obscenely heavy mount (the mount bolted to the car), produced with, what I'm assuming was an arc welder. The whole thing (control arm included) contains some welding that is downright scary:

A year or so ago, fellow GRM challenge competitor Andy Nelson (winner of the drag race portion of the challenge for 2 years running), was kind enough to let me tag along on a couple of freezing cold 4:30 AM flea markets where racers unload their used equipment from the previous season at prices that, frankly, might as well be free. (Keep in mind that they can't afford to put used or questionable parts back on their race cars, because if they lose, they don't get paid. Conversely, for guys like us, it's equipment in great shape at next to nothing). Anyhow, I bought tons and tons of miscellaneous stuff at these flea markets to use on the $2005 Challenge locost, much of which, I wouldn't need. Fortunately, I have a use for this surplus. I just grabbed a couple of control arms out of the bin, and can adapt them to work on the SuperSprite (I paid $5 each for these; retail is $70 or so):

Mounting these, though it's extremely important to how the car will handle, was a snap, I just made a template of where I wanted the center of rotation of the arm to fall, made up a couple plates, and welded them in, they still need to be braced on the outside, just to be overkill:

Here you can see the lower arm and hub bolted on. This is so I could figure out how I'll modify the upper control arm to work. It should be pretty easy, but tedious. The hub is just resting there, that's why you can see all the positive camber, don't worry, when I marked the arm for cutting, the hub was at 0*.

If you're wondering what was wrong with the whole original assembly to begin with, I'll spell it out. (In my opinion) It wasn't up to standard, it was ugly, the mounts were heavy, the rod ends needed to be replaced, and I didn't have any from the flea market in that size, so I would've had to buy 4 new ones at $15 each, and the old ones were a nightmare to adjust camber on. These new arms are adjustable with shims and can be done much more easily (though the roll center is altered too blah blah). The main idea here is that when one of the hot shoes drives my car at autocross portion of the challenge, and comes back saying the car could use more (or less) negative camber, I remove 2 bolts, and add (or remove) a shim or two, and have it back for the next run in 10 minutes. 

Feb 3rd, 2006:

Yeah, so here are just a pair of pictures. Now, you may be thinking, what happened here? Well, allow me to retort; the car was found to be extremely rusty around the lower portions of the rear wheel well, and in the trunk area. In this situation, most ordinary men would seek to repair the rusted portions. I, however, have far better ideas than convention dictates. The area of the car which was rusted was hardly important for anything except some kind of "aesthetic" nonsense. I figured that I didn't really need that whole rear portion of the car hanging past the wheels either, and all it would serve to do is leech some of my horsepower to move it around, so I got rid of it. What will I do with the big hole now? You'll just wait and see, but think functionality:

Here are the doors, as I did get a number of things on the car stripped down to bare metal and ready to primer. Overall, I'm pleased with just how little bondo, dings, dents, etc. that I have found around the car, because I probably won't get around to repairing them (well).

January 20th, 2006:

Happy (belated) New Year! I got a bit of work done on the car between semesters, although you wouldn't know it by looking at the car, sanding is unrewarding. I snapped a few photos, and I'll get them up as soon as I can track down my camera cable. I made a few decisions as well, more to come...

September 2nd, 2005:

There has been some progress on the car, but nothing noteworthy. Between being a 4 hour drive away from the car, fall semester classes, and trying to build a new business, it's tough to find the time to work on it. Certainly though, there will be progress and updates when I can get away for a weekend and put in some hours on the 'ole bugeye.    

August 5th, 2005:

Things are going slowly. Teardown is about complete, time to make it pretty!

The engine had been identified, thanks to some outside help, as a 1978 model year (early even-fire thank goodness).

Here's the rear end, apparently a narrowed 1957 chevy unit, interesting.... 

I can even lift it up now! It's about time to flip it over and start with the underside:

Seconds after I removed the engine, my brother insisted on pulling the valve covers. Note the still-shiny Kenne Bell roller valvetrain setup.

Possibly the shortest driveshaft in the history of short driveshatfs.

Yes, the engine tilter was more than necessary in this case. Although, if I hadn't had it, I'm sure I could have just turned into the incredible hulk, picked the car up, then shaken it until the engine flew out like a pog (anyone remember those cardboard wastes of money? ).

Did I mention that this car had 13 wheel spacers on it?

The neato custom front suspension:

Sunday, July 31, 2005:

Teardown has gone well, but more questions have come up in the process than answers. It's late, so I'll worry about re-sizing and posting photos later. I'll also be sure to post more detailed information and post the questions I have, in the hopes someone may be able to email me an answer.

 Anyhow, there are some discoveries that have been made thus far:

This innocent-looking Bugeye Sprite is now the world record holder for the most wheel spacers ever found on a single automobile. The record? 13! That's correct, there were 4 on each of the rear corners, 3 on the right front, and 2 on the left front. Don't ask me why, because I am as stumped and  twice as disturbed as you are, especially about one front wheel having more than the other, yikes! 

There is more than was bargained for in terms of aftermarket parts. The 231 Buick V6 in the car seems like it will be more potent than planned.

Discovered thus far (haven't pulled the oil pan yet):

- Aftermarket (centerforce? ) clutch.

- Aluminum flywheel.

- Carter AFB carb (I should make it clear that I have zero knowledge of carbuerators whatsoever, I just read that, as it was stamped into the carb)

- Wieland intake manifold

- Kenne Bell roller rockers, dual valve springs (and Kenne Bell heads themselves? )

July 26, 2005 Update: The car is here! I paid the princely sum of $500, then dragged it out of the back yard where it resided for so many years and hauled it home.

You can expect to see the occasional update from now on. I'll create a new "build diary" page for this purpose in the next couple of weeks.

For now, here you are:

Look how happy she is to be here:

The pair of creepers under the rear of the car weren't thrilled about being grossly misused. One of them even muttered something about killing me as I slept this evening. I could only laugh; creepers don't even have the necessary thumbs to utilize most weapons. I thought this car was supposed to be a lightweight; nonetheless, it turned out to be a huge pain in the ass just getting it moved around to the tent. 

In the tent, on jackstands. Time to go to work, this is where the magic happens....

Well, it looks as if I may have found my next project and Grassroots Motorsports $2006 Challenge car. I'm only slapping this page together in a few minutes, as I don't even have the car here yet to begin work on, so I'll just post some photos, and the basic information:

-Bugeye Sprite, Buick V6, 4 speed, hasn't moved from that spot in 15 years: