Bugeye Restoration Project

I've owned this Bugeye since either 1965 or 1966, we can't find the paper work to nail down the exact year. We bought it when Sandi and I were stationed in Hawaii. We have another Bugeye that I built from a tub purchased about six years ago (Can be seen here). I started tearing this one down as soon as the other one was on the road. I've now started putting it back together.

This car spent a lot of it's early life in the tropics on the islands of Hawaii and Guam and even after leaving the tropics it's always lived in a coastal environment. It was an East Coast car for a while but has mostly lived on the central coast of California.

The footwell floors were completely rusted through many years ago. They were replaced with sheet aluminum inserted into a welded steel frame. This was the best I could do at the time due to an extremely limited budget. The passenger compartment floors were in surprisingly good shape as I had always attempted to keep all of the drain holes open and flowing.

Due to the combination of rust and numerous accidents, none of which were repaired properly, the exterior panels were in bad shape.

Except for the footwell kick panels all of the panels used in this restoration are from Austin Healey Spares in the UK. The kick panels were left over from Bryan Vandivers Bugeye restoration and Bryan could not remember where he had purchased them.

This web page is intended to document the restoration process and cost.

	This picture was taken in Pearl City Hawaii in 1968. The little girl is our daughter Dawn who was born in 1966. The top is up because it was raining when we left home.
	This picture was taken in Salinas California in about 1998. On the outside the car looks ok but underneath it's a mess.