We had a lot of fun preparing this race car for a great customer of ours in Vancouver, Canada. He has the supercharged car “Roxy” that we modified, and he recently asked us to prepare this dedicated Bugeye racer so he could get some track time and begin his racing career.
The car had been sitting for some time and needed all the systems refreshed and upgraded. We used the best of everything and transformed the car into a racer that should be strong enough to take some serious track abuse.
We started with the original fuel tank and have found that sediment in old tanks is a serious reliability issue with the many road cars we have prepared. So we took a new Bugeye tank that we could mount in the stock Bugeye position and then sent it out to be converted into a fuel cell, which, if you are unfamiliar, prevents fuel from sloshing and prevents related fuel starvation issues. There are also multiple safety advantages including a double lining, foam inside to fill any voids, lower fumes, no splashing of fuel should there ever be a rupture, etc. It’s a much safer way to carry fuel in a race car.
Next we aggressively attacked the rear hubs, which we upgraded with a custom double bearing set up. The stock Bugeyes have a single bearing and for the higher side loads from wider tires and racing in general, the double bearing makes a much stronger rear. These are hardened for strength and needed to be machined to receive 7/16 beefier wheel studs, another upgrade.
Next we fit a limited slip differential for better power transmission and hardened rear axles to handle the extra power of this trick 1275 engine.
On to the front brakes, which we modified with larger Spitfire drilled and vented rotors and bigger MGB calipers. This conversion required a lot of modification to get everything to fit.
The rest of the car underwent similar intensive scrutiny and improvement, and we are grateful for the time we got to spend with multiple Bugeye racing invocations, which will help us make future street cars we prepare that much stronger and more reliable. Thanks so much to Hap Waldrop from Acme speed for the racing innovations he shared!
We wish you great lap times Karlo! Here’s some of my in car camera footage from a parking lot test drive (wish we had a track on our property for more testing!). Hopefully we’ll get some actual track video footage from Karlo in the near future!