This customer found us from Martin, the owner of Jule Enterprises. They are the ones that make the better, stronger frames for big Healeys. He came to the shop and liked what he saw. We have gone through training by Martin to put his frames under Healeys. He asked me about putting a Datsun 5 speed in a Bugeye. I told him we’ve done it before and that my personal Bugeye has one in it. He found the parts and brought down the car. Once we had the engine out and were ready to put the 5 speed in, we got a call from the owner. He asked how the engine compartment looked and we discussed the possibility of repainting it. He then planned a trip down to take another look at his Bugeye and decided to go ahead and have us repaint the whole car since it was looking a little tired. This is one of the most rust free british cars we’ve had in the shop. It’s pleasure to work on.
Update 1/13/2020
As usual, things became more complicated than originally anticipated. Part of the repaint was due to previous work where the seams were splitting. We found that someone had taken apart the seams at some point, probably to fix rust, and didn’t properly weld them back up. We cleaned them up, pulled them tight, and welded them like the should be. The next issue was the bonnet. When sanding down the bonnet, we found a significant amount of filler in places. The bonnet had been wrecked at some point and fixed with filler. We had to cut and pull some the metal back to where it was supposed to be. Everything is now in it’s proper place. The car has been skim coated and will begin the painting process as soon as the Tiger is finished in paint. While it’s waiting, the front suspension has been removed and repainted to cover up a lot of yellow overspray from the previous shop.
