Bugeye Wedding

I rode Harley Davidson motorcycles for years and thoroughly enjoyed it.  But life was too busy with 3 kids in 3 different sports year round.  I wanted a project car that I could step out into the garage and work on when I had an extra hour to two.  So in Nov 2009, I sold my Harley and bought a 1959 Austin Healey MK1 Sprite.

I was told that that the car I bought had pin holes in the floor board and no rust.  Well, my fault for buying a car site unseen.  It turned out to be much more than that.

Once the media blasting was complete, it was so bad across the entire car that my wife nicknamed it “Lacey”.  I replaced both floor pans, both inner and outer rockers, A posts, rear bulkhead behind the seats, boot floor, numerous patches on bottom of quarters and in the wheel wells.  The car had definitely been in a wreck and patched together.

“Lacey”

I built a rotisserie and did all of the metal work in the garage.  Of course there was an understanding with my wife that I would always have room for her car in the garage when I finished.  So I had rollers on the rotisserie and would turn the car on edge, roll it out of the way and clean up after every work session.

Over the next 6 years I completely rebuilt the car.  Every nut, bolt and washer.  Many of the parts were not usable and could not be restored.  Sometimes I felt like Moss Motors sold me a whole car, just in pieces.  The technical videos on the Moss website and the technical support was awesome.

Over the last couple of months, I worked almost every day on the car.  My daughter’s wedding was April 2 and she wanted me to drive her up to the ceremony in the Bugeye.  It was tough but 2 days before the wedding I had the car ready.  It wasn’t complete, but had everything that was needed for the reveal at the wedding.

The weather was perfect and the wedding was too.  We had so many comments about how the ceremony was awesome and the bride beautiful.  But one of the hits of the day was the Bugeye.  When my daughter and I came around the corner in the Bugeye, friends and family said they lost it.

Even though I have a punch list that I am working on, I am enjoying my little Bugeye.  Thanks, Moss Motors!

By Vince King