Restoration Blog: September 2023 - Jay Leno's Garage

Welcome to an episode of Jay Leno's Garage Restoration Blog. These have become pretty popular. People seem to like these restoration blogs. We try to feature the projects that we're working on here at the show. This is my aerial item. I got this back in 2006. It originally came with a General Motors Ecotec four-cylinder engine. I think it was about, what was it, about 210, 220 horsepower, something like that. It went fine. It was okay. But I didn't like, I didn't like, it used a sob transmission. I didn't, it was a manual box, which normally I love. It just, just need a little bit more power. So what we did was we, a friend of mine back east built this motor for us. It uses a three liter. It uses two Hayabusa motorcycle heads on a bespoke crankcase. And we hooked it up with this French six-speed transmission. I don't know if it's half the weight of the Ecotec, but I'm sure it's at least 125 pounds less. It's a lot smaller. And this makes, well that made 200 and something horsepower. This makes 488 on the dyno. Combine this with the paddle shifting six-speed transmission. I think it's going to be pretty quick. We've had to beef up the chassis a little bit. We haven't started it. We just stripped it down, putting it in a different fuel tank because this engine and placement a little bit different. So he, well actually Simon Saunders at Ariel Atom, they make a V8 version with this engine and we're just doing it here. So I've called them. They were kind enough to give us everything we need to modify it. Bigger radiator, chassis braces, all kinds of things, engine mounts. And we got that, that big crate there, this empty crate right there. And we're going to start putting it together. We'll start hacking on this and welding on it next week. Yeah that's about it. That's about it. It'll be a lighter, stronger, faster and that's what you need. Something like this, even faster. So these are just a lot of fun to drive because when you build a car, you know, the hard part is not building the car. The hard part is not even making it go fast or stop. The hard part is getting the doors to fit right and hey what's that squeak and what's that rattle. So Simon decided to build a car with no doors, no windows, nothing rattles, nothing squeaks. Almost like a solid billet with an engine on it and that's what this is. So we will get started on this pretty soon, putting it back together, getting the engine in. We've got the transmission. We've got all the pieces we need and next time you see it, hopefully, hopefully it'll be running. Now some other projects. Well come on over here. I'll show you my Panhard over here. This is George Swift. Normally he's on steam car duty but tonight he's on rare French two-cylinder cars with less than 70 horsepower. I brought this in yesterday to have George take a look, bring me idle down a little bit and then you notice it was rattling and the whole fan has fallen apart. Yeah, so this fan, it's a bit of a clutch fan but the way this was built, this centers in the crank. There's spring load pushing against this on the bolt that holds the this to the crank. There's a friction disc that allows this thing to slip a little. Right. But the way this fan was made, all the, there was rubber around here and it goes right in here. Yeah, this right in here. All right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And this should be centered and nice. There's rattling all around because I see the rubber rotted out. So whatever the slack is from the rubber rotting out. So instead of holding it. Yeah. And so all these rivets had to be drilled out. Fortunately, I don't have the technology to fix this. So Bernard's going to have to make something. Okay. Once it's centered, this will be quiet. Yeah. And the carburetor wasn't just set to idle, it was leaking. Yeah, a whole new gasket. And the gasket set is made of unobtainium for this car. So that had to be made. And that's it. So in order to get to the fan belt, you jack the engine up, pull the exhaust pipes off because the engine mounts hang on the exhaust. Yeah, I know. That's great, isn't it? Because if the exhaust pipe is corroding, then your whole engine's going to fall out. What's cool though, is to take the hood off, you take the hood prop rod off, and then you swing the hood over like this, lift it up. It's off. Yeah. It just hooks on a bar in here. And this is a wonderful, why this did not beat the Volkswagen. And this had a top 850 CCs, top speed of 94, 95 miles an hour. And really fun to drive. Buzzy, it revs, you've got a torsion bar, valve springs. It's really cool. Roller bearing, crank. It's a great, great engine. Yeah. In a race, it'll beat a Volkswagen. It just didn't outsell them. It's quite fast. I think it was 67 horsepower, this was. That much? I think it was. This was the Tiger model. That's a lot for 850 twin. It's amazing how fast these go. But this rattle, it just really detracts from this car. Right, right. It's just bad. Well, this car was brought to this country from France by, you got to be my age, Efren Zimbalist Jr. He was on the FBI, a Quinn Martin production, by the way. They'd bong and they'd have the thing at the end there. But yeah, so he drove this all around Hollywood. So I don't think these are even being imported into the United States in 67. This is the only one I know about in the country. But if you've one out there, let me know in the comment section. That's great. This wasn't allowed here, was it? No, you weren't allowed to have covered headlights in 60. I think that was gone by 66, I think. Yeah. You could probably sneak it in. It's just a really, it's got great lines. But you know, when stuff like this happens, I mean, I'm really interested to see how Bernard's going to fix this because you can't, this has to be dead center. It's going to be so imbalanced. But originally this was, the outer was sandwiched in rubber and it was probably bonded in here. It's like a harmonic balancer. When it's bad, you get a new one. Well, there aren't any new ones. You Google this fan, you won't find it. You'll just find Jay Leno's garage and picture of this car. So when we're not eating escargot, we go to something more American, like the Corvette over here. That's my split window fueling car, very low mileage car, but we decided to pull the engine and just have the whole thing balanced. We just got all the parts back. Isn't that right? Yep. Yeah. Put that down. Let's go over and take a look at the Corvette parts. Okay. This is our engine for the 327 Corvette fueling. It's the original motor, the matching motor. Obviously got to paint this block, clean it up a little bit. These are our heads. They've been shaved a little bit, right? Yes. Okay. And also screw-in valve studs were put in. They tend to poke and these don't. Okay. So that's bomb-proof heads. Carrillo rods. We all choose Carrillo rods and everything from the airplane motors, everything just beautiful. These will be full floating wrist pins. So they'll float around in the piston and the rod. Whereas normally the rod is heated, the pin goes in and it's stuck there. Those are really nice. Okay. These are the roller lifters. We got rid of the solid lifters because they tend to be noisy and you've got to adjust them. Whereas these are roller lifters. See you got, they call them roller lifters because you got the rollers here at the bottom. Yeah. Less friction. Less friction. Engine spins quicker. Those are hydraulic. And then the rockers are hydraulic as well. A new minty taste. I mean roller, excuse me. Yeah. Cool. Well, that's like a quality product on it. It is. Yeah. This is going to be a great engine when it's together. Made in the USA. Made in the USA. And all that stuff was made to order, which is why the time it took so long. Yeah. That's good. No, it'll, it'll be great when we get it running again. It'll be terrific. Yeah. These Mollie pistons are the best pistons you can put in that engine. The machine shop used to, used to get the block back all pretty, but really it's up to the assembly person to clean everything and whatever. So that's going to get washed and it'll, most of the paint will be taken off and then it'll be prettied up. Cool. The next time you be in a running Corvette. Probably later today. Later today. See, there you go. That's, that's the spirit George. I just want you happy. There you go. There you go. Come on. Let's show them some more of the steam stuff. Well, this thing is kind of cool. This is the Stanley owned by Raymond Stanley, who is the son of F.E. Stanley. The Stanley brothers built the cars. They weren't so much interested in style, but Raymond went to MIT, took automotive design. He wanted a Mercer race about looking, a lower, leaner kind of Stanley. So you notice how all the other ones sit so high. So he designed this. This is not that car. That car doesn't exist anymore. So it's a complete recreation using all Stanley parts. We bought this. It needed a lot of work. Needed a brand new boiler, which we just did. Let me, George, put this on the other side. So hang on. Okay. Yeah. I'll hold it. Can you bring it up? Yep. Up and over. This is a brand new boiler. Uh, we, our friend, uh, Bill Barnes built this for us. He does just beautiful work. So this thing should be ready to fire pretty soon. We're just waiting for the burner and a few other pieces now making up some fittings. It's almost all the way there, but we're not far off. So not really. It's just a little time consuming to get everything lined up and screwed together. So this thing will be running pretty soon. And George has done a beautiful job putting the engine of the Doble steam car back together. That's been a multi-year project. There have been so many other things involved. A crazy amount of work on that thing. So much had to be done. That's a machinist vacation home working on that thing. It was really close. Thought we were going to run it. And then the throttle was broken and it dumped water in the engine and it's just like another setback. Yeah, that's okay. That's okay. But even the throttle, the Doble steam car is the most complex car because no parts exist. We were lucky enough to have plans. So come on, we'll show you what we're doing on that. Nice to see it back on its wheels again. Let's take a look. Well, this here is our Doble steam car. George finally got the engine all together. Herculean task. George has just done an amazing job on this thing because there aren't any. It's pretty much experimental. You go and try to figure out what was happening. Abner Doble really was a genius. He still built to this day the only steam car you turn with a key and you pull away in under 30 seconds or so. But it is so incredibly complex. The throttle is broken. We found that out. George took the throttle apart. We had to go to Poland or at least get our steel from Poland because nothing exists. We couldn't find any. What kind of steel was it, George? Do you remember? Jim said they were going to make it out of Inconel. Well, Inconel you can get, but this is some other kind. Yeah, I mean it wasn't the material that Doble used, but they wanted to outlive all of us. What happened was the stem of the throttle valve was broken and it allowed, when pumping up the generator with water, it allowed water to go into the engine. When it started flowing out of places where it shouldn't, that was when the feed water heater was suspect because that has failed before. But it wasn't the feed water heater. The throttle in the passenger compartment was closed, but it was broken. So it was allowing water to go past the throttle and into the engine, which it's like, oh man, this is not good. And so it had to come apart this far to get the throttle out of there. It's amazing how small, it's the size of a nickel or a dime, that a thousand foot pounds of torque can go past that when it's open just very little. But allowing all that water to go past there is a bad thing. Abner Doble built these cars in Emeryville, California. Now there's really no plans. The one good thing is he left to the universe, I think it's the University of California, all the Abner Doble papers. We got all the papers, here they are here. And this is kind of what we have to do, go to the library, kind of find his original drawings about how, this is the steering box, how everything was put together. Actually this is, oh here it is, that is the throttle right there. Just making all these pieces, it's like, it's crazy. It's amazing that one guy was able to do that. Well you're turning the throttle control wheel up there and it's moving the throttle up and down down here. Right. See your throttle is another small steering wheel, looks like a small steering wheel. Oh here it is right here. Yeah. See you have a, because since you're looking at a thousand pounds of pressure, you can't have a valve like on a carburetor, a butterfly, because the pressure, you wouldn't be able to overcome it. So it's like a screw, it screws in and seals and then you back away. But it's setting it up which is almost impossible and the guys are doing a great job of it here. Let's show them that other piece that goes right here that runs the condensing fan. Yeah that's the fan turbine and feed water heater. Let me bring that over, stay right there George. It's kind of heavy. It is heavy isn't it, yeah. What is this way? Okay that's too heavy to move. George come on over. Okay. Now what this does, believe it or not, this just, all of this, this must be 150 pounds. I don't know if it's that much. 100 pounds, pretty close. It's heavy. It's pretty close. Steam enters here and the steam pushes this fan which is connected to the, that's not a radiator, it looks like a radiator, it's a condenser. Steam comes in, gets forced into the, the steam also turns the fan. After it exits the fan it goes into the condenser, the fan cools the steam, turns it back into water and the whole process starts all over again. The fascinating thing is Howard Hughes went 132.5 miles an hour in 1925 in that very car. So that's pretty amazing. Now it was all broken inside since it's water, obviously corrosion has taken its toll, but now look at it. Silent, makes no noise at all. Bernard had fixed this before. He made a whole new coil. Right. And there's a huge electric motor to bend the tubing, but water goes in, goes out, then it goes into the generator and so. Well steam comes in. Well water is here and steam here. Right. So like the white and this, when the water goes in there and steam has gone through there, they call it the feed water heater because the steam is preheating that water before it goes into the generator. And then there's super heater coil and all that. But my first fear was that that coil had failed and it was a surprise because Bernard did it years ago and it wasn't bad. It's like, oh man, what's wrong now? So then I realized that it has to be the throttle. It's the only other thing. Right, right. But it was in the closed locked position, but somehow it broke. Yeah. So anyway, we'll get this back together again. That's pretty cool. There's a big turbine wheel in there that the steam drives. This thing is so complex. I mean one guy designed the whole thing. I mean it's pretty amazing, pretty amazing. Come on, let's show you what else we got going on. This is Jimmy Hudson. Hey Jimmy, how you doing? What's happening Jay, how you doing? Mike, remember I talked last time about my motorcycle accident and I cut through a parking lot that had a chain across and boom, it just, you know, what they call a clothesline means through the ground. Since the bike was connected to a sidecar, the bike didn't fall over, just kept going, hit the building and got pretty dented up. Jimmy's been doing a great job putting it back together. You know, it's kind of a good thing that we crashed it because this had so much body filler and everything else in it, didn't it? Yeah, it was terrible and it's got a lot of rust and a lot of the bracket leads really worn out, so it really just had a rough restoration done to it. Right. So we're more concerned about the condition of the rust, not really the accident. Right. And we're actually making new skins, new framework for the inside, so it'll be solid, new steel. Yeah, we thought we could fix this, but there's so much body filler. In fact, I'm only going to save, this is the only part I am saving that's original, is the front nose piece here. It's okay, but all the rest has got to be remade. Now, Jimmy did a great job taking the dent out of it. This is all smashed. All of it was smashed, yeah. Plus, this had something the original sidecar never had. So what we found out is a lot of the parts were actually so, you know, disintegrated and rusted and they repaired it with fiberglass. We're going to rebuild it all with steel, make it clean. This is some of the stuff we found, Jay. So, and this has nothing to do with the accident, but it's kind of a good thing, like Jay said. So when you find stuff like this underneath, that's really bad. And this, look at it. That's a piece of body filler off one of the fenders. Look at that. I mean, this feels like a piece of solid steel, it's so heavy. It was so thick, it was like they put plywood on it. Yeah. You know, so we're going to fix it all back up and it'll probably weigh a couple hundred pounds less. Right, and you can see all the dents and... Yeah, all the stuff that's gone through. And the floor has been fixed with fiberglass rather than steel, huh? Yeah, where it's rotted out and had holes in it, they just fiberglassed it and they covered it up, so... Which means I probably got to do the engine as well. We haven't done it, though. We probably should go through the entire motor. We are, we're pulling it out. I'll show you the bike. We got new forks. Let's see, where are the forks? Oh, here we are. You know, in some ways, this accident might have prevented another accident. These are the original forks that were on the bike and they were chromed. You never want to chrome forks because of something called hydrogen embrittlement. That's when, in the chroming process, it weakens the metal unless you... What do you do to avoid... You heat treat it. You heat treat it, that's right. Especially. Right, right. And that'll work, but that never happened to these. So I always had in the back of my mind that they could crack or break when you're going down the freeway. So we managed to get a brand new set of forks. Straight. Yeah, yeah. These would cost you as much as a motorcycle now. But pretty much. You want to keep it original, so that's good. Okay, what do you got there? These are the springs that came out of it. This is our original leaf spring. Right. From our bike, but we got the full set. We got bearings. We got a new leaf spring. Now yours has an override. It's a little heavier. We're going to put that one back with your fork. Right. And we'll just save this one for an extra. Okay, and put that down. And we got new struts with it too. Right. New straight struts. So we got all new straight parts, straight forks, and we'll go forward to the axle, get it on the frame. We're going to check the frame next. Make sure it's all square. Engine will come out. We'll go through it. Clean it all up. And here it is right here. And we're going to change the color from that kind of, I'm not crazy about that orange anyway. Yeah, yeah. We're going to maybe do a nice two-tone. But here's the bike here. Big four-cylinder. Starts every time, you know. It's like, it's like 4.8 or something compression. You drop your foot and thump, thump, thump. All kinds of torque. A lot of fun to ride. Not fun to crash. I didn't enjoy that. But they're fun to ride. And of course, our other white steam car over here. This is built on an original chassis. Jimmy has done a wonderful job creating a new, I guess it'd be a burner can. They actually called it a flue, like almost the same thing as a chimney. Yeah, that's right. That's right. It's a flue to exalt the heat. Because of here, yeah. Gets the heat out of here. You made this part as well. And look at the beautiful brass work here. You want to take that off and you want to see the inside of it? Yeah, let's take a look. All right, we can pick it up together. You grab the front, I'll grab the back. Come on straight back, Jimmy. All right, put it down right here. Yeah. This is an auxiliary water tank. Yeah. So now we just probably holds what? Let's see. What did it hold before? About 16 gallons, I think, before. So now we got maybe another 12 here. Probably more than 15 again. 15, yeah. So this way, if you want to go non-stop to San Francisco, it's a little easier. Yeah. You have a little knob here, you turn on like a water faucet. Yeah, exactly. Fill your other tank. And your fire is in here. And this is not a boiler. This is what they call a steam generator. Kind of like a tankless water heater. And at Stanley, this would be filled with maybe 12 gallons of water and you'd heat up the whole thing like a tea kettle and just keep it hot. With a white or a doble, you're only heating two quarts of water at a time. It comes through. The water comes through. The fire comes up in between the coils. Water gets hot, turns to steam. And these run on what they call superheated steam, which is, I think, one drop of water expands 2,500 times when it's superheated. Incredible. Yeah. So, yeah, it's amazing. In fact, superheated steam will light a match on fire. You know, we know it can cause damage to like to my face. Yeah. Like when you get a superheated, when it's superheated steam, if you get up to 700 degrees and you just open the steam valves, when you get steam that comes out as a gas, you hold a match in front of it and it'll ignite. You think, isn't it wet? But no, it's beyond. All the heat is out of the water. Now it's just hot. Pure hot. Pure hot. Yeah. But as you can see, all the brass work. This is going to be a nice car. Here is the throttle. This steam car is like I showed you on the doble just a second ago. You know, sometimes people say, why are there steam wheels? Well, sometimes you make smaller turns, but that's not true. This is the throttle. So you open and close it and you steer here and you open and close the throttle right there. So Jimmy, thanks a lot. All right, Jay. Well, I'm going to answer a question I get quite frequently on this restoration blog. People say, Jay, do you wear the same shirt every day? No, no, that'd be ridiculous. Actually, being a show business, I have a pretty extensive wardrobe. In fact, I've got an outfit for just about any occasion it should pop up. Come on, show what I'm talking about. Now see, these are some of the denim shirts I wore in the early years. Those are the ones I wear at the garage. Okay, this one here, this was during a confused time of my life when I was still trying to figure out who I was. Don't wear this one much anymore. But as you can see, we have light denim, dark denim. We've got denim to just about any occasion. You get invited to the White House? No problem. Oh, hanging out with friends? Easy choice. See you guys next week.