1924 Bentley Twin Turbo - Jay Leno's Garage

we're here in the Bentley section of my garage is the 1924 Bentley 3 litre chassis a lot of confusion about Bentley's the real Bentley's the ws went from 1919 to 1931 W old Bentley was an engineer he was originally a locomotive engineer then he moved on to cars and then the company got sold to rolls-royce after 1931 and Bentley's became the silent sports car and it lost some of the luster of the early Bentley's then one LeMans like six times like a lot of great engineers not a good businessman so Bentley eventually went bankrupt in 31 and had to sell out and rolls-royce bought the company and then Bentley went on to design lagonda and some other impressive engines and cars but he got to see his cars become a legend and he got to see the club the Bentley Drivers Club one of the great clubs of all time the Bentley Drivers called these guys drive the cars all over the world you know I kind of get annoyed at the Duesenberg owners because most of them don't drive the cars they put in the museum where's the Bentley guys they drive them they blow it up they have spares they make new engine blocks they make new everything for him so it's a terrific terrific group now what I did was I didn't want to modify an original car I don't think that's good you don't want to take a nice original car and cut it up so I bought a car that had been a race car this originally had a four and a half liter engine in it now Bentley built three liters four and a half liters six and a half litre and an eight liter he also they also built the supercharged the blower Bentley's did you hear about but those were not built by Bentley those were built by Tim Burke in a very famous English racecar driver he wanted to go faster Bentley did not like supercharging he didn't think it was reliable and he was eventually proved correct because a supercharged blower Bentley never won a race they were impressive they were fast they came in second and third but they I don't think he ever want anything when Bentley wanted to go faster he just made a bigger engine so what they used to do much like Chevy does you know how you take the big 396 of the 427 and you put in a little nova body that's what the Bentley drivers did they took the engine from the eight liter come on over here this is the big 8 liter sedan if you've watched the videos you put this big giant motor in the little 3 liter chassis and that's what we did on this one when rolls-royce bought the company they were so afraid of this motor they really thought this motor was superior to the rolls-royce motor at the time that all the moles were broken up so there are only 108 litre Bentley's I managed to track down five of them but there is still look quite a few out there anyway you take this big 8 liter engine and you put it in the little 3 liter chassis what we have here is an 8 litre bentley engine with twin turbochargers no turbochargers are not available in the day of course they work tremendously well you know there's such a big motor there's almost zero lag so it starts it starts pumping them the minute you put your foot in it now you've got 6 fans you've got four of them up here and a couple down there on the lower radio so these are all these modern relays are all for the fans I'm sorry they're not particularly attractive but that's just what you got to do your Bentley fill a cap I always love the attention to detail on these things that's where you put your oil in this your overflow tank we made that these look like they're really long motors and I suppose they are in a Bentley your engine really runs from here to here your six cylinders are from here to here and what you have here this looks like it looks like another cylinder but it's not that's to drive your overhead cams these were essentially oil cooled motors as well you can drive this thing all day long you can drain the oil almost put your hand in it it'll be warm but it won't burn you that's how cool these runs they use straight 50 weight oil although I'm using the modern redline 2050 on this one I asked to mate this car to be around 400 to 450 horsepower but a lot of torque eight nine hundred foot-pounds of torque tremendous torque and Bentley's were really over built the gearboxes are enormous ly strong the trick to take a tremendous amount of power like a lot of cars of the period it doesn't have shock absorbers you have what they call dampeners although they do call it a shock absorber what you have is here you adjust this you have your spring down here and if you didn't have this you spring with you you'd Pogo boring boring boring down the road so you have these hartford's on here and there are pieces of wood in between the metal here and you tighten it up and what it does is when the car bounces it goes boink and then you put how much tension you want and it comes back up slowly so you're not pulll going down the road there are million lubrication points on these cars all here every one of these or there's must be 50 of them at least we have double hartford's on this one you got your scoops or your brakes here we have this original three liter radiator and what we've done with this car is we've lined the bottom of the car on the other side and a special radiator made to put along here so the water goes through that radiator down to this radiator and then back so it cools a little bit better see we need the crossover to get to the turbocharger on the other side then we realize the hood didn't fit so hey let's just cut out the hood and it looks kind of cool as you see you got three carburetors on three big s use put you a little bit of oil in there and make sure when you hear that noise you go okay I got some oil all right this is your overflow tank this there's a lot happening under the hood of this car a few other modern things like braking obviously of course and hydraulic clutch but other than that it's pretty much as she would have been back in the day this is your Popoff valve here the nice thing about Bentley's is this is a solid block there's no head gaskets so you're not gonna blow a head gasket on this thing to do any valve work you have to literally take the whole engine apart and go into the bottom imagine going to a proctologist to get dental work done that's basically what one of these is you have to come in through the back to do anything one thing is that you could do to your old classic they didn't have back in the day was really good modern filtration systems I like to run a couple of Fram filters on these things because back in the day they would have just a piece of screen door essentially you know you take the big chunks out of itself if you can put a modern system in it I recommended I don't think anybody calls that cheating but it will make your engine literally last forever here in California we don't worry about rain too much but in England it gets rainy and rusty so what happens is you you you'd coat your Springs with grease then you put these leather gaiters on you tie them off and the leather would keep the the grease inside the spring there a bugatti used to sort of insult Bentley by saying Bentley built the fastest trucks in in Europe and in some ways he was correct but they also it also made them virtually unbreakable these things could run 24 hours all day long at Lamar the body is what they call a Wyman style body I can take this body off myself and hold it over my head no I'm not incredibly strong it's just incredibly light what this is is this is a leatherette type fabric stretched over wood wimon what he did was because metal bodies used to creak and wooden bodies used to make a lot of noise you had thin strips of wood and then you had rubber in between the wood where they joined so it wouldn't squeak and then you stretch this leatherette fabric really tight the gearbox on this car is a Bentley gearbox as I said they're incredibly strong it's what they call a dog box what you do is you you shave every other gear so consequently you can slam shift this thing without using the clutch on the move it's just bam bam bam you can shift it real quickly because there's a lot of space between these gears it's just just like this and your engine they're not moving that fast so you can you can shift pretty quickly I love the rear of this car the gas tank those you have proper English lights all copper exhaust system you've got two fuel pumps when this thing is when you put your foot in this thing you're dropping down to about four miles per gallon if that normally this would have a magneto and a distributor we got rid of Magneto we mounted twin distributors right here under the dash modern distributors just to make a lot of spark as you can see a dashboard that's pretty busy it's got everything but a speedometer you got tachometer you've got a clock that's your original 3-liter clock this is your exhaust gas temperature for your twin turbochargers water temperature oil temperature that's the original steering wheel it's all proper Bentley with the exception of hydraulic brakes mint leaves were cable brakes it's got hydraulic brakes and it's got the twin turbo charges on it but other than that it's everything you would have wanted to make a period hot rod back in the back in the 30s or 40s we got to fuel pumps normally I just one on one fuel pump around the freeway and you want to really give it some power you turn on the second fuel pump to keep it from starving that's how much gas 'ti to actually need a second fuel pump it's hilarious let's see if she's ready to go on the tank to get out of the car to look at it I just like the attention to detail the dogs on here he's got a spring that holds your gas cap on then you set it turn it that way yeah I've got a fuel cell in there then you tighten it up and you hook your spring back on Lookout the original English plates on it I think it's just a great looking car just classic vintage Bentley come on we'll take it for a spin I'll show you how this dog work watch my head I have my hand on the shifter notice I'm not touching the clutch [Music] spark advance and I've got the fan started now you don't want to hit turbo boost who you got at least Stephanie degrees centigrade [Music] nothing like here that wastegate papa well that's about it I promised a buddy of mine I'd go to a rugby game but they got a rugby jacket on can you figure out which team it is drop me a line if you know I'll give me a hint it's an Australian you

Channel: Jay Leno's Garage

Views: 1,110,512

Keywords: nbc, JLG, atg, 1924BentleyTwinTurbo, revC, 1080p, 1080P, 24, Jay Leno, Automotive, Cars, Garage, horsepower, Jay, Leno, mods, custom car, Speed, Fast, modded cars, mechanic, fastest car, Jay Leno's Garage, cars, exotic cars, interview, custom, Leno car, funny, Leno funny, car show, Rare, Motorcycles, racing, jay leno interview, auto, drive, power, fast, amazing, cool, the cars, vehicle, lotus elan, bentley, twin turbo

Id: hgkACtLJaxk

Length: 11min 37sec (697 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 08 2012