1963 Porsche 356 Carrera 2 - Jay Leno's Garage

welcome to the episode of Jay Leno's Garage today we're going to talk about my 1963 Porsche Carrera 2 this I think is the most desirable 356 Porsches that there is it's certainly my favorite and interesting how this car came to be I got a call one day from a guy his dad had passed away and he wanted to sell his car and I said what is it he said it's the Porsche you know explain what it was 356 so that's ok twin-cam ding old twin-cam well that sounds kind of cool and I've been off the road for quite a while now I am certainly know a Porsche expert and and certainly comes two twin cams I didn't know much about them I know it was the most and it was the most desirable model and I said well what I normally do when I I find a car that I wanted trying to find some experts on that mark in the area so I called Jerry Seinfeld if you are the Porsche guys I know and I said who are some for cam experts in Southern California and they gave me a few names and I said which one is closest to where this car is located and they said well Wilhite restorations down in Long Beach he's kind of the premier guy so ok so I say call this John Wilhoit and they say hey I found this twin cam Porsche coupe sunroof GT seats the whole bit he does huh what's the license plate so I tell them the license plate he goes that's my car I restored that car back in 1976 he sold it to the guy I was buying it from I said well this is perfect let me bring him out to look at the car and I did one better I brought him here today John come on in how are you this is John Wilhoit rollin restorations if you got a Porsche he's been in the business how long 30 40 years 37 years here you go so he's the guy and this is a car you did back in the early seventies correct yeah I bought this car in 75 I think right the end of 75 restored it in 76 and then I sold it in 77 and when I sold it is the highest price anybody yeah yeah it was crazy I I sold the car for sixteen thousand at that point the highest I'd ever heard anybody getting was twelve thousand so I thought man I really hit a home run they'll never be worth yeah and you know you have to put that in perspective because a new Lamborghini Miura was twenty two thousand yeah so that was was a lot yeah and this was the fastest road going Porsche at the time correct that you could buy well in sixty three it was yeah it was the premier car it was sort of comparable to the turbo today right right and it was easily twice as much as the standard super 90 coupe right yeah these cars with just the basic model was about $7,000 u.s. and you could buy a regular 356 coupe for in the $4,000 right right so it was a lot more money now when you got this car back in the 70s did he require a lot of work was it pretty straight no it actually still had the original paint on it it had no rust issues at all the engine the car actually only had 46,000 miles so it was a low mileage car it had factory electric sunroof this is also the first 356 to have disc brakes correct yeah these are what they have what they call now annular disc brakes what Porsche did at the time was a Dunlop had come up with a brake a regular disc brake and rather than pay Dunlop Porsche thought well we'll create our own disc brakes so what they did was they took a drum and they mounted the special disc and brought the caliper from the inside and it it was a good break a lot of people complained the pedal pressure was kind of high but it was the first disc brake and they they had small problems with them and then the next year they decided we're just going to go ahead and pay for the license and we're going to use the other brakes but this one still has this still has the annular brakes and you can still get parts for them and this of course is the four cam engine they call it a twin cam because both cams two cams on one hand yeah - cam it has under four cans yeah the normal engine of course pushrod driven and this was based on the old Furman design correct yeah Forman came up with this engine in the early 50s and Porsche wanted to create their own engine that wasn't based on the Volkswagen for racing and it was primarily built for the race cars I don't know that they intended it as a street engine and it was a complicated design not theoretically but to work on it's very complicated because there's no easy way that bevel gears drive the cams the bevel gears have the lash has to be set and there's no simple Arbor to adjust the valve timing you have to do it by readjusting the gears on the spline and checking each cylinder it at a time you know Bernard our shop foreman his dad was also mechanic and whenever his dad had one of these engines it was 40 hours he would go in the garage shut the door yeah sit there with the tweezers but he put each bearing in I mean it was a roller bearing crank shaft yeah extremely complicated isn't it this earth built the roller bearings on early engines this actually has a plane bearing this one is yeah the later ones had plans and of course this is a 2 liter engine so it was the biggest engine they built up to that point yeah great out of the stock engine in the stock car the push rod was the 1600 and this else was a lot bigger now did it have the GT seats when you got it you put no I actually you know being wanting all the trick goodies right I found a set of original GT seats for the car it's almost hard to convey the level of workmanship on this car you really have to drive it to appreciate it because I was one of those guys I came kind of late to the Porsche party I grew up with Corvettes and the idea if you could get a 427 Corvette for $2000 less than a 130 horsepower Porsche well when you're 19 years old that what I want is you know but it's a bit like fine wine or anything like that you get a little old and then you realize oh my god this is one of the most beautiful driving cars of all - yeah let's show him the motor well there's your beautiful 4 cam engine right there what did you do to this you know amazingly the engine ran really well as I said it only had 46,000 although the Careers usually required engine work before they got to 46,000 it had been rebuilt at some point and I just went through and rebuilt the carburetors detailed the engine started right up and ran great he's invented something you've got one of these four camps if they sit they tend to smoke because your oil tank is higher yeah consequently oil will drain down if it doesn't run for a month or two it'll back up into the valve guides you turn the key huge clouds of smoke and I thought I just assumed my engine was worn - my valve guides were worn and I called John and we discussed rebuilding the engine but being the honest guy that he is he said you don't have to rebuild the engine there's nothing wrong with the engine it's just it's dripping down from the from the tank so he came up with this rather cool invention and I've done this on some of my motorcycles it's a one-way valve explain how it works what this is and it's it's not an this is actually a copy of a valve they used in the 1962 model Porsche race car so it's the ideas it new but it's got a really lightweight spring and it mounts on the all tank and the suction line of the engine of the whole pump is on this side right and so this real lightweight spring just prevents it's got a seal and it prevents the oil from draining back right into the engine when the engine sitting as soon as you have vacuum on this line it pops it open and should the spring ever fail it's going to fail in the open position so there's not really any kind of a risk factor or anything well what a difference it makes because yeah it does make it what I could on the street clouds of smoke somebody reported me to the EPA Oh your car's polluting so we figured oh my god what I got do I get a you know pull the engine and do the valve guides and all this kind of stuff yeah and then we put this one-way valve in and of course it solved the problem does the smoke at all so you know it's so funny we all know the iconic 911 now what's the classic Porsche but when the 911 came a lot of the purists and I didn't like it you know Porsche guys don't like chain a Weiland but 911 was like a new car yeah yeah this was the classic and you know it is a wonderful driving cars you will find in a minute you know the cool thing about this car is John restored it back in 76 sold to this guy yeah who didn't go more than five or six thousand miles no in 40 years so consequently it's just as he left it and I think you were really surprised to see it whoa I mean I had no idea what to expect I mean it looked like the day I sold it it looked fantastic he I think he still had some scope mouth washing and the inside of the car so you get there was car restored for about what 12 bucks an hour well what was it going rate back about 70 that was probably a high rate yeah well bucks an hour of us let it sit for 40 years oh yeah as you can see it's got all the original I mean it's just beautifully done yeah it's pretty amazing well I think it's probably time to go for ride well I'm not gonna drive today you know he hasn't driven this car in over 40 years and he restored it so this would be kind of fun we'll let him do it and see what he thinks of his own work see how that 40 year warranty holds up so he's going to take it out and see he can relive some memories here the only bill about what 490 of these like that 92 yeah and I don't think they really intended the pork image to be something for everyday use the nice thing about these two leaders is they you know they didn't really need to rev it up as much as you could just come and drive them like regular car [Applause] it's just like I remember it yeah yeah it I think I want it back uh yeah you know when he sold the car he put two Sparrow lightbulbs down in the pocket and they're still there from seven everybody you never needed I mean it's it's pretty amazing you know this is such a wonderful car to drive because you get something to these you don't Kevin modern cars modern cars are so fast that you hit that rev limiter Oh in a second yeah where's that you get that long pull tell me again what you did do with the tree and the transmission well at the time it was really the trick setup I put a taller first gear and a shorter fourth gear and for the career engine it's a high-revving engine so if you remember back then the speed limit was 55 on the fright so the standard fourth gear was ridiculous it was too tall right so using that that shorter fourth gear and the taller first gave me a lot closer gear ratio so made it more fun to draw I remember driving this to a show once and just having that tack pinned at about 6500 and we're running 115 and yeah I mean just tight no strain and this Anthony likes to rev the engine still sounds really good oh it is really sounds really good it's really strong it just loves to rev and pull so strong let's take it up in the freeway see how she cruises and boy it runs cool that oil never really gets even anywhere near the center not these engines have so much thinning on the heads and right wonders they they just over engineered it like crazy the big thing in Germany you know back in the 60s was people wanted to drive it you know on two hundred kilometers on the Autobahn I mean that was their thing and this was the car that would do it goes get done feels great smooth and runs great over the inside we missed that before as you see standard washer 356 dashboard got your wood steering wheel that's the career wheel rides that you get to the career it was an option on of the cars my career has all had at a standard you always have these quality radios the black punk radio 160 mile hours phenomena Tackett what's the red line on red lines at 7:00 on the town right right what was I like to come back and drive it after all these years you know I it's all kind of coming back to me I remember I I gave you a picture when I showed the car up at Santa Anita racetrack and I remember a friend of mine and I it was one of the longest trips I made in the car and we drove it up there and showed the car and I won the show which was neat and driving back on the freeway I mean it feels exactly this yeah well it's just a great just a great job and it's a real labor of love you know the people that do these cars these Porsches it's such an emotional experience so that's why it's fun to have him do the drive this time instead of me besides I got kind of a sore throat John thank you very much thanks Jay hey you'll see my opportunity yeah you'll see more with John on our website we'll bring back some of the cars that he's done over the years show you what quality work he does we'll see you guys next week [Music]

Channel: Jay Leno's Garage

Views: 849,423

Rating: 4.9251418 out of 5

Keywords: 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, black, John Willhoit, 1963 Porsche 356, Porsche, 1936 Porsche

Id: -qyluq2j27g

Length: 15min 8sec (908 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 18 2013

Reddit Comments

[u/SeanusIdius]

I love Jay's videos. This is such a pretty car. And that air cooled sound! Sploosh.

[u/MalibuBiff]

He is spot on about the way 356 Porsches drive. Very refined and delicate. Amazing cars.