Jaguar/Daimler V12 Engine - a Powerhouse in a Silk Glove | Tyrrell's Classic Workshop

hello and welcome to another tyrells classic workshop today we're talking about a slightly off-beam car again and not a sort of take your breath away supercar not all blood and thunder and lots of noise and wheel spin and all that sort of good stuff talking about something subtle but a sort of a fist in a silk glove really is how i would describe it and that's this car the v12 engine jaguar or in this case daimler it's one in the same car actually this was a real sort of turning point for lots of reasons jaguar were the first car manufacturer to really bring the v12 into almost the realm of the real world uh you had cadillac maybach rolls-royce in the 1920s and 30s hispano-swissa lots of sort of extremely esoteric top-end manufacturers all had v12s at some stage or another and ferrari and lamborghini continued that trend in the 1960s or the 1940s onwards in ferrari's case but jaguar really pulled the trick of developing a v12 engine that was not quite for the masses but certainly not for telephone number money either and they used some very very clever trickery and engineering to get to that more of that in a minute but the shape itself this is a series 2 car series 2 xj saloon it's based on it's called the jaguar xj12 in jaguar terms or the dame the double six in daimler terms the only difference between the daimler and the jaguar was what's called badge engineering which was very prevalent in the 1970s rolls royce and bentley did it as well same car different badge different hubcaps different grille one or two other things maybe the instruments little symbol saying either d or or j on the instrument something as simple as that and that was it you either had a daimler or a jaguar some trim differences that was the norm then if you took it up to the next level you had this car and this is called the vandomplar double six and bridges leyland who were making these cars at the time bought the dutch coach builder uh vandam pla the right to the name and they turned it into the same as ford did with gear you had a capri gear granada gear mustang gear in the 1970s it was a sort of bodybuilder stroke coach builder stroke styling house that they added on to their top-of-the-range cars to make them sound posher and this is a vandemplar double six this car had lots of different things about it over and above the jaguar and the daimler it had metallic paint work in these gorgeous six shades they did these in gorgeous colors this is a sage green it had the vinyl roof which is an acquired taste and it had a different interior more luxurious individual rear seats as opposed to a bench different woodwork it had standard automatic air conditioning which was revolutionary this was arguably the first car ever to have automatic climate control and it had things like these beautiful pressed chrome wheels which were an optional extra on the jaguar and the daimler but was standard on this car and this car was a hefty price more than the jaguar or the daimler but what really impressed me as a child about this car was the elegant looks yes and the for me that's the shape is still breathtaking it's just so utterly graceful but it was the performance as well i mean this car in period was 140 mile an hour plus car nudging 150 miles an hour with the later fuel injected engine like this one yeah and i've got a an edition of motor magazine here from 1977 it's showing an xj 5.3 c the coupe on the front taxi because they did a road test of it but um they go on to say it's essentially the same car really one of leyland's world beaters effortless but startling performance from uncannily smooth and quiet v12 engine um as a comfortable elegant spacious long distance express it is in a class of its own and if we have a look at the price of these cars new i've got a a price list here in the same edition of motor and the jaguar xj 5.3 efi electronic fuel injection 9400 pounds and the daimler version with slightly more luxurious is 9700 um but the van den plar double six efi is 12 768. so this was 30 percent more expensive than the jaguar equivalent just because it's got metallic paint it's got the fully automatic climate control and other luxury refinements the pressed chrome wheels 30 percent more i mean this made this car very very exclusive but compared to rivals it was still good value for money the mercedes 450 sel 6.9 similar performance was 22 999 pounds so it was over twice the price of this car and it arguably didn't cost it its occupants as well as this car did that's what motor magazine said about it road and track said similar things they loved the v12 as well they didn't like the reliability or lack of it and build quality too much but that was unfortunately as we know british leyland at the time but just the details on this car are achingly subtle and elegant and lovely and this car is a very very rare survivor i wouldn't like to put a figure on how many of them are left this is the series 2 car but i'm guessing maybe 30 um maybe 40 and this car is all original all the chrome on it is still beautiful there's no pitting no no nothing it's just absolutely perfect like the day it was built in 1977 this is factory original paint with its beautiful original gold coach line which was an optional extra but standard on the vandenpla this is actually cellulose and if you polish it some of the paintwork actually comes off with a cloth so if you look at chauffeur-driven rolls-royces and daimlers as this was when it was new what used to happen was some of the paint would come off with the cloth and being a metallic finish it had tiny tiny tiny particles of aluminium in the paint and if you polish it what you do is actually you're polishing partly the aluminium flakes that are actually touching the surface and the reason these went dull was because the aluminium would start to oxidize with the with the the outside air in the paint and it would go dull so really your chauffeur could polish them with a coating a polish and that would last so long and stop them oxidizing but eventually you'd have to polish it again and they actually wore through if you look at a chauffeur-driven car such as this in the 70s a dame la jaguar rolls royce whatever you can see on the edges quite often bits of primer if it's the original paintwork because it's been polished away by chauffeurs or polishing to keep them shining keep that lustre these days we don't have that problem because paints are clear over base so they have a lack of finish over them which means the metallic never gets near the fresh air or the atmosphere but all this to say it's remarkable that this car has survived uh that the paintwork hasn't worn through and it could do with a polish now but we don't polish it that often because every time we do as i've said we're taking a bit of the paint off and there's only so much paint on it but to have a car survive like this in this condition unrestored original from 1977 is incredible the car has only done 21 000 miles from new original documented fabulous it's got to be the best phantom pilar double six in the world of its age anyway everything about the car the woodwork on the interior the leather the carpets every last bit that isn't a tire or a belt or a hose is original it really is a remarkable piece of kit and don't forget this car with the v12 engine could do well north of 140 miles an hour which in the 1970s for a four-door saloon was moving probably push it to 150 with the later fuel injected engine like this one here's got 295 brake horsepower similar figure for torque and it was low down where you need it as well this car to describe was effortless really effortless and almost silent it was actually the most refined car in the world it was more refined even than a rolls-royce silver shadow or silver shadow ii and it had soft suspension because it had a fairly soft ride by american standards the ride was firm by european standards it was super soft but it actually within reason could be hustled around as well fantastic achievement really the wonder of jaguar's achievement with this was that they brought the v12 engine to a whole new level of people really a whole new quantity of people because they made them in their thousands and uh jaguar were very clever about this engine it started out as a four-cam engine like the lamborghini and later ferrari equivalents but it took up so much space uh the top end of the engine with the four cams and all the carburetors and everything um they ditched that because it they originally intended it to be a le man winning competition engine that was why it was developed uh initially in the 1950s then in the xj13 which there was only ever one of originally made they decided when they changed the project and walter hassan and his team turned it into a road car engine they found it could be more efficient more torquey and just smoother and more refined low down more docile if they actually ditched the twin cam heads and went for what's called a heron head which is a very very simple combustion chamber design the cylinder heads are actually flat with the valves in a line inlet exhaust inlet exhaust etc and the combustion chamber is actually in the top of the piston it's in the crown of the piston and that was one of the secrets of this engine's super smooth success some people actually went as far as to say it was the finest internal combustion engine in manufacture in period in the 1970s not all people who owned them would agree with that because they had the usual british leyland unreliability issues but if you got a good one they were great if you got a bad one they were terrible there was nothing in between but the v12 engine very quiet very refined beautiful power delivery it's not top endy or frenetic or anything like that it will pull from idle and yeah let's uh let's get it running back on 12 cylinders and then take it out for a run well we've dug the car out of storage it's been here for a while so we need to breathe some life back into the car and i've ascertained that it's running on nine cylinders two down on this bank and one down on that one check the ignition system that's all fine we've got a good strong spark at all 12 cylinders fairly basic stuff on this era of engine one ignition coil remarkably does uh um serves the whole engine you've got a distributor big lucas distributor k here in the middle with 12 ignition leads going obviously to the firing order of the spark plugs so all that's working this is where the tricky bit comes because um i mean i've come across all sorts of problems it people i've had situations where people have been driving around on these engines years ago on nine cylinders thinking that they were fine and but a bit bit short on performance and they brought them in i remember an xjs i did in the 1980s and it was running on nine pots and it was the trigger disc in the distributor all 12 things weren't triggering the ignition system the ignition system on this is a very early electronic ignition it's called a lucas opus system oscillating pickup system or as it was more commonly known opelus because it failed with regular um regular occurrence so anyway um this one's fine so it's not that what i'm going to do now is an old trick because i suspect some of the injectors aren't working they've stuck the fuel injectors jaguars intended this engine to have fuel injection but it started life with the four pretty awful stromberg carburetors on it and they are a pig to synchronize and a peak to get absolutely right you can get them close and they're fine but to get perfection takes time the induction system was a horrible compromise on the the carburetor v12s much more elegant on the fuel injection system the petrol gets to the right place at the right time in the right quantity and in the right form i atomize not a puddle on the bottom of the inlet manifold that suddenly sucked in so that's all good but the problem is i suspect at least two of the problems on out of the three on this are injectors that are not triggering so i have a little trick for uh rejuvenating them back into life we've got a 12 volt feed here and i'm going to pull the trigger wire this is one of the offending cylinders here number four on this bank so i'm going to remove carefully because these rubber covers are 43 years old and they're a bit delicate i don't particularly want to damage it there it goes off it comes and we'll just offer the 12 volt feed up to the terminals and see if we can get a tune out of this injector just very carefully put that on the terminals no nothing there just as i thought the injector is actually stuck so i'm just going to keep doing this because normally a good direct 12 volt feed does free them off yeah there it is that's that's ticking away nicely now that's come back to life that's great that was stuck that injector was stuck it wasn't ticking at first i can feel it actually you just feel a slight vibration you can't hold the uh the wire on because it burns out the windings in the injector it's designed to work for a fraction of a second only of course the fuel injector so that's one down and i'm now going to try the others and see if that's the problem i suspect it is on this age of car so that is a result we may even have a 12 cylinder engine yet well i've done the two injectors on this bank number two was also not playing um so i brought that one back to life and also number one on this bank was similarly it was injecting actually but very very slightly and very sporadically so that's got a good strong click to it now tick as it should have uh we've plugged that back in hopefully the engine now will start and obviously chime in on all 12 if we've got it right yeah i'm either one of the saddest people in the world or a very discerning car enthusiast uh one or the other but um i'd go as far as to say i like these cars so much if i could have a top 30 collection of cars ever made it would have one of these in it i just love the intoxicating i mean it is a luxurious cabin still lovely even now this beautiful uh almost mirror finished woodwork all original from 43 years ago never been touched we have put a new headlining in it because the headlining's saigon them very badly they come unstuck so uh i look i will admit to doing that um but nothing else has been touched in this car and what what i just love is the um is the uncanny refinement of them um but the first time i traveled in one uh i was lucky enough to be a young lad a friend's dad had one and um i couldn't believe how how quiet it was and smooth i mean it just glides along and it just really stuck with me but but also the performance it was it was a really really and still is a fast car obviously it's nowhere near supercar performance then or now but it can still move um and the car that really um really sort of the next car the most refined car i remember a friend actually gave me a lexus ls 400 a 1993 one in the early noughties because it had sort of things were starting to go wrong with it nothing against the car great car but um it sort of and i was really impressed with the refinement of it that v8 engine really raised the bar again um but you know it's um it's just a lovely car the rev counter isn't working i noticed that will work because it usually does it's just bringing everything out of out of its slumber and i'm just letting the car warm through oil pressure's great the oil pressure on these from the factory should be 63 pounds per square inch at 3000 rpm uh and this this oil pressure is very very good we know that in fact the car is in really good shape we've redone all the brakes uh brake discs rotors as they called it across the pond and uh the back ones are difficult to do you have to drop the entire rear suspension assembly the cradle to uh to gain access to them there inboard the brakes but that's that's how they made them and that helps with the smooth ride because the brakes aren't next to the wheels it's less unsprung weight as it's called which makes the ride smoother well here we are the engine's warmed up um but it looks like the rev counter hasn't because it's still not working but um one of the most amazing things about this car for me is the you know i'm big on nvh noise vibration harshness and um this car was so refined in period it was the most refined car in the world bar none mercedes couldn't approach it fantastic piece of machinery an engineering job though the the 6.9 450 sl merc was um it couldn't approach this in terms of suspension uh con um smoothness uh although it was a little more controlled um but this um just glides along it just wafts and um that considering you've got a 300 horsepower almost five and a half liter five three four three cc v12 in front of you you could just are not aware of it there were analogies in period from car magazines about being pulled along by a turbine and of course big electric motor of course we've arrived at that now but um you know it was uh it was just a revelation this engine in the 1970s but um i'm just going to drop it down this gearbox the gm 400 doesn't like kicking down but i'm going to coax it into first and we'll just try the acceleration now that we've got it running back on all 12 cylinders it should be there plenty of power really quiet from the inside but of course you've got all that going on on the outside so we'll just open it up and there we go just beautiful beautiful smooth power um just there instantly um smooth smooth power for a car from 43 years ago it moves particularly for a big saloon just beautiful and you're surrounded by this look these lovely materials this mirror finish burwal that's all original from 1977 and the random plot again has got the burr walnut the standard jaguars and daimlers had the uh the slightly lower grade maybe grained walnut or not quite the burr on a walnut tree is only 18 inches of the whole trunk it's a tiny bit of the walnut tree that actually has that beautiful bird as the americans call it burr finish which uh rolls was so beloved of rolls-royce even mercedes in the 6.9 i was talking about uh the standard fitment in that was burr walnut um before uh zobrano wood came in which was so beloved of mercedes in the 1980s and this car again just just absolutely almost silent just beautiful so again um we'll just open the taps and uh just savor that creamy cut glass smooth v12 power and again the beauty of this car is it's got torque but it's not cami or it's very linear the power delivery um it's just there whoa there she goes fabulous fabulous um just so smooth and so quiet there's just a tiny bit of induction raw jaguar went through a massive amount of trouble to to dampen things down you can hardly hear even at six thousand rpm as that was when it up shifted just over six thousand into uh second gear negligible noise really unless you're outside and we have recorded the exhaust noise as well so you can hear a bit of uh you can hear a bit of that maybe when we go around this corner we just open it up again beautiful [Applause] well we're looking briefly at another car we've got in the workshop here at the same time which is the coupe version of the jaguar xj12 or dame the double-six they never actually made this officially in vandom platform so it's a poor relation but hardly that still has the brilliant magnificent v12 engine in it but the really interesting thing about this is like a few cars in the 70s the bmw e9 the three liter csl few american cars um it's got what's called a pillarless construction so you have these frameless doors as they're called with just the the drop glass just the window in and the same here and one of the really magnificent achievements that the jaguar engineers did and i was privileged to have a visit from ian callum the head of design of jaguar at the time who explained to me that he actually exercised them quite considerably to come up with a window mechanism that um it creates the pillarless look which i'll show you in a minute but also um is extremely good at wind uh suppression because obviously this this is a bit loose that's how they're meant to be so how does it seal lots of cleverness is the answer these days we have on a lot of cars like this you have the window drops a few millimeters when you open the door handle as a micro switch in the door handle to trigger the drop glass to drop and then when you close it it goes up into a channel and this is to keep the wind noise out jaguar managed to do that in the 1970s without all that trickery but they did employ some other trickery so i'm going to first of all put this window down which is fairly conventional nothing terribly exciting about that but this one is a little bit special how about that and this is where it's called the pillarless construction and motor magazine going back to that road test again and other magazines in period commented that even at high speeds cruising on the the german autobahns at 130 miles an hour or thereabouts or even more the windows barely made a whisper of wind noise just part of the incredible package that this car was in terms of almost superhuman refinement at the time so uh yeah really really special i'll now put the window up um and very few of these actually work correctly or at the speed at which they're meant to work this one does uh quite often they're sticky and clunky and slow there is quite a complicated mechanism in here which we've worked on and got it up to snuff just a really really interesting aspect of the the coupe version of this car of course just as fast as the saloon so now we can put this window up as well and close the car up and it's good for doing 140 miles an hour in without barely turning the radio up as you do well that concludes another tyrol's classic workshop video if you've enjoyed it please subscribe please share and we'll be back again with something else soon you

Channel: Tyrrell's Classic Workshop

Views: 440,153

Keywords: Iain Tyrrell, Tyrrell's Classic Workshop, Classic Car Expert, Classic Car Restoration, Classic Car Insights, Classic Cars Cheshire, Jaguar, V12, XJ, Daimler, Double Six, Vanden Plas

Id: nMaOtaaI4Yk

Length: 27min 54sec (1674 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 18 2020