Lamborghini Engines: 350 GT and 8 Liter Marine - Jay Leno’s Garage

and then we'll prime the carburetors by hitting the accelerator pumps a couple times to give it a couple squirts of fuel in there as you know and then we'll hit the start button [Music] [Music] the garage today the heart the solely essence of Lamborghini we don't have the cars we just have the two incredible engines the one that started it all and of course a huge 8 litre powerboat offshore racing engine and we'll fire both these up and you can see what I'm like they make a lot of noise but they're very very cool I'm here with Andrew Romanowski he is the president of the Lamborghini Club and this is his motor and we'll find out about Andrew come on in good to see you my friend good to see a J great to be back on the show if you read octane magazine I have a whole story about how he shamed me my mirror had been sitting for like a year and was just going back to the dust and he came and said what look how dirty when you're right so I went through the whole thing and that's why I appreciate that but no problem J yeah but you'll read that story tell us what we have here well as you mentioned this is the first Lamborghini engine this is a three and a half liter v12 from a 350gt that I'm in the process of restoring it was a sort of basket case car that I bought from somebody had been sitting around for decades and boxes and pieces and in the process the restoration this was the first to come together the engine and so for testing and display purposes here for the show we put it on a cart you own to show everybody how it works it's really great except now you don't want to put it in the car because it looks so beautiful you just want to run it here on the stand yeah that's true it really is a great looking engine with the six Weber carburetors the valve covers clearly displaying Lamborghini it's a sharp piece yeah and this is the engine that really made everybody sit up and take notice because a fruitier Lamborghini wanted to build a more Road worthy Ferrari you know the classic story he got in a big fight with Enzo the question a lot don't you Billy on car yeah just thought you guessed - Italian guy yelling each other I think Ferrari started more people in the car business monteverde Enzo Ferrari you know they had a big fight to them and they would often built the wrong cars but he really did it and this was I think fair to say smoother probably a better Road worthy engine than some of the road fries but if Ravi 12s are great I'm not saying they're not but this was a very competitive competitor let's say I think it made a few more horsepower than equal v12 Ferrari at the time yeah yep yep it was smoother bit more sophisticated and just classic example of early Italian engineering from the 60s just a beautiful beautiful engine of course everything is symmetrical you have the twin distributors here and the way the oil filter here mimics over here it's really a beautiful motor what's the horsepower output it was the 350 it was in the 300 range right and you know to what you were saying about the Italian engineering as a testament to this engine the basic design of it I was used for almost 50 years by Lamborghini yeah this was the Lamborghinis version of the small-block Chevy wasn't it right yes would have been the 265 the 283 well let's start about three and a half liter four and a half liter five litre all the way up to this what is this 8 litre yeah that's an eight-litre made specifically for offshore racing and pleasure boating well we'll get to that one look at that I want to fixate on this one it's a standard yeah yeah that's the standard it depends a little bit okay that's a piece of the puzzle that still needs to be restored but that's the standard dipstick no was this engine apart when you got it no it was actually seized salad and a friend of our friend of yours in mine Bob Huber from vintage Lamborghini garage he took the entire engine apart and completely went through everything put new cylinder liners in new Pistons change to a little bit more modern piston for a little bit more compression and a little bit more power otherwise keeping everything stock but the thing was lock salad when I got it and what caused that to happen run without oil or just abuse oh well no I'm not sure you know the the biggest enemy of these cars can be the mechanics I think that there was a less than qualified mechanic working on the car before I got it and a car had been sitting for decades so there's a little bit of corrosion than you know cylinders you know and things like that well you know a lot of guys would take these to Clem at the Shell station then right exactly kind of fixed it with a hammer let me bang on that too now you free that lifter bang bang yeah so I don't know how that works okay and of course you have the 5-speed transmission hooked up as well yep and that's something unique to the 350gt yeah the use of ZF gear box right after the 350gt they switched to a Lamborghini design gearbox and which body style was this in do you have the car you have the complete car I don't have the complete car it's pieces of the complete car that I'm working to put back together okay so it was the you know the touring aluminum bodied 350gt body style okay yeah because there are all kinds of things going on in the early days you know yeah out of the cars were wild somewhat kind of not too exciting but I all had this great great engine yeah absolutely dallara that he designed that who designed this motor ah this is AB is reading engine Abbas Araneae okay yeah and his pay structure from Ferruccio depended on the horsepower output of the engine so this was an important paper it on the dyno and they were testing you know they tune it to get the maximum horsepower possible so biz Rini would collect a bigger payday from fruit chill well mr. Byzantine II was here at the garage about 25 years ago well fantastic it was a huge thrill I mean he didn't speak in English I didn't speak in Italian but we did a lot of nodding and smiling right it was but it was fascinating to meet him it's truly a genius and just yeah built some beautiful and it's so funny when he built his car he put a Chevy engine in which which makes me laugh I don't know why that did you ask him why he did it no I don't speak Italian he didn't speak English cool cool so tell me about this did you make the stand here this is really brilliant no this was me by the mechanic I mentioned Bob Huber the pedestal was inspired by the 1963 Auto Show that Lamborghini participated in and they put the 350 GTV engine on a pedestal display that looks exactly like this one okay so it's pretty much the same we added some support because the engine torques a little bit you know when were revving the engine and you notice we put some sub-race braces and things like that and then with the car you know there's these auxilary things to allow the engine to run and what a beautiful motor you have four cams here to here yep two here two valves per cylinder pretty traditional that way Weber's it just looks like classic Italian engineering from the period and you realize when this car built this Angeles built it's about halfway through the development of the automobile I mean from about 1910 to 1960 it's about the same amount of time from when this engine was built till now so this represents almost the middle point you know which is kind of cool I mean it's kind of cool and the you know it's so simple compared to the P ones and all the cars are out now but when I was a kid this seems so calm when the swing six Carver I just seemed like the most complicated thing in the world but actually now it seems quite simple which is interesting can we can we fire it up yeah sure we'll turn on the fuel pump and then of course we'll turn on the coil power and then we'll prime the carburetors by hitting the accelerator pumps a couple times to give it a couple squirts of fuel in there as you know and then we'll hit the start button [Music] [Music] sorry mrs. McGillicuddy we'll keep it sorry we'll keep it down neighbors don't like that oh you know it sounds like it's got glass packs on but it's just open isn't it yep open headers into a collector system that we made just for words that the display purposes it's just great just great it's ashame acid when they call you always want to keep it like this yeah right well I think you'll like it once we put it in the chassis and we have it you know rolling on the display chassis we'll bring it back to the garage and show that off but I think you'll like that just as much oh yeah I think I will do very cool now let's talk about our second engine here so this is our friend Rob Cleary and Rob got the Lamborghini bug a few years ago hey Rob good to see you again and since then Rob has been buying up all kinds of strange Lamborghini collectibles including marine engines okay now this well it looks about 1/3 bigger than that but it and with the 8 litre correct this is an eight liter two valve yeah 500 cubic inch eight thousand CC do overhead cam I mean this is it's really just a bigger engine bigger version of that isn't it yeah yes what's this an engine that was ever designed to be in a car like the Countach what was that always marine earlier in Lamborghini they were looking for a larger displacement engine and a Countach which they want to get more horsepower the early stage of the vlm was coming about so unfortunately when they got so far ahead in this they realized the motor was just too big and too heavy right I mean it's 990 pounds oh it is but it felt the same in aluminum and everything's not gas tire no aluminum aluminum cast iron sleeved right this is like I said this was the finical for boat racing in the early eighties and how successful were they were they pretty successfully so Lamborghini is still racing today and some boats which a lot of people don't realize and so in this is the first series this is now 802 2 valve an offshore class one in the 90s that they were change the rule to a four valve so they went through the Quattro valve right what year would this motor be so this isn't a it's about an 88 okay but okay what's interesting because they had the Quattro valve Countach which came I thinking 86 correct and the thing I love about it is they saw to use the American formula more cubic inches as opposed to supercharging or turbocharging you know they like I like NASA naturally-aspirated and that's what this is and it's interesting you think the or else take a couple of turbos on earth irregular but no they just got bigger and bigger you know this would be like the Hemi version of a Lamborghini wouldn't it right yeah Lamborghini stayed Nash naturally-aspirated with everything until the URIs right yeah up until then everything was natural aspiration what is this rev - about 8,500 so the map these are Laura Reverend Reverend but you know because you gotta remember when your boat racing belkin propel outside - why so they have the rev limiter zone but the max power on this model was about seven hundred seventy horsepower its 6800 rpm get anybody able to try to put one of these in a car not to my knowledge no you know some people have talked about putting them in LMS but I've never seen anyone successfully do it I mean probably the weight alone would make it yeah you know infeasible it's the exact same construction the exact same design as this motor except just everything is what and a third bigger and large bigger piston yeah yeah how big what's the piston time listed on this is a 98.7 okay these are 77 millimeter diameter Pistons right there and what's the induction here this is electronic fuel injection okay that's okay that's what I thought it and I've seen it look like what no it's not Weber's of course yeah now they did also make a carburetor version to write the pleasure boating right okay but so is this a race engine or the pleasure boat version No so this is now lado - that was a race engine all on total and they made two series and made two L 802 which was for the boat racing and then they made an L 900 which is a carbureted version for pleasure boating yeah but all in all they didn't make a lot of these engines at all and these are still relatively easy to work on aren't they compared to some of the more modern stuff because I mean I thought you got more cam doing but but it's all exactly what you see you know modern cars you take them apart and thank you drop some circuit board somewhere and yeah no idea what I mean this form follows function is a campfire it's a cam is that you know you just said you know the whole deal plus it must be fun you can just adjust everything right here without out of the vehicle was this ever in or in a race boat this one J actually what they ended up doing under a good another good friend that we all shared Valentino Balboni right so this actually was done under his watch and we should spank Valentino Balboni probably the most famous factory test driver in the world everybody seems to know his name yeah absolutely maybe maybe him and Wallace with the - but Balboni like because we're about the same age and he and he started doing this he was 18 when I was 18 I was working with Donald when he was actually driving a testing cars and to this day still does you know when he comes he gets anybody so I remember this guy yes but I boom takes off you know right a real interesting guy and he had the the grater everybody thought he had the greatest job in the world and he would race through the hills of Modena chasing he would run into a Ferrari tester I ran the two of them would mix it up and all that kind of stuff so it's really exciting he really had an exciting life they even named a car after him they did the Balboni version of the guy yeah yeah okay and they made it really lonely now four-wheel drive which is my favorite and I had a manual box right would yeah when you brought though Rob has one and I have one as well we brought it to your garage last year right and oh that's my favorite Lamborghini because it's light in it yeah just great just great now before we fire it up I know this has one distributor whereas the road car has two yeah so in the early days of the engines there are two separate distributors and in the later days they went to a single one especially when you needed air-conditioning or you know a way to drive the air-conditioning or something off of the other Drive oh I see and in the later days you had faster processors for the electronic fuel injection so you could go to a single distributor and the fuel injection processor could keep up with the 12 points on a single distributor okay so the early days they didn't have the technology for a single distributor that you're saying basically basically yeah yeah okay tell me about this this it looks like there's a pipe that runs through here this cools the exhaust is that what it is yeah Jay so one of the things they use for the boat racing obviously they use the only the the salt water from the ocean actually cool the exhaust so you would have lines coming up here and you would see if you ever watch boat racing you would see in a stream just the water coming right out the exhaust and that would be used to cool the exhaust question why do you need to cool eggs I mean in racing in Formula One they don't cool the exhaust there what's the reason for cooling the exhaust explosive run hot yeah it keeps the Andy's engine temperature down keep in mind these are usually in some kind of a compartment part I see but it's cooling it from this point forward it's not cooling it near up here right where the valves are anything correct because a lot of times the exhaust will run through part of the boat right so you want to keep that cooler you know I think from warping okay cool cool can we fire this one up and explain the gauges that you have on this one yeah so listen electronic gauge a lot more modern basically just keeping track of the RPMs on here okay so the fuel pumps go hit the button [Music] it's an orchestra sounds fantastic it is that's the best kind of music they made really is and did you make this stand as well so I again know Valentino he commissioned the whole build I was lucky enough to meet Valentino an idol of my you know I mean ever since through the Lamborghini Club of America he needs that much older than you know not by any no no no he's my dreams about 68 right yeah yeah yeah 48:41 that's right that's what I mean so so to me so when you were a kid he was he was it I mean yeah you know I we all had the car bug so he was just you know I'd like I said I was always just in the Lamborghini just because of the whole history and like you said thank the Enzo you know fruit show came about and he just I mean from helicopters to the tractors to combustion but I like because we had the same birthday were both long oh that's right 28 so that kind of and and I just like his attitude that's the same as mine I don't really like to go racing I like fast drivable comfortable road cars you know something it's really enjoyable to rota as opposed to a race car on the road but you know it's a little harsh he always made cars that handle and started and work and the clutches always work that right thing you know as he put it a car for gentlemen drivers yeah yeah I know I'm a gentleman but but yeah basically right basically well these two ends is just fantastic guys it's great thanks for bringing and yeah this will be in a car anytime soon well I'm gonna keep this in the living room not the living room maybe in the garage for a little bit but I think the next step of it I have the chassis and the suspension for the car just about ready to go so we're going to put it into the chassis and maybe we can bring the rolling chassis back to the garage to show everyone that would be great now do you have to make a body for two of you got a body much of the bodies missing so a body will have to be created accident I think it might have been in an accident and then someone started to restore it and then they stopped and over the years pieces became missing yes if they changes hands and things like that by the time it came to me I'm sort of a carcass of a car right well thanks for saving this piece of history yeah thanks Jay great I mean it's classic Michelangelo's David's okay but really he's just much better you know fantastic janky thanks for having some show thanks for firing them up yeah very cool see you guys next week [Music]

Channel: Jay Leno's Garage

Views: 1,150,029

Rating: 4.8631277 out of 5

Keywords: Lamborghini, engine test stand, 350 GT, 8 liter marine, Ferruccio, Valentino Balboni, Bob Huber, Lamborghini Club of America, power boat, offshore racing, marine racing, V12, Jay Leno, Jay Leno's Garage, car reviews, compares cars, classic cars, vintage cars, sports cars, super cars, cars, car gear, McLaren P1, Porsche 918 Spyder, Camaro Z28, jay leno garage, jay lenos garage, car collection, cnbc, episode, motorcycle, ford, corvette, tour, dodge, lexus

Id: WUL8xQ0K-qs

Length: 19min 16sec (1156 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 11 2019