Restoration Blog: August 2019 - Jay Leno’s Garage

[Music] Jalen was garage this is a restoration blog we do things from time to time to keep you updated and what's happening this is a car we mentioned in the last restoration blog it was running but not really a very rare car there's only two of these left a very briefly was the only car built in the city of San Francisco you can tell by the massive brakes it's essentially a truck chassis with a car on it because of the hills in San Francisco and had these massive brakes which we've done now the brakes have been done then we started to drive the car we went about a mile and a half and this happened now the distributor which is right there sits in here and this is just pop metal and pop metal is just well it's an inferior type of metal that was used on a lot of cars for different parts and the idea was this would see this would hold the distributor in place it was gear driven came off the generator to time the engine well this just fell apart and broke there are no Kleiber parts if you're not going to find one of these so what we did was we scanned this put the broken piece in place I gave it to Bernard our fabulous fabricator and he made a brand new one out of unbreakable Lisa next hundred years aluminum and now the car is running again so now we got a running driving car that works quite well it runs it stops the brakes work the other thing we did was get brand new door handles all the door handles who are broken well this is the great thing about the old car hobby company called classic and vintage restorations out of Australia made us brand new door handles they make all this kind of stuff which is no longer available for cars it doesn't quite exactly match but this is stuff they had in stock and it worked perfectly so rather than getting a 3d printer copying the original one and make our own companies we were able to buy these so thank you and if I can give them some business it's great if you need any door handles or window cranks sir I imagine I have all sorts of parts give them a call all right well that's pretty much it for this we're just putting the rest of these door handles on because you might remember the last time we did this you couldn't open these rear doors these were all broken now we got nice new handles I don't think I'm going to restore this car it's kind of fun to drive it just the way it is it has sort of a vintage gangster look to it and I like any car where I can just kind of do this when I go to the car show and sit on it and let kids jump on it and all that kind of stuff come on let's see what else we got going this is the 1938 mg which one I got it all he needed a few things just to get it running I think that paints okay this had a fascinating history a friend of mine who collects Spitfire airplanes had fire engines told me a wonderful story about a young man on his 21st birthday got this as a gift from his parents in 1938 this is his present they're obviously pretty well-off and the war started and he joined the Air Force in World War two like so many brave young men he died at the very beginning of that war flying a Spitfire I mean those guys got blown out of the sky on a regular basis just the bravest people in the world my friend who collected the engines and all the stuff he got this car but it never quite ran he didn't do anything with he just had it in his warehouse or his museum so to speak we got to be friends he gave it to me and we started the restoration of it and it needs every single thing that you could possibly imagine but everything rear end brakes wheels it just needed every single thing so we're just gonna make it a nice running driving original car I like the story that went with it I just found it fascinating you know I like that period of history I like all those brave men and women in England who fought during World War two against just insurmountable odds to win the war and the Spitfire is one of my favorite airplanes you know and the p-51 and that rolls-royce Merlin engine you know I've got one in my rolls car I've got one engine on display so I just like the history I like the story so that's that's what we're doing with this I'm just going to get it back and turn it into a running driving proper car again so that's that one come on let's go see what's going on with the 1914 Detroit electric this is a project that's been taking a pretty long time only because we've had to jump from one project next but now it's starting to move pretty quickly the 1914 Detroit electric we've converted to what I call Tesla power it's not an actual Tesla engine but it's 400 volts versus seventy eight volts like the original so this thing's gonna be pretty fast let me show you what we've done here the we've got using our 3d printer we made these battery boxes to hold the lithium-ion batteries these are air-cooled lithium-ion batteries these came out of an early Nissan one of the Nissan Leafs when they they I think they switched to water-cooled now but the air-cooled I like because it's less complex this isn't a very heavy vehicle so is it it's not going to be using as much power as it had to in a Nissan Leaf so this thing doesn't weigh a whole lot so it'll be pretty easier we have our main cut off here charging station there I want to show you the cool part we wanted to put a sound system in this car but we wanted a sound system that was period-correct there really weren't a lot of sound systems in 1914 so come here I'll show you what we decided to do we use an emerson radio from probably about ten years later I think that's the late 20s early 30s I think it looks period-correct in this we're gonna make a matching box using the same wood so the whole the whole thing integrates into the dash nice it looked like part of the - but I think that's kind of fun so that's where we are with this we're going to have the same batteries in the front as we have in the back same set of batteries same setup lithium-ion we got a water tank there too for the air conditioning unit to help cool that and cool the inverter the inverter will be water-cooled and that's where we are with that you remember the will st. Clair I remember that car we had we just started to paint it the body was not on I don't think the engine was in yet well the bodies on the engine is in Jimmy's been doing a lot of the trim pieces come on I'll show you oh and whenever you do a car show like this you have people working the garage if you ever watch all the other car shows you have to have walk paw you have to walk by a guy making sparks for the machine that's part of doing a car show show what I mean [Music] no sparks for you that's how you know it's a real car as you can see the engine was not in the last time we film this it is now this is a little jewel of a v8 engine this is post-world War one 1919 this was developed I guess during World War one actually as you see twin overhead cam very advanced for the period no water pump a thermo siphon type of deal to cool the engine fan that shuts off about about 40 miles per hour to save horsepower very clever look no belts no nothing the generator is driven off the cams there it's really a really a sophisticated piece of engineering or gear driven over here rather I should say the body is on now the radiator is not on because the shell is out being Chrome it's hard to get chrome and to find places that can do it you really have to search so you got to be patient with that one but this should be running by the next restoration blog and of course Jimmy our metal man who just does amazing work look at all the detail Jimmy bent all these metal pieces here to form them around the floorboards look how beautifully polished they are he's locking but you put your screwdriver in there you turn it to pull the floor out but look all around the pedals everything's nicely chromed nicely polished same thing up here all these bezels he just does beautiful work if this windshield frame was totally rotted out and Jimmy was able to fix it and make it make it good even the rubber in here you know so many people they do these kind of cars they just forget these little things Jimmy's got such an eye for detail so and this you can open up and close to let more or less air in it's got a rumble seat so the next time we show you this car it should be running so I'll keep our fingers crossed hey remember the Firebird remember I showed you that one that six similar overhead-cam Firebird that was pretty rare it was running it was complete we've kind of started to tear it down let me show you what it looks like now well this is 68 Firebird I told you about we pulled the engine out went through it it's really worn out well over a hundred thousand miles on it so we decided just to do it proper so we're going through that put it back to stock maybe a few performance modifications like a cam and pistons and but just not too much not gonna make it crazy obviously gonna sandblast everything and do it up do it up right this is gonna be a frame off because the car is in pretty good shape it was it was dinged in the back but not really hit I mean it wasn't like smashed it was just a minor accident somewhere in the last 40 years so that's not so bad or 50 years I guess so but this is got to be a great car when it's done we're going to do it in the same color we're going to put it back to the way it came from the factory we might sneak a five-speed Tremec in it instead of a four-speed but I will keep the four-speed for the next guy if he ever wants to go back but the other thing we might do is switch to 15-inch wheels because it'll look a little bit better in the wheel wells than these 14 so but other than that other than the transmission the bigger wheels it'll pretty much be stock as it left the factory this one don't forget had the hood mount attack power steering power brakes and a few other things so it's a pretty rare rare bird this one so I'm anxious to to to see this one done and driving around because I thought these were fascinators I mentioned before this was John DeLoreans idea to for something to compete against the XK II love the 6-cylinder Jaguar XKE and he wanted to build a 6-cylinder American version of that and I think he's succeeded to a certain extent with the six-cylinder overhead cam with the rubber belt drive in the overhead cam it's just that by the time he did the performance upgrades on that engine it cost as much as the v8 and most people at least in America just wanted a v8 but I liked it because it was light it was more nimble it handled so and it's rare so it's gonna be a cool car when it's done come on let me show you some other stuff we got going this is the newest addition here at the garage is a 1925 Cadillac cuz it's got a great story this car was bought by farmers insurance because it was the first car they ever insured not this very one but a 1925 Cadillac so they contacted me and they used it for years for motional purposes and the kind of fell by the wayside a little bit things broke and they said hey would you be insured in this I said okay now the starter was broken so we pulled that out we're putting that back in now we haven't run it yet so we hope to run it very soon in fact we should be doing a road test on this very quickly now you all know George Swift he's like I see doing the steam car he's kind of the chief mechanic around here does a lot of great work but I have to be very careful because he he I think he feels overworked whenever I get a new car I always hear tools being thrown hey George I got a 25 Cadillac you know I mean so just try to downplay it come on let me show you something else okay this is a car we've been working on for well pretty much ten years on and off you remember Jimmy made these beautiful water jackets here we've got a few leaks in it we're going to try and start it now just kind of run it for a minute or two and we want you to be part of this so we'll see I we don't I think it should run I mean we haven't driven it yet we've done a lot of work to it well we'll show you what we did well we put them on and clutch in it and Bernard did a brilliant thing we made a clutch break using a disc like a motorcycle disc brake on the drive shaft so when you put the clutch all the way in it grabs the drive shaft stops it from moving so you can shift the car yeah and then one under way you press the clutch halfway down you can go through the gears but I think you want to hear it start so let's see how this goes this is our compression release when you pull this it opens the valve still the engine can turn we're getting a new starter we don't think our starter is quite powerful enough so let's see how this goes okay I'm pulling the compression release fuel pump on when you're in neutral choke on let's see what happens here very close choke off [Music] the road [Music]

Channel: Jay Leno's Garage

Views: 363,342

Rating: 4.9627523 out of 5

Keywords: restoration, blog, Kleiber, MG, Detroit Electric, Wills St. Clair, Pontiac Firebird, Cadillac, motonerd, engine, restomod, Rabbit 1, 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: GJuBOLqHxfc

Length: 16min 25sec (985 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 18 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/JeepChrist]

These updates on the cars Jay's shop is working on are great. It looks like they haven't done one since March. Hope they make some more.

My favorite is the lime green 1922 Wills Sainte Claire roadster with a belt-less overhead cam V8. The paint is the original color, in an era when everything else had comparably boring colors. It was basically the Lamborghini of the 1920s. He goes more into it in the March restoration blog.

[u/Adaris187]

Really old cars from the 20's-40's aren't really my thing, but Jay makes them interesting. I feel like even if they aren't my area of interest, seeing these old machines be restored into working order gives me an appreciation for an era of automotive history I hadn't given a second thought before. Jay's enthusiasm for all vintages of cars is infectious.

[u/TheRealGeorgeKaplan]

Anybody recognize the green car in the background of the electric vehicle at 5:18 ff ?

[u/Looptydude]

I love that electric car. Man, Jay really is living a true enthusiasts dream, and Jimmy is one hell of a body man, that guy can turn out some serious metal work.

[u/MDA123]

Jay is really living the car guy dream, man. Eclectic collection, 3D printing and hand-fabricating replacement parts, indulging little fantasies like having period-correct radios in 1920s cars, etc. Amazing.