TRAVELINGWITHTOOLS

Two Hispanos, a Bugatti and a U-16 Miller…

A typical day at Phil Reilly & Co, on Paradise Drive in Corte Madera, California. The variety of projects under way at any given point in time was remarkable, with this snapshot in time featuring four pre-war powerplants and a hint of the future in the back, the roll hoops of two ’70’s Grand Prix cars poking up from the Hispano Suiza J12’s shiny black valve cover. I think a BRM and a Parnelli?

The J12 was going into a car that had a date in August at Pebble Beach, and the H6 next to it was finally ready to go after being apart for several years, if I recall correctly.

I don’t have much detail on the Miller, but what a beast! Two straight eights mounted on a cradle and geared together. It is impossible to find info online, as the more common Miller 16’s were in V configuration, while there was also very large marine U-16 that was totally different. But here are a few shots from the archives…

The V12 Hispano was attached to a considerable amount of drama in the shop in the previous year, and it gave me a fair amount of hassle before it was all wrapped up. In the main image above, the motor is ready to go to the dyno at Paul Hasselgren’s across the bay in Berkeley. I wish I had a copy of the dyno printout, because the car has been described in print as having, “estimated 250 hp”, but that thing has a real number in a file somewhere! The more impressive part would have been the torque number from this long-stroke “Bis” model, with over 11 liter displacement.

We got the engine in the car and running when the chassis was incomplete and undriveable, and the concours restoration at Perfect Reflections was a long way from the end. I recall that there was some trouble with the twin magnetos that called for them to come off the car be worked on, and then refitted later at the shop in Hayward where the paint and polish and all the details were being done.

I drove down there from Corte Madera to re-time the Scintillas and found the car up on stands in the middle of the shop with about ten guys crawling over it finishing details. They did not want to move it to a doorway, so I ran the thing in the shop while shining my timing light through the window on the bellhousing at the timing marks on the flywheel, the space progressively becoming inhospitable with clouds of exhaust. Now, the Hispano Suiza was typical of Swiss engineering, there were two sets of degree marks on the flywheel, all the way around, for the right mag and for the left mag, through two different windows. If you paid attention and kept the numbers straight in your head, you could time both mags through one window, which is what I did. The other side of the engine bay was occupied by a guy focused on his own task.

To make things more complicated, the twin mags had a hand control on the steering wheel and a linkage that synchronized the advance and retard between the two. There was a problem with the manette, as the hand control is known, which also had levers for idle speed and mixture. With the pressure of trying to get it all dialed in before the crew was asphyxiated (well after dark, I’ll add), and working around issues with the linkage that I had nothing to do with previously, it was a pretty high anxiety job, though I felt like I had gotten it nailed in the end. The motor would idle down to something like 400 RPM at full retard and ran smooth as silk.

I later heard though that the timing got adjusted by ear while on the road tour before Pebble Beach because the driver felt it was not set right. Well shit. What’s wrong with a little last minute car prep for the biggest car show in the world? They were finishing something like seven Ferraris simultaneously for the same event in that shop!

The Hisso ended up getting second in its class on the green, and took the Alec Ulmann Trophy, so job done then. It’s fun to go looking for pictures of some of these cars that I worked on more than ten years ago. I learned today that this one sold at auction last year for $1,850,000.

1936 Hispano-Suiza J12 Cabriolet | Gooding & Company (goodingco.com)

Here’s a look at some of the motor assembly process. (Click for larger images with captions.)

To wrap up today’s post, the Bugatti in the lead image was about to leave the shop after I rebuilt its engine, some pictures of which were in the first “One Day in the Shop” post.

This particular day was in the middle of a period of crazy productivity. In the background of some of these shots are a Maserati 8CTF that we finished in the same month, plus parts for an Alfa 6C 1750 that was ongoing, and a Ferrari 275 motor that’s almost ready. It was a good day.