TRAVELINGWITHTOOLS

There was a lot a variety in 2025 to keep things interesting, with new-to-me projects as well as changes to my personal rolling stock.

I started the year with a Jaguar XKE engine, a 4.2 liter for a vintage racing E-Type. The previous engine that came with the car blew up early in the new owner’s possession, and I rebuilt it with a completely new bottom end… block, crank, rods, pistons, sump. It retained the cylinder head as the only carry-over part, and we converted it back to wet sump to better fit its place in vintage racing.

I came back from my summer break to some bad news. Unfortunately, one of the new events I experienced in 2025 was a total failure of an engine that I had assembled. The Jag successfully ran on the dyno and through one weekend of racing, but in the second race event, it broke a rod and ruined all the new parts it had just acquired.

I built my first engine in 1989, a Volvo that I drove coast to coast not long after. I’ve been building special vintage and racing engines for 30 years, and until this season I have never had a total failure. What went wrong? It’s hard to say. The crank journal where the rod failed did not have color indicating overheat, from a failing rod bearing. Was there a rod bolt with a flaw? I have always measured rod bolt stretch on all of my racing engines to get the middle of the bolt’s specification. Did the Carrillo rod have an unseen nick or stress riser?

The most unsettling aspect is that it was the same rod that failed in the previous blowup, number 5 (second from the back, number 2 in Jag-speak). All new parts, the only common thread is the head casting. Just coincidence?

The motor is currently going back together with a repaired crank, yet another block, new rods and new pistons (with a slightly revised crown design for a little more compression).

In February, after searching for many months, I finally found the right prospect and upgraded my wheels to a newer motorhome, exchanging the 109,000 mile Fun Mover with the 2,500 mile Outlaw. I’ve put about 6,000 miles on it now, and it has been a huge relief to not worry about mechanical failures every time I hit the road. On the house side of things though, I have many complaints!

In SoCal, I did some more work on the MGTC Special that I had gone through in 2024. The fender mounts needed repair so I got to do some blacksmithing, hammering steel to reinforce the parts that had cracked and welding up the new pieces.

In the past, I’ve worked on a number of big and small Healey’s, doing a couple of Sprite race cars and a number of jobs on the big six cylinder cars. In 2025, I got to assess an Austin Healey 100S that was new to the customer, coming from a Monterey auction the previous summer.

The 100S is a special homologation version of the plain Jane 100 model, built to race at LeMans. They built 50 examples, with a special engine, aluminum bodies, and Dunlop disc brakes being the primary features that make it racier. My assessment found that the motor had a number of problems, so work is progressing to correct those issues, and this will be a focus of mine in early 2026.

2025 somehow evolved into the year of the Lotus Twin Cam, with four of them in some stage of completion. I have two ready to go to the dyno and two more in the works to be finished early in 2026. Plus one Cosworth BDG 2.0 liter engine that’s in line for the dyno, a straightforward refreshing, ready for another season.

They new Yamaha that I acquired in July to replace my broken KTM has been a good bike so far, though I’ve not yet even put 1,000 miles on it. In another first for me, I had to call 911 after an incident on the road. I got hit by a left turning car that I somehow didn’t see coming, that also fled the scene. This was with 35 miles on my brand new bike, two days after taking delivery! Fortunately, it was a glancing blow that left only cosmetic damage, and I was unscathed. Progressive insurance came through and wrote me a check for all the scratched parts in a timely manner. I just recently got around to ordering new hand guards, and decided to get the factory heated grips as well.

All in all, it was a decent year, despite the chaos. I hope everyone had a Merry Christmas and wish you all the best in the New Year. Bring it on 2026!