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A Bugatti Cylinder Block Repair
Working with iron and a cautionary taleSeveral years ago, I went through a Type 40 Bugatti engine that had had a hard life. Its recent days hadn’t been made any easier by the chap that took it apart, using a dead blow hammer to break free the joint between the cylinder block and the crankcase. Not a crazy idea, to use…
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Bugatti Blocks Balderdash!
Concealing a Row of Hardware for Art's SakeEttore Bugatti came from a family of artists, though he was not himself formally trained as one. He apprenticed at a bicycle manufacturer and began making cars without any engineering education. There are many remarkable artistic details that resulted from this unconventional origin story. One example of Bugatti’s eye for detail are the lovely polished…
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The Lincoln KB V12 Mystery
Shims Suck, Let Me Tell You WhyBack in 2010, I built what was rare for me in my later career, an American-made engine. The Lincoln KB V-12, circa 1932, was a big cast iron monster, very different from the mostly French and Italian motors I’d been working on in that era at Phil Reilly & Company. This story isn’t about the…
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Keeping the Fire Inside the Motor
Five Methods for Sealing the Combustion ChamberI’ve worked on a pretty wide variety of engines over the years, and a consistent engineering question each of the designers faced is this: How do we keep the extremely high combustion pressures inside of the motor? If you’ve ever experienced a blown head gasket and the expense that comes with repairing it properly, you…
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A Lamborghini 400GT Project
An Engine With a Surprise Hiding Deep Inside…I worked on this Lamborghini 400GT back in Colorado several years ago. The car had been stored without the correct mix in the cooling system and the crankcase was broken by the expanding ice. A new old stock crankcase was somehow tracked down, and I was charged with transferring all of the components into the…
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What’s it Take to Make an Old Bugatti Run Properly?
A Deep Dive into Some Pre-War French MachineryI spent a fair amount of time earlier this year getting a 1926 Bugatti Type 30 ready to do some road miles. It had been in a private collection for many years and apparently saw very little use. The new owner enjoys using his cars, so right off the bat the car needed to be…
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Making Your Mark
This will go down on your permanent recordI worked for a long time in one location, almost ten years, taking apart cars and putting them back together. Any old car shop has shelving storing parts, and some shops have bits from jobs that were done twenty or thirty years ago. Parts may sit for a week before going back together, and some…