Category: Car Restoration
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Shims Suck, Let Me Tell You Why
Back 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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Merry Christmas
2023 is almost over! Many thanks to my customers for trusting me to take care of some really special cars this year and to help keep them rolling down the road. The variety of projects I’m able to work on is what keeps this job so interesting and stimulating. I’m looking forward to another great…
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A Lamborghini Double Check
I worked on this Lamborghini 400GT project 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…
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A Bugatti Crankshaft… Artistry and Madness
Bugatti Type 35 Grand Prix engines are well known for their complex roller bearing crankshafts, built up from hundreds of components, a design intended to reduce friction losses and to be able to survive on very little oil at very high RPM. 7,000 revs in 1924 was earth shattering. And as far as I know,…
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What’s it Take to Make an Old Bugatti Run Properly?
A Deep Dive into Some Pre-War French Machinery I 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…
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Back to the Birdcage
For the last three years, I’ve mostly been working on more modern race cars, but back in the day, I worked on several Maserati Tipo 61 “Birdcages”. I had my hands in four or five of the lightweight masterpieces and came to know them pretty intimately. I’m back in NorCal for a bit to do…
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The Talbot Lago Finally Makes it to Pebble Beach
I started working on this project back in 2016 in Colorado, the beginning of a long and circuitous path. In a previous post, I explained some of the issues that helped make it a five year engine build… One of the few upsides of a worldwide pandemic is that some events get postponed, which gave…
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Get to Work Ya Bum!
There has been a notable drop in the rate of new content being posted here at travelingwithtools. That’s because I’ve been back at work for a few weeks, and despite thinking I would be able to do two things at once, I have not. I’ve landed at the same Northern California shop that I worked…
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An Alfa Romeo 8C Project
A post about classic cars! Travelingwithtools has been focused on the travel part of late, so I thought it was time for a tools post. This Alfa Romeo 8C 2300 came to me in 2008 with a badly leaking rear main seal. As I recall, it was a very fresh restoration but there had been…
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A Note From the Desert
I’ve been parked out in the Nevada desert for a few days now, since finishing my look-back series on our trip to Africa in 2016. I’ve been poking through my photo archives and infrequent journal entries, looking for the path forward for the blog. I have a pretty good idea what I want to do,…
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