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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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Welcome to One Day in the Shop
A new and recurring post topic: What was going on in the shop that day?Here’s the concept: I pick an image from the archive. It will be an image of some cars that were in the shop at Phil Reilly & Co between 2005-2015, hopefully some interesting cars, and I will write about what was there, that one day in the shop. For readers that are new to travelingwithtools.com,…
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New Parts for Old Bugattis
About ten years ago, while working at Reilly’s old shop in Corte Madera, I had my hands in a particularly interesting 1930 Bugatti Type 35B. This post started off as an attempt to craft a recurring theme along the lines of “On this Day in History”, but I haven’t quite sorted out the format yet.…
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A Ferrari 166 Under the Knife
From a basket of parts to a million Euro auction in MonacoFerraris seem to be all the rage lately, what with the recent film generating headlines. I haven’t seen it yet and probably won’t for some time, as movies about cars and racing have almost always been a vast disappointment. What a letdown “Rush” was, after all the hype. The racing scenes were just as bad…
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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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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 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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The Bugatti Type 35 Crankshaft Explained
A Look Inside the Artistry and Madness of Ettore's MasterpieceBugatti 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. The Bugatti’s practical rev limit was in the neighborhood of 6,000 PM, which…
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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…