Jay's Garage

Thanks for your questions... let's keep the dialog open!

Tue, 14 Nov 2006 18:41:27 -0800

Thanks everybody for being here. I’ll be checking back regularly and hope to answer as many questions as we can in this blog. As you know, I have this day job you may have heard about, so I can’t do this full time. And be sure to send us a picture of your favorite ride and we’ll put it on our site.

To Robin: Tank Car mpg

Tue, 14 Nov 2006 18:39:40 -0800

No, the NBC page doesn’t list all the cars. It’s more fun to do them one week at a time. Now that we put Bosche fuel injection and turbo charging in the tank car, we’ve more than doubled the mileage! We’re saving fuel! Because fuel-injection is more precise than 2 giant toilet bowl carbs, you can actually get more power cause you’re metering the fuel and using it more efficiently. So I’m proud to say that I’m getting anywhere from 4 to 6 mpg. Ed Begley jr. would be proud!

Fastest Quarter Mile Time

Tue, 14 Nov 2006 18:39:12 -0800

I have no idea. I don’t really race. I’m not one of those guys. Just because I can do something doesn’t mean I’m particularly good at it. I enjoy power; I enjoy speed and the sensation of speed as much as the speed itself. Driving a 1906 Stanely Steamer race car at 60-70 mph is much scarier and more fun than driving a McClaren F1 at 150. So speed is a relative thing. I suppose I can put some phony time on this and give you some crazy trap speed but actually I haven’t done any competitive drag racing. I just have fun with it.

Getting girls.

Tue, 14 Nov 2006 18:38:57 -0800

Actually, I’m at the point where getting girls actually causes me to lose cars. When you’re single, cars can help you get girls, but when you’re married, cars can actually get you to lose girls cause you have to sell half your stuff.

Big 3 Manufacturers

Tue, 14 Nov 2006 18:36:10 -0800

Well, these days the Big Three manufacturers in the US are Tonka, Matchbox, and Hot Wheels. That being said, I’m a big fan of American cars. I think the Chevy Corvette is one of the best super cars in the world as well as the current Mustangs and the upcoming Camarro and soon to be Dodge Challenger. I think the American companies will be leaner, trimmer and make fewer, but better cars in the years ahead.

To David who just turned 16

Tue, 14 Nov 2006 18:34:20 -0800

I think a great car for someone on a budget is one of the early Miatas. The early Miatas are great cause they’re real sports cars. When I was 16 the cool cars where MGs and Triumphs and even more exclusively Lotuses. The Miata is actually faster and better built than any of those. Some guys put them down as secretary’s cars, but I know a lot of guys who race them; they’re pretty bullet proof, reasonably cheap tp insure, and now 10, 12, 15 years old and you can get them at a good. Price. There’s a magazine called Grass Roots Motorsports which deals primarily with buying and racing, cool cars on a budget.

Why I don’t own any Ferraris

Tue, 14 Nov 2006 18:31:51 -0800

I do like Ferraris. I like older ones. It just when I started collecting cars, Ferraris have always been expensive. Lamborghinis were fairly cheap, relatively. You could buy a car like an Espada, which is a V12 with 6 carbs and a 5 speed for probably a quarter of the price of a comparable Ferrari.

So it just sort of became a joke around the shop, but when I do get a Ferrari you’ll be the first to know.

Opening a museum in the future

Tue, 14 Nov 2006 18:29:30 -0800

The trouble with opening a museum is it’s open the public and not necessarily to just car enthusiasts. Plus when you have a museum then the government gets involved. Oh you can’t have gasoline in these cars sitting here... that’s a danger. You have to have hand rails on everything, there’s all sorts of safety issues that you must address when you become a public facility. I prefer to do it this way and then just have a handful of people stop by every now and then.

Hardest Car in My Collection to Work on

Tue, 14 Nov 2006 18:28:08 -0800

That’s a good question. Cars have changed a lot in 100 years. In the old days, labor was cheap and technology was expensive. So it didn’t cost the manufacturer a lot of money to have an employee taking a lot of hours to put a car together. Nowadays, labor is expensive and technology is cheap. So working on an old car is actually a lot more expensive and time consuming cause there’s a lot more to them: external oil lines, water jackets like no an old Bentley that have 50 nuts and bolts holding them on. It’s really hard to say. A car like a Doble Steamer is extremely complicated to work on because there’s not much tech information that exists. They only built 40 of them and only a handful remain, so there’s a lot of guesswork involved.

But to answer your question in an nutshell: the hardest thing to work on… anything Italian!

I know you've driven the pace car in the Indy 500 and Daytona 500

Tue, 14 Nov 2006 18:23:31 -0800

Actually the real fun is not the actual pace car driving. The real fun is getting into Indy Daytona 2 or 3 days early and doing practice laps. I got to do about 100 to 150 laps at Indy and that was great fun although the steep banks of Daytona are really a lot more exciting.

Also got to drive Talledega on a Porsche Carrera GT, which I spun out at a 188. Luckily I didn’t hit the wall. And hey… it wasn’t my car! In fact, there’s a story about that on the web site under the Popular Mechanics articles.

My husband says that I have to run up the rpms on my Mustang to clean the valves out. I

Tue, 14 Nov 2006 18:23:00 -0800

If you just do stop and go driving in your car, you’re not really exercising it properly. It’s a bit like sitting in an office all day and going for a run afterwards. You will feel better and so does your car. But most modern gasolines today are detergent and that’s not really necessary and you don’t want to rev up the engine while it’s idling. You only want to do it in load gear. Is it a 4 speed or automatic? Put your foot in it when you go on a freeway on ramp and if you’re turning 100 mph at 4000 rpms you might want to look in a mirror, the cops are probably behind you.

PS: If you’re a hot blond, they’ll probably let you go.

Young Blake, welcome to the website!

Tue, 14 Nov 2006 18:20:51 -0800

You’ll be driving in three years. Let me know so I can get off the road. The oldest car I have that I still take out on the road is a 1906 Stanley Steam car. It runs on steam. You heat up water and the steam powers the engine. And on a cold day, there are huge clouds of steam behind me, which people often confused with smoke and then swear at me. But actually, it’s polluting less than a gas car, because it’s just harmless steam!

Oldsmobile 442 Appreciation

Tue, 14 Nov 2006 18:19:08 -0800

First off on the undercoating, if you still have undercoat on your 69 442 you have a lot better dealer than the one I worked at. We used to charge people 110 bucks for the undercoat, spray black paint under there and go, “yea, you’re protected.”

But seriously, the best way to get undercoating out is to scrape it off. You might try some alcohol based cleaners but you’re really just going to have to scrape it off. And I think you’re car will always continue to appreciate in value not so much cause it’s an Oldsmobile but because it’s a muscle car.

Let’s face it, a 396 Chevelle from the 60s doesn’t have much in common with a front wheel drive Chevy of today.

To Robert and Shannon Warren: BioDiesel eco Jet Ca

Tue, 14 Nov 2006 18:10:38 -0800

There’s pictures of in online now on the website. We started the project in earnest 7 months ago. We got the frame and body done. We have the engine in place but it’s not running ye. We should have it running by x-mas, but we still need to have an interior put it int.

The fuel economy is probably not very good cause it’s a jet engine, but the nice thing is that when your using bio-diesel you just wait for the next harvest. We’re using non-fossil fuels… it’s a renewable fuel and we’re using a product from Imperium Renewables out of Seattle. We’re trying to make it as Green a car as possible to quote our friends in PETA, we’re using a cruelty-free interior. By that IO mean no animals skins, no leather. These days it’s not really necessary to use leather because synthetics are just as good.

The idea behind it was to build a super car that ran on bio-diesel. I mean we all like the fuel economy of a Prius or hybrid but let’s face it: they’re not fun, sexy cars to drive.

Watch this space. We’ll be giving you updates as the eco jet comes along. We’ll be showing you possible sketches of the interior and letting you know the problems we encounter in getting it road worthy.

Fire away

Tue, 14 Nov 2006 18:06:40 -0800

Hi everyone. Jay Leno here. I'm at my computer and ready to answer your questions.