Harry's Lamborghini Espada - First Road Test for the V12 | Tyrrell's Classic Workshop - Episode

Hello and welcome to buy this time, talking about Lamborghini Espadas or particularly this Lamborghini Espada. This, of course, is Harry's Sword. Harry Metcalf, who has the YouTube channel. I think he has just under 360,000 subscribers, now well done, he bought the car. from me about 10 years ago, something like that in my old

classic

car business, we focused more on sales and restoration and he enjoyed the car for a number of years and started playing on the 50th tour of Lamborghini with the The factory outside the factory is Larry and Espada, which I was also in, started to overheat and misbehave a bit, so we had to chat about it at the end of last year and he said could you give it a glance?

And I said, well, you realize it's probably a serious head gasket or something and he said it can't be used as is, let's just fix it, so we got the car in and it was actually gasket week. cylinder head to diagnose where the gasket had failed and there was a leak between the combustion chamber and the coolant. passage in the cylinder head, so we rebuilt the engine, but Harry's brief was that not only did he want us to rebuild the engine like a normal Espada engine, but he also wanted us to run it a little, so that's what we did.

I started a journey. of looking at the weak links, the strengths, the weaknesses, doing an analysis of all the internal components of the engine to see where we could get additional horsepower, so what we did was order a special set of pistons that had been manufactured by some people in California for a beautiful standard I also ordered some special valve springs. I worked with a valve spring manufacturer to forgo a valve spring that wasn't too strong to wear out the camshafts, which is a risk, but also allowed the valves to rev higher to oscillate. higher and without causing valve bounce and giving to one or two more tricks with the clutch plate to make sure it is safe at high revs, which would not be standard, so this engine when running on my type of requests Harry's goal was to get to 8,000 rpm safely and hopefully we've achieved that, so I'll be driving alongside him with my hands in the air, ready to catch pistons, connecting rods and valves when he does it for the

first

time, but apart from That, I'm pretty sure we've really fulfilled our mandate, so my story with Espadas started very early.

They were the type of car that really inspired me to get into automotive engineering in 1975, but when they allowed me to go to my parents' family house in my hometown. In Wallace II, the house was on a main street and on a hot summer day, the bathroom window was open. I was washing my hands in the sink and heard an incredible noise as I passed the bathroom window on the street and looked to dive. Out the window and I looked out, there was a beautiful Tahitian sword blue, a beautiful metallic blue. I had never heard of the e12 before 1975.

Most cars on the

road

had a very kinky pushrod engine, 4 cylinder engine cars, so some sort of four cam v12 was really really out of the question. scale and that got me hooked instantly when I started my

first

business up to engineering in 1984, shortly after starting that business, the guy called me, the owner of that car, and said he would like me to do some work on So I took the car and I ended up buying it. It was a bit tragic really because we spoke several times on the phone. He came to work, but I ended up making the deal with him, we agreed on a price and then he.

He died in the hospital and I never met him, so I ended up giving the money to his wife. I mean, it was a really strange situation, but that was my first foray into Espada property, so Espada was really responsible for getting me into this. type of car and this type of engine, we fast forward, we finish Harry's sword, he's all armed, he's back in the car, we start the engine and it turns on for the first time. Incredible in the video of him, so what I'm going to do now is take his car. on its maiden voyage, so this is the first time the car has gone out.

I'm going to tune the carburetors, set them up with my usual bolt-on main pipe trick: balance them and get them to all the correct mixtures at idle and then we'll just take the car out on the

road

and do the first few shakedown miles. One of the jobs we were going to do for Harry was to fit a lighter roof panel and I've made sure we can't. Do this with anything other than Perspex because it has a slight curve and the cost of making a piece of glass would be really prohibitive so there is a shortage of Perspex just because we live in the age of 19 so at the moment I have ordered perspex, which is a lighter green on much of the windows, but it's not here yet, so for road

test

ing purposes we've actually put this panel back in place, it's glued tight , it's like that.

We're not going anywhere, but we are waiting for this final element of the work. In fact, he asked us to make the spinning wheel in black too because there are pictures of the car years ago with the spinning wheels in black and really. Actually, this car looks good, so we've done it, so let's just start the engine. now let's do a basic tune up nothing special because we really need to put some miles on it first and we'll take it. From there what I've done here is just give them a basic tune up at this stage, the carburettors because there's no point in going crazy because all the cylinders need to break in and start working properly etc and then I'll revisit them . this and give it another more detailed tune up, but it's certainly good enough to hit the road now the engines run wonderfully, there's not a hint of a leak anywhere or anything strange, it sounds wonderfully mechanically quiet as it should and let's give it a try. one twist, yes you got it, it fits almost done for the job, well this is literally the first ride from the shop for this car.

I'm just nursing it back to life but she is very very happy right now, the shifting is much better with the new bushings and we put some new oil light bushings as they called them on the shifter linkage changes and Harry will be very happy, that's much more positive, the car handles very well, I mean all this stuff that spiders do when set up correctly, they are considering We are such a big car that the handling compromise was really right from the beginning and all of that was due to Bob Wallace, the New Zealand engineer and

test

driver who developed the suspension for these cars. flat handling too, yes, Ferruccio called the Espada his Rolls Royce, which is stretching the truth a bit, but it was the fastest four seater in the world for many years when it was built and it's capable of sorting, you know. those trips across the continent and if everyone compromises a little on space, it can actually fit four adults inside, it's really a complete four seater, not just a 2+2 and there's good luggage space too, one of the things that have always attracted attention.

What it tells me about road testing different cars over the years is that some are a bitter disappointment, you get along with them and you've revered them and you think oh no I don't like this at all and other cars I really you didn't like them. Get in and drive them and suddenly they come to life and you think this is a car I've really underestimated. One of those cars was the BMW m1. The first time I drove one of those after we did it for work, I just thought. For me, forget the tacky switches and forget the oblivion, you know the slightly angular look of the design is a car that drives very well and this car reminds me that I put it in the same category as a Lotus Esprit or an Aston .

Martin Lagonda is the type of Lagonda series, the very angular one because it has that kind of stable flat plan but with a soft feel and the view from the windshield is quite similar in a way, it is really angular, almost a flat type of windshield. This car is going very, very well, it is behaving, the water temperature is absolutely where it should be, the oil temperature is six kilograms per centimeter at 2000 revolutions, which is quite correct and the oil temperature is maintained well, This car runs very well. I'm actually just nursing him back to life.

I'm not asking too much of the engine at all, you can just feel how it responds a little to the slightest input of the throttle. I'm sure Harry will be very, very happy with it. This car is very happy. This steering wheel is actually from an Espada series three. It's smaller than the Series two because the Series 3 had power steering, which means they could have a little bit of a higher speed, so you have to have a smaller steering wheel, but. This has the electrical system, the excellent discomfort, the electric power steering system and it makes a difference even driving it, it is better, yes, it runs great, very, very good, starting very cleanly, with no signs of hesitation or misfire. or anything just great and again we use it with cheap and nasty oil to accommodate everything in the engine, it is of no use, it is actually counterproductive to put expensive engine oil and the new engine of this era because it does not allow everything that the rings of piston to fit the polishing, the cross scoring in the bores correctly, things like that, yes, all good and although I am not asking anything of the engine, you can see that the Espada handles sublimely, it is just cornering beautifully , Without body.

Sorry to talk about no drama, just all there and, well, if you enjoyed this video, Harry has six videos on the Espada engine rebuild that show it from start to finish, go to his channel and take a look, thanks again for hurrying through everything and us. I will be back soon