1925 Doble Series E Steam Car - Jay Leno's Garage 

Chaud = hot, Chauffeur = fireman, the man who shovels coal into the boiler on a steam train. Called engine driver in England or engineer in north America.

Not to be confused with a "fluffer". That's entirely from another profession (but still very French).

these cars* remind us*

@@yammmit duurrr look at me I correct grammar to deal with my insecurities of being a loser duuurrrr I don't know how to see the big picture duuurrrr

RantChant 316 That’s what people tend to think and you’re free to insult my implied “insecurities” if it makes you feel better about your own.

its not for that reason. its because the state makes a piss poor job of protecting sensitive information. You can easily find adress name and more just from the license plate. It should be illegal but gov gets away with everything

@@Veikra I found celebrity addresses fairly easily when I worked at Harbor Freight.

@@Clay3613 people give all their information to anyone that asks, then wonder why such things happen.

@@Clay3613 Yeah. Jay's garage by the airport is hard to find. And it's not like he drives around LA in flashy cars honking at all the ladies

Thia was from the website days and they did things a little differently then.

Glad you met this legend IRL.

sure pal and im the owner of the wearhouse jay has his garage in.

@@DanRustle liar

1000 pound feet of torque, in 1925

*1,000 lb-ft only at rest, (0-rpm 0-mph) The Doble only produced 150 horsepower max. when new, not impressive in 6,000 lb vehicle.*

@@doktorbimmer 150 hp in 1925? That's impressive as hell too. A Duesenberg of the era made something around 90 hp.

*Supercharged versions of Duesenberg's straight-8 could produce over 400 horsepower...* *Bugatti's 12.7 liter straight-8 300 horsepower* *Hispano-Suiza H6 160 horsepower* *Isotta Fraschini Tipo 8A 160 horsepower* *Mercedes-Benz and Rolls-Royce did not disclose actual horsepower but both produced engines in excess of 200 horsepower.*

@@doktorbimmer That's when you need torque... getting a load moving

Buck-o? Who do you think you are? Richard Cunningham?

It’s good to see it’s preserved but if it needs super fancy rocket engine materials there’s a fundamental design fault.

​@@davidelliott5843 Modern cars also use exotic high temperature nickel alloys for the exhaust valves, seats and in the turbocharger. The fatal design flaw in the Doble is the Rankine Cycle engine.

I never hear section or garage 😂

The 2 buses in service were only used round Auckland. They were under developed and broke down a lot. When they ran they were OK but they cost Prices a bucket load of money and left Prices with nothing much. One of the engines (2 cylinder double acting compounds) is in England and one is in New Zealand. Some parts survived but all patterns for the castings were scraped. Info C/o of the Bell family who ran the project at A&G Prices.

@@fizzguts Only a 2 cylinder compound? One high pressure cylinder and one low pressure cylinder?

@@fizzguts your talking to someone who made them and learned ton a tills on it. Probably born 1932 if I were to say..of course that was 6 years prior.

I have no idea what you are trying to say.

Exactly Martin, I hope Jay gets tremendous joy from sharing this because I love seeing it and learning about stuff I never knew existed.

He would have been my favorite teacher in high school.

When I was told this story (in the 50's), i asked my father what kind of car was the gasoline car. He said, the story always told was that it was a Deusenberg. Every time he told the story, it got more comical. He and his brother were always interested in cars. They started building dune buggies (jaloppies) in the 30's to roam the oil fields salvaging old steel to make a buck during the Great Depression. Father always had some car or pickup in the shop. His older brother bought a new VW and immediately disassembled and shortened it, putting a jeep-like body on it. It is the first VW dune buggy that I ever saw. It must have been an early model, because it had the swing-arm front suspension. Great memories.

Surely VWs had torsion bar front suspension and swing axle rear suspension. Great but faulty memories.

So it is a pointless story that ends “that was a day to remember!” Probably is a real story from the period! My grandfather loved steam cars and hated Packard enthusiasts.

Sounds like the claims made by smart phone manufacturers on battery life.

good you liked them

If I heard someone say that upon entering, no way would they be allowed to drive that thing. lol

BlackSn0wz It was a joke you idiot.

You're a diehard republican.

That makes two of us. This car just puts a smile on my face. :)

Lots of wheel thrust, especially with those huge wheels.

Bad Beard Bill No ponies.. no speed.. a Hyundai Elantra would blow this heap away on a long, steep grade

Bad Beard Bill And use a third as much fuel doing it...

The real doktorbimmer Clearly you don't understand cars. That's fine, but don't pretend that you do. It's just sad. Horsepower is only relevant in that it's a good rule of thumb for torque at a certain RPM. With steam, torque is constant from RPM = 0. HP becomes nearly irrelevant. What matters is wheel thrust and wheel RPM. Maximum engine RPM in a direct drive determines max wheel RPM. Bigger wheels means more distance traveled with less RPM. This means more speed with less RPM. More wheel thrust (a result of bigger wheels) means more acceleration. The Doble has the performance of a modern car in terms of acceleration and speed.

The "doktor" is just an idiot who wants to be combative in every post on everything, seen this idiot before elsewhere, now I blocked him. Like I said earlier, a steam car is NOT practical for people who want to drive 4 blocks to get a quart of milk, even a gasoline car isn't practical for them. The steam car like this is a touring car, something that would have been taken out and driven a couple hundred miles on a Sunday jaunt and back- for that it's the type of use it is most practical for. No transmission, no gearbox, no shifting or clutch, carburetor, distributor, computer system, emissions control/cat converter crap etc etc it's a SIMPLE steam engine and they were building those all over the place in the mid 1800s, they didn't need super special precision manufacturing. Since the steam engine has so much torque, the wheel diameter could be larger to get more speed at lower RPM's too, and at 6,000# dropping 1, 2-3K worth of weight off it with lighter weight materials would also mean a smaller power plant could be used with it's reduction in fuel use. They build gasoline cars mainly because they can be made mass produced cheap in the existing tooling and plants by thousands an hour, to change that all over to building steam engines they'd have to retool, change everything, re-train everyone from the drafting dept to the people on the assembly line. Jay already said his car just about meets emissions standards, and that's in CALIFORNIA- a state with the most insane, crazy overbearing, stringent regulations in the country, like my old 1992 Honda CVCC's unique head design that exceeded even modern emissions tests- the Doble car could do the same, with little modification to weight and using a smaller plant as a result of that too, it would do fine.

Gosh Lao ! I'm 68 an don't run anymore (unless an annoyed husband is shooting at me !!) You must be super fit still running at 100 !! ( Sorry - Just joking - your English is better than my any other language!) Wish I hadn't started this facile comment now. Feel stupid. I r such a stupit dog .... sorry.

I just want to be allowed to wander through his collection. Promise not to touch anything and I will also wipe up a drooling off the floor.

Not a chance in hell.. Steam cars were already obsolete when this car was built... they are not going to come back.

lekoman if you only count the main risers and no branch lines. I’ve installed miles of pipe in a single story school before

PacificCircle1 nah... its obsolete for automobiles... it cannot compete with Otto and Diesel cycle

The real doktorbimmer I never said steam would be practical nor competitive. A 2015 steam, or other type car, would exceed a 1906 car.

PacificCircle1 Actually you just did.... " Steam cars would be much better with todays tech." I guess you forgot?

The real doktorbimmer Obviously I was writing about steam cars only. I know what I meant, so I know you took me wrong. A steam car made today would be better than a 1906 steam car. Plain enough?

PacificCircle1 Not really, by 1906 reciprocating steam engines were nearing the peak of practical efficiency... As I said before when dealing with steam power the scale, power output and efficiency are directly related and linked.. in the size and power range of a typical automobile there is not much room for improvement in fuel efficiency here. A perfect analogous example is steam locomotives... Dampflokomotiv- und Maschinenfabrik DLM AG of Switzerland builds modern replica steam locomotives for mountain tourist railways... they utilize some very high tech, ultra modern materials and technology... the main advantage though is in automation and labor savings (a one instead of 3 man crew) with very little gains in thermodynamic or fuel efficiency compared to the 100+ year old originals. They do not compete with modern Diesels in cost efficiency either but are produced solely for their nostalgic value.

just like real life.. the superior internal combustion engine dominates the automotive industry

Well, considering how few of those were around - it's pretty realistic :D Living in that time you'd run a chance of never seeing a steam Doble with your own eyes.

*Steam cars like the Doble would be a huge boost to petroleum sales... the Doble is horribly inefficient and polluting... designed to run on Diesel fuel #1 (kerosene) it guzzles fuel at the obscene rate of 8 MPG and produces well over 1,000 grams of **_CO2_** emissions PER MILE.*

*The truth is, steam cars were only popular until Charles Kettering's invention of the electric starter for internal combustion cars in 1915... after that the steam car market collapsed virtually overnight because ICE cars are cheaper and more fuel efficient.*

@scott nyc u realize to run the burner at that temperature they need product that comes from oil

It would be a good idea. But of course they would change the design to something hideous.

Well the problem is what would happen if you crash one of them with all that steam pressure inside. Steam cars are basically mobile bombs!

i guess so but then so is a petrol car too if the fuel leaks with a few sparks,but i know what your saying,but now their trying to make compressed air cars so they would be same bang bang!! if it were to have a crash. Just depends if the boiler was to split or a fuel tanks on a petrol was to go same result me thinks or similar

Greed. Oil was more quickly profitable, or was cheaper to invest in, so they took the money rout, leaving, literally world altering technology in the dust. For money.

i recon your right luke

*The oil companies would be very pleased to see more of these horribly inefficient dinosaurs back on the road. The Doble E series was designed to run on Diesel fuel (D No.1/K1) and guzzles petroleum at the obscene rate of 8 MPG when fully warmed up and 6.6 MPG when cold started. The EPA tested the Doble boiler design in 1972 and test results showed that it produced a whopping 1,109 grams of **_CO2_** emissions per mile while a Toyota Prius averages just 98 grams per mile and as much as 60 MPG (55/58).*

@@doktorbimmer I am going to have to call that statement a whopping great lode of Bullscat, the car is designed to burn kerosene and as Jay says it's almost a completely total burn of the fuel.

@World Traveller *D1 /K1 aka Diesel fuel no.#1 is also known as kerosene or paraffin depending on where you live.* *Jay is a professional comedian and television host (very successfully at that) but he is not a professional engineer and his comments regarding emissions is unfortunately not completely accurate. The EPA tested this boiler design in 1970 and it failed to meet the up coming 1972 vehicle emissions standards for both NOx (Oxides of Nitrogen) and HCs (unburnt fuel emissions) both pollutants contribute to photo-chemical smog. This car has horrendous CO2 emissions per mile and terrible fuel mileage.*

@@doktorbimmer I don't doubt what you say. Mobile steam engines are not very efficient. Shooting liquid fuel into a bucket and igniting it is going to produce a lot of pollutants. For it's day and intended use the Doble is an amazing feat of engineering but let's not kid ourselves... even at it's best it has tremendous shortcomings compared to an ICE powered car, particularly if you were to compare similarly priced cars.. the Doble was VERY expensive. Jay talks about this in the video he did about the other Doble in his collection. The only people who could afford these cars could afford to have a "man" to maintain and operate the car for them.

@EristiCat *Good comments*

most vintage cars (before 1980) will be unaffected

there is a video on youtube about australian 1970's modern steam car. it acutally was pretty efficient

I think I remember him saying you get around 15MPG with it. But hey, you can't out a price on fun.

Look at my long name I bet you love this long name as much as me Its as long as a ruler maybe longer​ 15mpg of water is much different from 15mpg of gasoline

Paul Driftmier External combustion is efficient when utilized correctly. Super heating helped immensely but it still relies on transfer of heat rather than expansion. Still, Its very good at that. From the air inlet size and the fact it basically has a early supercharger it would be safe to assume single digit fuel economy. Without knowing airflow or exhaust temps its impossible to know for sure the efficiency at which heat is made to steam. 3-8 mpg realistically. Keep in mind it weighs 6000 lbs. A truck that weighs that much gets about 10-15 nowadays and in the 80s and 90s got 5-10. Nothing we know of is quite like H2O. It expands 2500 times its size when boiled and is liquid at room temp. The majority of electricity on this planet is steam generated. Marginal amounts are made using internal combustion. Large scale its amazingly efficient.

alex smith Actually it wasn't... it was an alternative fuel concept with some temporary advances in exhaust emissions, in terms of thermal fuel efficiency steam is really poor... less than half that of todays Otto and Diesel ICEs. Once the oil embargo ended, so did any interest in the Pretchard steam car.

Ballistol!!

tom pelley Nein, Ballistol es ist nicht für Dampflok

+fidel catsro Well, you might get a false impression that was true... but the facts are the Internal Combustion Engines are far superior... steam is very inefficient and not economical or practical..

+The real doktorbimmer Sir very respectfully hope that you spoke all could had been just so true !

Rahul Atul Its absolutely true, steam cars are obsolete due to their very inefficient operation.. The Carnot heat engine cycle efficiency of steam can never match the internal combustion engines fuel efficiency.

*Nicolas Carnot discovered ICEs were more efficient than steam in 1824.*

*Then **_Why_** are there no steam car companies left???*

either a quasiturbine (no recompression, no loss of power through converting reciprocating motion to rotary motion and no loss of power from the reversal and loss of momentum inherent to reciprocating motion) or an opposed piston compound uniflow steam engine, add condensing or a bottoming cycle with a small engine powered by a lower boiling point liquid. either could approach ICE Efficiency.

Perhaps a combined cycle power plant could also approach that efficiency. In them, the heat from exhaust of a gas turbine is used to generate steam for a steam turbine. At least one Lake Michigan car ferry has two compound uniflow steam engines but I think that they are a 1920s design. I rode it across the lake once. The drive machinery was inaudible and completely free of vibration unlike ships powered by Diesel engines.

Engine efficiency matters less when there are more components than just the engine involved. Transmissions, drivetrains, and even CV joints could all introduce losses in the system, reducing efficiency. Since steam needs no transmission, the playing field is more level than you think.

@@badbeardbill9956 Steam engines have terrible energy loss... just a tiny amout of the energy contained in the fuel makes it to the wheels.

@@sandervanderkammen9230 That depends on the specifics of the design - being technical, most cars have terrible energy loss as well. A good amount of electricity is generated using steam turbines, at incredible efficiencies. Now of course putting that into a car is a non-starter, but steam cars have existed in the past - the main issue is their startup time and their reaction time. Both of which are solvable. Of course changing the technology we use like this isn't practical, but it is possible.

*It still needs gears... you just don't need to shift gears.*

*Too bad it still only had 150 horsepower... no amount of gears can improve horsepower.*

Doktor Dim Bulb, Horsepower doesn't move anything, torque does❗

you realize this still runs on gasoline right?

Cameron Hill External combustion is far more efficient then internal combustion, generally speaking because not only are you getting a more complete burn, it can burn at its optimal fuel/air ratio at all times where as an internal combustion engine has to vary its ratio as more or less power is required despite the cylinder volume not changing. This could also be run on almost any liquid or gas fuel, like LPG, Hydrogen or alcohol.

Aus Explorer thanks for educating me

Aus Explorer Also you can use a solid fuel source like wood pellets, hemp fiber pellets and even coal, as long as it has the right boiler setup, which this car is clearly designed for liquid or gas fuels, but still.

A lot of solid fuels can be crushed and atomised in a fire box. Thats how they typically fire coal power plants. But in a small mobile setup its a bit more difficult. LPG and methane are decent choices, gasses are fairly easy to utilise. But yeah you can design a burner for any fuel, solid, liquid or gas.

robaxx Absolutely not, steam cars like this have less than half the thermal fuel efficiency of a modern Otto and Diesel engines.. steam cars are obsolete because of the terrible fuel efficency and high fuel consumption.

The real doktorbimmer He said the fuel efficiency was similar to combustion engines /of the time/, not modern ones.

Brett Bates His mistake not mine... Mr. Leno is a highly respected car collector and professonal intertainer... although he is not a professonal automotive engineer. ""Fuel efficiency was said to be comparable to similar petrol cars of the day"" Similar comparable cars in this class, circa mid to -late 1920s ( like Bugatti, Hispano-Suiza, Bently or Dusenberg) often were equiped with engines with as much as twice the rated horsepower of the Doble....

The real doktorbimmer What about torque? I know the one steam car Jay has, he said it's a 2,000 or 3,000 lb car I think with 25 hop by like 1,000 lb-ft of torque!

The real doktorbimmer Also the maintenance, complexity, and lengthy startup times.

Paul Driftmier 10-12mpg on kerosene.. so even less than that on on gasoline.

Most cars back then had bad mileage anyways. That was probably good for the day. 12 for the Doble compared to 14 national average isn't bad at all.

I know this is an old post but my understanding of steam powered cars is that you can use just about any fuel for it as long as it can burn at the right temperature to keep everything running smoothly. I think Jay mentioned this in another video as well but the benefit of these steam cars is that it really can take any form of liquid fuel which also includes biofuel which is basically a renewable fuel.

+Phoenix1138 *Steam engines are not the only technologies that offers multi-fuel capabilities... Both the Brayton Cycle engines (gas turbines) and the reciprocating ICEs Otto, Diesel, Akinson have multi-fuel capibilities... The Ford Model T was multi-fuel, it could be driven on kerosene, gasoline or methanol. Today's modern military Diesel engines can run on 5 or more different types of liquid fuels... the main advantage is that Diesel engines are 300% - 400% more fuel efficient than steam powered vehicles.*

Wow, I learned something new. I wonder why companies don't create vehicles that take many different types of fuels as the default instead of the exception.

+kaputnik11 It still uses gasoline to run the boiler. So really it would be known as a "Hybrid water/gasoline engine" As today we use that term for the so called gas/electric cars.

+Pepe Perro do you know what is the average usage of gas in a steam car is by any chance?

+Jonas Pöchacker it'll use a tank every 4 water tanks give/take

Thedeoradude "Used" past tense, modern locomotive do not use steam.. Long ago when steam was used many Western lines switched to No. 6 Fuel Oil referred to in the railroad industry as "Bunker C" which originates from its use on navy ships.. It was once a very cheap and plentiful waste product of the petroleum refining industry.. but thanks to the development of hydro and catalytic cracking this cut is now in high demand for plastics manufacturing and is no longer used as fuel in most parts of the world as it continues to increase in price. No.6 fuel oil is also very difficult to work with..it requires special fuel handling equipment including pre-heating, filtration and special atomizing nozzles.. Kerosene (DW #1) is still consider the optimum fuel for steam applications.. but like Diesel engines can run on anything that burns..

*Not true, the laws of thermodynamics prevent steam from ever matching the efficiency of internal combustion, its why steam cars have been obsolete for a century now.*

Steam cars are horribly inefficient and produce huge carbon emissions

If it was a straight 16 it wasn't Deusenberg Straight 8s only