Since being laid off from his job as an automotive engineer a year ago, Jon Waples has bided his time the way many car aficionados could only dream.

For the past seven months, he’s been meticulously restoring a gray-blue 1962 Bentley S2 sedan in an Ypsilanti garage populated by hardcore fellow collectors. And he’s been blogging about the technical aspects of the project on his site, SherbourneMews.com.

He’s a 44-year-old car guy with a blog and a thing for the Rolls-Royce and Bentley family of automobiles.

 “They’re kind of tragically optimistic,” Waples explained about the English nameplate brethren. “They were always a very small company, they were very successful very early on.” 

Rolls-Royce was famous for what Waples calls its “obsessive-compulsive over-engineered” early Silver Ghost model but also was known for its aircraft engines.

“The car company was always this quirky little offshoot,” said Waples, a 44-year-old former engineering manager with Automotive Components Holdings LLC. “They always had to live up to this tremendous name with almost no resources, but they wouldn’t let it stop them.”

Waples is nearly completed with his project, which would mark the first Bentley to be overhauled at the highly secretive Ypsilanti garage, said Bill Milliken, the car collector who runs it.

Car collectors who work there hold regular open houses for invited guests, but Milliken, who heads Milliken Realty Co., keeps information a closely guarded secret.

“There are 100 individual owners there and it’s their very vocal feeling that they don’t want the location outed,” Milliken said.

Waples, who lives in Detroit, paid $15,000 for the S2 after seeing an ad for a non-running Bentley posted by a widow who lives near Columbus, Ohio. The car hadn’t been run in 20 years, he said.

“We found that it was a lot lower mileage than we thought,” he said. “Also, although it hadn’t run in 20 years, it was very well maintained. You can tell a Rolls-Royce bolt from a hardware store bolt. They have special marking on them.

“You could tell that whoever maintained this car really was meticulous about keeping the car and using the exact right parts.”

While able to free up the engine, Waples quickly learned that the car’s carburetor, fuel pump, generator and starter motor were all seized up. The brakes also needed an overhaul.

After firing up the engine for the first time, he discovered that it was running on just seven of eight cylinders.

“The most interesting thing about this Bentley S2 line is it was when the famous V8 that Rolls-Royce made started,” Waples said. The engine would beget the turbo R and Arnage engines of automotive legend, he said.

“That’s why this car is so cool, because it’s the first iteration of that V8 that’s been in production for 50 years.”

While he’s searched unsuccessfully for a new job, Waples has kept busy with the Bentley restoration and documenting it on his blog, named after the street he lives on and the British term for a row of stables or garages. The author of “The Shadow Owners’ Companion” has also taken a nominally paid job as technical editor for a pair of Rolls-Royce collectors magazines.

He’s had help on the Bentley from some of his former ACH colleagues, and he’s put his technical knowledge to use building his own blog site. He plans to do the same for 203 Custom Car Works in Ypsilanti in exchange for some body work.

“I’m having the best year of my life,” Waples said. “I wish I could do this more often.”

Contact Sven Gustafson at sventg123(at)gmail(dot)com, or follow him at twitter.com/sveng.