Wasn't planning on turning this into a car blog but I have to mention one more company using Hayabusa engines since they seem to have quite a business building street legal cars and kits. The comany is Z Cars over in England and they have some of the coolest conversions, putting bike engines into a Mini, a Lotus and some other cars, most notably, the Ultima, where they use two … [Read more...]
Hayabusa V8 engine
Radical Extreme Sports Cars started building race cars powered by superbike engines back in 1996. They began using Suzuki engines and it looks like they have been fairly successful. Their latest creation, the SR8, goes a step farther. Instead of just dropping in a complete engine, they built a V8 by grafting two Hayabusa engines together. So far the figures are 372hp and the … [Read more...]
Most powerful diesel
I have to mention engines again since I saw this. This turbo diesel comes in multiple versions from 6 to 14 cylinders and is a bit larger than most. Bore 38 inches, stroke 98 inches, each cylinder displaces 111,143 cubic inches. Each cylinder produces 7780 horsepower. The pictures are amazing, the photo on the right here shows a section of the crankshaft and that little green … [Read more...]
The universal engine
Over the last week or so I've been thinking and writing about motorcycle engines and I came across this series of columns by Marc Cook over at AVweb. Being an aviation web site his columns look at engines from that perspective and he examines the actual differences between motorcycle and airplane engines and the reasons why they're different. It's good information. As I … [Read more...]
Old motorcycles and motorcycle engines
It's probably apparent that I like motorcycle engines. Old motorcycles and motorcycle engines are especially neat because there was such a wide variation in their design and appearance. Today, many engines are hard to distinguish from one another. As I was looking for something else I came across this web site, the Wolverhampton Museum of Industry in England. Now I admit I … [Read more...]
48 cylinder motorcycle engine
No sooner do I mention motorcycle engines up to 8 cylinders and someone points out a 12 cylinder made from two inline sixes. OK, today I come across this, this ... oh heck I don't know what this is. 48 cylinders! I would chalk this up to Photoshop but there's a video on the website. Hmm... … [Read more...]