Awesome Engines

Rolls-Royce shared this brief, but fascinating look at the process of building one of its Pearl 15 jet engines at their factory in Germany. Each engine is assembled by hand by a team of skilled mechanics out of thousands of individual components. This particular engine was later attached to a Bombardier Global 6500 business jet.

Simas1014 of Generic Woodworking likes to make working models of car engines from wood. Here, he shows off an impossibly tiny model of a V8 engine, complete with a working crankshaft, rods, and pistons that move. You’d need to measure this engine’s displacement in milliliters.

Green Gecko shows off an impressive LEGO Technic build which replicates the functionality of a V8 engine. Running on compressed air, it even sounds like a real engine as it starts to pick up speed towards its 1500 RPM redline. Like what you see? Buy the complete kit on the Green Gecko Workshop website.

LEGO builder Mad Brick created a working replica of the block, crankshaft, and pistons of a V12 engine. Then he lubed it up and connected the engine to a powerful motor, which spun up to as much as 40,000 RPM. It worked great until the pistons started flying.

Morris Models makes mechanical wooden models inspired by engines. They show how crankshafts, pistons, and other parts work in sequence to generate propulsion. They come in 7-cylinder, V-Twin, lawnmower, opposed aircraft, and Wankel rotary variants. They also make a model of a repeating weapon known as a Chu-Ko-Nu.

While stuck at home with some free time on his hands, car enthusiast Brian King aka AWDcutlass decided to rebuild a full-size GM LS V8 engine inside of a transparent acrylic shell. It’s pretty wild to see all the parts moving inside of it, and it looks especially awesome when he turns on the LED lighting. See Part 1 of the build here.

Plane Pieces’ drink coasters are a great gift for aviation enthusiasts. They’re made using authentic Pratt & Whitney gears from WWII radial airplane engines. Each one is encased in clear resin, surrounded with a machined aluminum outer ring, and has a protective bumper underneath. Sold individually, or in sets of four.

Old school Mazda fans will immediately recognize the Dorito-shaped rotor in the image here. For everyone else, what you’re looking at is an approximation of a Wankel rotary engine, built by LEGO machine maker Akiyuki. For a lesson on how the real engine worked, Car Throttle has a nice simple explanation.

You could have a steam train, if you’d just lay down your tracks. Russian railroad enthusiast Pavel Chilin took Peter Gabriel’s advice literally, and built himself a working steam train engine that runs along a set of narrow-gauge tracks in his backyard. Additional footage here.

YouTuber JD Rock’s picks for the strangest engines invented or currently in development. The list includes the hypersonic harbinger SABRE, the highly scalable and versatile camless engine, and the mind-boggling EmDrive.

Hagerty and Don Schumacher Racing provide an up close look a the teardown and reassembly of an 11,000 hp V8 HEMI engine from an NHRA top fuel dragster. While this was a complete rebuild, they perform much of the same process each weekend at the dragstrip.

What you’re looking at here is a teensy, tiny, fully-functional steam engine that’s so small that its base is an old copper penny, and some of them have a flywheel made from a shilling coin. The miniature engine can run on steam or compressed air, and was built by Phil Gravett.

JohnnyQ90 shows off a sweet miniature gas-powered stirling engine. It’s powerful enough to spin a propellor to nearly 2,000 RPM, so keep your fingers away. While Johnny made the turbine fan, he’s quick to point out that you can buy the engine itself from Banggood.

Did you break the tip on your pencil again? You could go for one of those fancy mechanical pencils, or you could rig up a pencil sharpener like the one Giaco Whatever hacked together – using a 1000cc two-stroke engine to spin the sharpener up to speed.

After showing us what it takes to rebuild a couple of V8s, Hagerty Classic Cars captured the restoration of a V-Twin Ironhead engine from a 1957 Harley-Davidson XL sportster motorcycle. The time-lapse condenses what was surely days of work down to just 5 minutes.

Warped Perception built a custom transparent acrylic head for a four-stroke engine so we can see what internal combustion looks like as it happens. He fed the engine with different types of fuel then captured the results in slow-motion. Amazing stuff.

Carpenter Ian Jimmerson built a working model of a 9-cylinder radial engine out of wood. In his video, he uses the mechanical model to walk us through the fascinating engineering that makes this kind of engine work. Part 2 here.

An incredibly detailed model of a GE turbofan engine from a Boeing 787 airplane, made using 3D printed parts, and capable of pushing out an impressive amount of thrust. Its builder, Harcoreta, plans on flying it on an RC plane soon. Build log here.

We’re not entirely sure of the purpose of this thing, since it’s basically just a massive Rolls Royce V12 tank engine without a drivetrain, but the red-hot, flame-spitting exhaust pipes are eye and ear candy for any gearhead.

This time-lapse video from Hagerty Classic Cars celebrates the Chevy small-block V8, one of the greatest and most versatile engines ever made. With the help of Thirlby Automotive, they rip one down, then rebuild it like new. (Thanks Justin!)

This intricate, pneumatic-powered LEGO Technic model built by Huib van der Hart replicates the inner workings of a V-8 engine – and is nearly as loud as one – so you might want to turn your speakers down for this one.

A look at the mechanical wonders of a Porsche Carerra 3.2 Engine as told through a time-lapse of an old engine being torn-down for restoration over the course of three months by Hoing Motorsports. Shot by Filmkooperation.

Obsessive LEGO builder Solde created this palm-sized replica of the 4A-GE engine found in Toyota’s MR2, complete with working timing belt, crankshaft, pistons and throttle. We’re guessing it doesn’t really make those sounds.