After 7 minutes my mouth was dry--I realized I'd been sitting watching this with my mouth hanging open.

Google translation from the Spanish Youtube description:

Engine V-12 naval air injection hand-built craftsmanship. Perhaps it is the engine in the world smallest of this modality. It has 12 cm3 of displacement, the cylinder bore is 11.3 mm and career piston is 10 with only 0.1 mm. Works Kg/cm2. This is constructed with stainless steel, aluminum and bronze. This motor is dedicated to Patel and her 4 oldest grandchildren Sarah, Carmen, Jose and Paul.

Boosting this quality contribution up in the Hot Listing - declared quality by Boise_Lib.

Note:
I think this
"...and career piston is 10 with only 0.1 mm. Works Kg/cm2."
was supposed to mean
"Piston travel is 10 mm with only 0.1 mm Kg/cm2 compression."
But, that's just my guess.

this is astonishing.

[even more so if you're wasted]

epic

Fantastic. Reminds me of my wife's granddad, so is very moving for me. I'm going to tell you about him because I can, you don't have to read this, it's just that I think he deserves a mention.

He retired at 65 from a career as an engineer and went on to be a tinkerer and inventor. He had a love of steam engines and built a scale model of Stephenson's Rocket in very much the same way as the gentleman in this video, but he made absolutely everything from scratch, including the nuts bolts and washers. It's about 12inches long and runs around a track when connected to compressed air. It still fascinates me to this day. He finished making it when he was 93. He said he'd sometimes drop a piece on his study floor and it would take him most of the day to find it again with his bad eyesight and loss of feeling in his fingers. I can't imagine having the skill to make one now while I'm in my prime. Seeing things like this make me feel awfully humble.

His crowning achievement was making the world's first ever road-legal solar powered car. He liked tinkering with solar power and realised that if he made a solar powered car it would be fun and he wouldn't have to pay road tax (he built and drove an electric sports car to work and back in the 50s for the same reason). So he built it. He wasn't the first to use solar power, he was just the first to make it road legal. I don't think he knew at the time he was the first, and it didn't seem that important to him. It was just something interesting to do. I swear he could have lived to 200 and not run out of ideas or things to do. He makes me realise how little I've done with my life.

If anyone's still reading and is still interested, this is him:

http://www.search.windowsonwarwickshire.org.uk/engine/resource/default.asp?resource=6940

Epic *music
makes me *happy

This deserves to be #1.

Adding video to channels (Happy, Music) - requested by luxury_pie.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag.(show it anyway)

So it's running on compressed air? I wonder if you could make it run on petrol? I guess you'd need miniature spark plugs and a distributor.

Very good. Would have been better without the Steven Spielberg soundtrack loops.

>> ^dag:

So it's running on compressed air? I wonder if you could make it run on petrol? I guess you'd need miniature spark plugs and a distributor.


That would be my guess.
Beyond the problem of building a tiny, tiny, tiny coil--a spark gap of a few microns would be problematic (at best).

@robbersdog49, I read it. Thanks for the cool story.

*promote

Promoting this video back to the front page; last published Sunday, November 20th, 2011 1:18am PST - promote requested by Boise_Lib.

Amazing. Still has more horsepower than a Smart Car.

@dag
@Boise_Lib

The main problem is not the fuel to air mixture rate, the spark plugs/distributor or anything that would deal with making the cylinders fire, I speculate the main problem is heat. Having the engine liquid cooled with pump and radiator would not work, it would generate to much heat or it would be to difficult to produce the veins the coolant goes through, not to mention you would need it to be lubricated with oil pump etc.

I think they use air because it gets the parts moving and produces a rotational output, to make it fire on vapors would be a very difficult task.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag.(show it anyway)

Well then, I would like to see the smallest possible V12 where this was possible. Surely you could go pretty small. >> ^BoneRemake:

@dag
@Boise_Lib
The main problem is not the fuel to air mixture rate, the spark plugs/distributor or anything that would deal with making the cylinders fire, I speculate the main problem is heat. Having the engine liquid cooled with pump and radiator would not work, it would generate to much heat or it would be to difficult to produce the veins the coolant goes through, not to mention you would need it to be lubricated with oil pump etc.
I think they use air because it gets the parts moving and produces a rotational output, to make it fire on vapors would be a very difficult task.

@dag

Air cooled engines work fine because they have that massive flow of air around the cylinders, some day I will own one like this.




as well as liquid cooled this 15 cc is pretty neat, but the video kind of sucks

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag.(show it anyway)

Cool stuff. Thanks for that.

>> ^BoneRemake:

@dag
Air cooled engines work fine because they have that massive flow of air around the cylinders, some day I will own one like this.

This one's air cooled.

>> ^dag:

Cool stuff. Thanks for that.
>> ^BoneRemake:
@dag
Air cooled engines work fine because they have that massive flow of air around the cylinders, some day I will own one like this.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag.(show it anyway)

Wow - that's got an amazing sound for such a small engine. Sound like mini Lamborghini.>> ^Boise_Lib:

This one's air cooled.
>> ^dag:
Cool stuff. Thanks for that.
>> ^BoneRemake:
@dag
Air cooled engines work fine because they have that massive flow of air around the cylinders, some day I will own one like this.

@dag
@BoneRemake

This one too. We're havn' fun now.

I can't wait to get old...no stupid trainsets for me! I'm building a RC Ferrari with a V12!

Every single post on this page is fantastic. The original video was actually beautiful to watch and the working miniature V12 was a work of art.

>> ^Boise_Lib:

This one's air cooled.
That was awesome!

*promote... it always seems to be your videos... you must be awesome

Promoting this video back to the front page; last published Sunday, November 20th, 2011 11:36am PST - promote requested by MycroftHomlz.

I posted the smallest one I could find.

8:56 is *timeshift

And actually, all the timelapse counts too.

Videos are limited to being in a maximum of 7 channels - ignoring all requests by messenger.

4 more comments have been lost in the ether at this killed duplicate.