We’ve been excitedly following the saga of Russel Sutton’s 9 Cylinder Radial Engine on The Kneeslider motorcycle blog run by Paul Crowe. The project started in 2008 with Russel’s desire to build a radial engine for his air boat. He decided to use 9 removable cylinders from Kawasaki air cooled dirt bikes with Holden Commodore pistons with his custom machined crank case, crank and rods. The last time we checked in with Russel, he had posted a video of the engine starting up. He tried to run it a while with a propeller but was cut short when one of the cylinder liners failed. Luckily the damage wasn’t too bad and Russel set about fixing it.

Now Sutton has got the engine back together with different cylinder sleeves and a much more detailed and crazy test rig for the radial engine. This go around he installed an MSD ignition that would give him a rev limiter and I think he’s pumping external hot water through the engine to heat it up. The crank is now connected to a Toyota Hilux driveshaft which turns a brake rotor from a Ford Falcon. Russel clamps down the brake to provide load for the engine which allows a solid break-in of the piston rings. The radial engine makes so much torque that the brake rotor has to be sprayed with a constant stream of water for cooling. Ultimately the rig looks pretty crazy but it works and more importantly Russel had gotten the engine running reliably. Check it out: