Lego 12-cylinder engine!

[Phoxtane]

I built this for no real reason. It may get used in a project at some point.

That's about all it does, really. It's almost soothing to watch

[Gojira]

It's a V12!

That's four cylinders more powerful than a V8!

But really, that is seriously cool.

[viperfan7]

something you may like, pneumatic lego engines

[TouhouTorpedo]

something you may like, pneumatic lego engines

I thought the OP would be posting one of these. LPE's are pretty awesome. Some people make back to front versions that run off a vacuum cleaner as well.

[Phoxtane]

The LPE Power engines are modified; the cylinder intake and exhaust ports have been drilled out slightly. While it does increase performance dramatically, I wouldn't do that since I am a Lego "purist". You can get LPEs to work without doing that, but they have to be simple and small so as to allow the cylinders to work with minimal resistance. You won't be seeing any of those from me, since my two small pumps leak and the large hand pump doesn't really work well anymore.

[Luigibro606]

Ogawd, that's epic. You should so totally grow vegetables, harvest them into biofuels, and power an RC car with that in it.

[Excalibur]

I love it. Lego Technic was probably my favourite toy back in the day! Not too long ago I was at a friends house and he happened to have some boxes full of the stuff. I found some caterpillar tracks and within a few minutes I'd managed to build myself an elastic-band powered tank. Because I used a worm reduction gear it had enough torque to climb almost anything grippy and a range of maybe ten meters.

On the note of model engines, I used to play around with Nitro off-road R/C trucks. Eventually I ended up stripping the little engine down, smoothed over the porting for smoother fuel/air/exhaust flow and spent a good couple of hours carefully polishing the piston and cylinder head liner with Brasso metal polish. I swear throttle response and high-end RPM were vastly improved, but I didn't have a dyno on hand so I couldn't quantify the improvement. I even considered enlarging the ports for more aggressive intake timings but I subsequently read online that even a slight miscalculation in the modification could ruin the 150GBP engine, so I chickened out.

[Vostok]

I once built a lego single-cylinder engine with leftovers, I'll see if I can find a picture of it It ran at at best 60rpm.

EDIT: found some images:

The enormous mass of gearing runs to the flywheel which keeps the engine turning over, albeit slowly. Air is pumped in via a bicycle pump, and diverted by the lever valve (which is controlled by the crankshaft rotation) to the piston that drives the crankshaft.

Edited September 6, 2012 by Vostok

[Shpaget]

One of my first encounters with lego technic was at a friend's house. He had a giant truck with a pneumatic grappling arm that would move in any direction with the pull of the levers. That thing was so awesome. That's also the only time I've seen that truck.

[Phoxtane]

I bet it was the Airtech Claw Rig, from 1992:

[Shpaget]

I don't remember it haveing the "cockpit" for the claw part. And it is a lot bigger in my memory.

I could be wrong. It was 20 years ago.

[Excalibur]

I bet it was the Airtech Claw Rig, from 1992:

I still have the box for my Airtech Claw Rig. Was my favourite toy ever! I always wanted the sports car from about the same era, no pneumatics but it had a flat-10 engine I think and a fully working gearbox with 4 ratios. Also the red helicopter if anyone remembers it, that had a working cyclic pitch!

[ScratchXP]

Wow, that is cool!