It’s difficult to fathom the level of engineering ability that it would require to build yourself a fully-functioning twin-turbo Porsche Type 917 engine with little more than a 10-inch lathe, a milling machine and some other basic workshop tools.
One of the few people capable of such a task was the late-great Herb Jordan, a Canadian engineer and former IBM man known by the nickname “Mr. Inventor”. His Type 917 engine has a displacement of 54cc and it redlines at 24,000 RPM, it uses a gear-driven mechanical fuel pump, and even has tiny braided oil lines.
If you’d like to bid on the engine, and perhaps build a 1:4 scale replica Porsche 917 around it, you can click here to visit RM Sotheby’s.
Photo Credits: Courtesy of RM Sotheby’s
Articles that Ben has written have been covered on CNN, Popular Mechanics, Smithsonian Magazine, Road & Track Magazine, the official Pinterest blog, the official eBay Motors blog, BuzzFeed, Autoweek Magazine, Wired Magazine, Autoblog, Gear Patrol, Jalopnik, The Verge, and many more.
Silodrome was founded by Ben back in 2010, in the years since the site has grown to become a world leader in the alternative and vintage motoring sector, with well over a million monthly readers from around the world and many hundreds of thousands of followers on social media.
