Wretched Excess, Ring-Ding Dept.
WRETCHED EXCESS, RING-DING DEPT.
Imagination can be a strange, wild creature that sometimes bolts for the far country, leaving the rational mind standing. There we find this dreamlike Kawasaki, whose 48-cylinder, 4-liter engine consists of six special Straight-Eights, geared together at the rear to spin a BMW transmission and shaft drive. Six Mikuni VM carbs serve a like number of log-style intake manifolds, and exhaust is by dual 24-into-3-into-1 systems!
Remember the old OSSA/Yankee Twin, and the four-cylinder that grew from it? With a press and enough parts, what’s to stop a person from turning out crankshaft like sausage-“made by the mile, cut off by the foot?” Builder Simon Whitlock bolted S2 250cc two-stroke Triple crankcases together end-to-end to enclose just such cranks. It runs! Craziness? A nightmare of torsional vibration? Veteran aircraft engine builders walked this same path-remember Pratt & Whitney’s 28-cylinder R-4360, or Wright’s 42-cylinder Tornado with its seven driveshafts? Think of this Kawasaki as mental health. Better to let the imagination flash and sparkle occasionally than to force it into Thoreau’s “life of quiet desperation.”
Bravo, Mr. Whitlock!
-Kevin Cameron
