Shamelessly stolen from RetroRides:
The Commer TS3. A 3 cylinder diesel. With six pistons. Two strokes. And a supercharger.
And it powered this
Shamelessly stolen from RetroRides:
The Commer TS3. A 3 cylinder diesel. With six pistons. Two strokes. And a supercharger.
And it powered this
The Beck 1909 engine. Beck sounds a rather German name, but in fact Frederic Beck lived in Neuilly-sur-Seine in France. By 1910 he seems to have rethought his engine, and obtained US patent 977,260 for a "rotary explosion motor" using bell cranks and a face cam to drive the pistons.
And the Napier Deltic opposed piston valveless, supercharged uniflow scavenged two stroke diesel for marine and locomotive use.,
Knight sleeve valve engine.
Arial Square4 bike engine. 4 cylinders, 2 crankshafts
Chrysler Gas Turbine
Rolls Royce K60.
6.6 litre, 6 cylinder, opposed pistons, 2 stroke, supercharged, multifuel (runs on anything from paint stripper to engine oil), 240bhp@3750, 375lb.ft@2500rpm, makes the same noise as the birth of the universe
awesome
Radial engines are fairly conventional, unless they're in a car. When you turn them on their side they become even more unconventional.
Honda’s NR500
If I go with not just "unconventional" but also "outright insanity", do I win the thread?
Well, it's worth a try. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you... drum roll... The Megola
A mad German tween-war thing using a five-cylinder sidevalve rotary engine mounted within the front wheel of an otherwise wholly unconventional motorcycle. The engine rotated in opposition to the wheel at six times wheel speed, so at 3600rpm the wheel turned at roughly 60mph. Carburation was obviously an utter nightmare... and so was steering. Ever heard of gyroscopic precession? It's what keeps two-wheeled vehicles from falling over (and also steers spaceships and stops tall buildings bending). essentially, it means a spinny thing wants to keep going in a straight line. Try holding a bicycle wheel by the spindle. Give it a spin. Now try to turn it side to side. Feeling the lactic burn in your forearms yet? Tough, isn't it? And that weighs essentially nada. The faster it spins, the more it doesn't want to let you steer
Now try that with cast-iron engine architecture in the centre of the wheel, plus carburettor, saddle fuel tank and associated gubbins. Now wonder why your Megola will... not... turn. For anything
Still think ze Germans have no sense of humour? 
How about a 2.3 V12 Kawasaki!
Where on Earth did you find all this stuff?
How about the first rotary engine? Spin the engine, not the crank...
In reply to Adrian_Thompson :
Is that Kawasaki V12 their inline 6 doubled with a shared crank shaft? That thing must sound glorious.
Jay Leno needs an example of that Megola. He loves bikes. He loves weird. That thing definitely fits the criteria. Especially he actually has one of the engines in your list (has one of very few Chrysler Turbine cars in private hands).
I think probably the most modern thing that deserves to be on this list is nissan's variable compression engine. 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=djJTQh_RMVQ
Found a short video of the V12 Kaw.
Apparently filmed with a potato.
Which lead me to this one. The 48 cylinder Kaw.
Is the V12 Kaw a bespoke unit made from Kaw parts by some guy?
noddaz said:How about the first rotary engine? Spin the engine, not the crank...
And this is why WWI fighter pilots of things like Sopwith Camels and the like with rotary engines found it faster to do a 270˚ right turn rather than a 90˚ left. Such was the gyroscopic effect of the engine spinning that both left and right turns required full left rudder. The Germans used this to their advantage and would always turn left in a dog fight with their mainly in line 6 Mercedes engines in the comparable aircraft.
Tom_Spangler said:Where on Earth did you find all this stuff?
Stolen from Retro Rides 
RossD said:Is the V12 Kaw a bespoke unit made from Kaw parts by some guy?
Yes, a guy named Allen Millyard built it. He first became known for building modified Kawasaki triple two stroke bikes - he built them with four and five cylinders. He also did some V-twin Honda minibikes, I believe. He has a Youtube channel with videos of some of his creations. https://www.youtube.com/user/millyardviper/videos?disable_polymer=1
Back in the early 1960s Mickey Thompson was building all kinds of dragsters and land speed cars with Pontiac engines. One of them had a two cylinder engine...Pontiac at that time had a slant 4, which was basically half of a 389ci V8; he cut one of those in half and added a supercharger and Hilborn fuel injection.
Torpedo engines are the most interesting and unusual engines I've been around.
Fairbanks-Morse vertically opposed-piston diesel engines, powering everything from tugboats to locomotives.
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