THE MOST POWERFUL DIESEL ENGINE

A gearhead friend of ours sent along a link to a
YouTube video (also embedded below) promising the
world’s most powerful engine. Now, we’ll be the first to
warn you that it’s just an advertisement, and for
something that you’re probably not going to rush out
and buy: the Wärtsilä 14RT marine engine.
A tiny bit of math: 96 cm cylinder diameter times 250
cm piston stroke = 1,809,557 CC. And it generates
around 107,000 HP. That’s a fair bit, but it runs at a
techno-music pace: 120 BPM RPM. With twelve
cylinders, we’d love to hear this thing run. Two-strokes
make such a wonderful racket! Wonder if they’ve tried
to red-line it? It’s a good thing we don’t work at
Wärtsilä.
The thing that astounded us most, however, was the
timelapse of watching the engine being assembled in
the video — it looks just like an engine! (That sounds
dumber on paper than it did in our head.) No, really. As
you watch the tiny ants crawling around on the
scaffolding surrounding the largest cam-shaft you’ve
ever seen in your life, you could be mistaken for
thinking it’s a “normal” motor. Except it’s four storeys
tall. Form follows function, right?
We’re pretty sure that this isn’t a hack. But it’s one of
the cooler two-minute videos you’ll see today, so sit
back and enjoy.