And I thought the Bugeye was small...

[DanLewis]

Maybe you guys have already seen this, but it blew me away! Check out these you tube videos showing the construction and actual running of the world's smallest V-12 engine, an interview with the man who designed and built it, and then a third video I found of an even smaller V-8 built by someone else.

World's smallest V-12:

Interview with designer:

An even smaller V-8: click here. (Wasn't allowed to post more than two "videos", so I had to resort to a "link")

Dan

 

[Boink]

Now, if only they ran on a petroleum fuel (not compressed air). Still, these are SO impressive. Haven't seen them in awhile.

 

[DanLewis]

They *DO*. I'm not sure what kind of petroleum-based fuel the V-12 uses, but the V-8 was running on the same kind of fuel that is used for camping stoves with a little oil mixed in for lubrication.

Dan

 

[Boink]

Oh! Didn't realize that!!! The first few I saw a year ago ran on compressed air. Wow. Even MORE amazing.

 

[aeronca65t]

I have an entire page of plans for various air-powered "steam" engines ~HERE~

The designs are intentionally simple so they can be built quickly without a lot of exotic tools or background.

Here's some built by some random people who saw the page and built their own versions:

 

[Gerard]

There's a miniature engine builder club that showed up at the Intel car show a couple years ago. They had several running engines on display. Some were replicas, some not. It was an enthusiast club, but I think you could even buy parts from some of the members.

 

[nomad]

Forty year's ago I did some mold building for a company that was building RC airplane kits. The owner had some radial 4 cycle RC engines that would fit in the palm of your hand. He was going the other way with his kits and the ones that I was working on were going to be powered by modified chain saw engines. Never forget those little radial's though....they were impressive.

Kurt