A mad Aussie named Ben Robertson is building a CBR1000-based drag bike by – as so many hot-rodders have done before – swapping in a car engine. And not just any engine, but a 2.4-litre four-banger from a Honda Odyssey minivan.
Why not a big American V8? Well, for one, Robertson is a Honda fan, and for another, he likes turbocharged engines. And, yes, that means the 2.4-litre car engine will be turbocharged. And not just some mild, sensible tune. Nope, Robertson is promising to turn up the boost on the Honda K24 engine so it pumps out some 1,000 horsepower. No, that isn’t a typo. One thousand horsepower for just two wheels.
Such insanity is not unknown to Robertson’s Snail TV YouTube channel, which seems to focus on building engines with enormous power and then shoehorning them into vehicles totally unsuited for their monstrous input.
Besides the standard fare of nitrous-oxide-injected V8s and ginourmous turbos, Robertson somehow found a way to stuff a 1300-cc 200-hp Suzuki Hayabusa four-cylinder into a go-kart. Even he suggests that may be too much, yet he now seems to have plans to turbocharge it, which will, I think we can all agree, be in the running for the most frightening internal-combustion-powered vehicle ever constructed.
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His new drag bike will challenge even that insanity. For those not familiar with motorcycles, Honda’s CBR1000F Hurricane was pretty much state-of-the-art when it pumped out 135 horses from 998 cc. The Odyssey K24 four, meanwhile, boasts between 197 and 203 horsepower, depending on its year of manufacture. Now, thanks to the addition of an intercooled Garrett GT47 turbocharged, it will have five times that much.
And the thing looks as bonkers as its specs suggest. The blower is so big that there’s no room inside the frame to house it securely, so Robertson has just hung it off, unprotected, of the right side of the fairing. The huge intercooler — about the volume of a motorcycle gas tank — exits stage left. If this thing goes half as bonkers as it looks, it’ll be almost un-rideable. Judging from Robertson’s previous projects, that’s just what he wants.
Keyword: Mad Australian crafts 1,000-hp drag bike with minivan engine