A short while back we showed you a wild video where a guy took the little compressor from a refrigerator and made it into a little working engine. It as fun and crazy and required a lot of brains to pull off. Well that same guy is back and he has stepped up his game, moving from the little fridge compressor to a much larger and more robust automotive compressor the likes of which we’d find at the heart of the air conditioning system of a car. The mission? Same as before. Make it into an engine. This is freaking awesome.
There’s a basic simplicity to the idea of making these compressors into engines and that’s the fact that they’ve got a piston (in this case three of them) so if you introduce the fuel and combustion you’ll be in business. Sounds easy on paper but it requires some real brains to pull this off and make it actually run. Wait until you hear what this one sounds like when running!
There are some elements of this process that seem “easy” right? Making the head, making the fuel system, these are pretty straight ahead. Timing the thing, getting the firing order right, and making the ignition work (to us) is where the real brainiac stuff exists here. The whole project is freaking awesome but that’s the part that boggles us a little.
This is an awesome hobby and it’s so cool to watch yet another of the unexpected little engines come to life.