It was late January when we told you about Tyson Gavin’s wild 12 rotor engine that has the potential on paper to make multiple thousands of horsepower when fully sorted out. At that time, Tyson had gotten the engine fired on a test stand and that was about it but he was hunting for a dyno to run the thing on. His plan was to get the engine on a dyno and simply run the thing with a load on it to get some information and boy did he ever.

Using a single four barrel carb for these initial tests, the engine was only spun to 3,500 RPM, which is about a third of what the operating RPM would actually be when it has EFI and is fully sorted. It made 815 lb/ft of torque at 3,500 RPM with just the carb on it along with a nitrous plate to add more fuel (no nitrous was used) and as Gavin described it on the Facebook page for the engine, “a very crude method of adding more air.” He didn’t elaborate as to what that was but we can speculate it was some sort of manually controlled vacuum leak or something. But the point of the exercise was to see if the engine would actually run and act like it should with a load on it at part throttle. Outside of freewheeling on a stand, it had never done that. By all accounts, the tests were successful and Gavin is awaiting the EFI components to show up so he can plumb the engine and feed it the fuel that it wants…which we think will be lots at 9,000 RPM or so! Boost will also enter the equation at some point as well.

We think that this engine is one of the cooler things that anyone has done in the last 10 years or so. It is entirely another to design, build from scratch, and prove out your idea which is what Tyson Gavin has started doing in the video you see below.

The pull that is shown on the video was only to 2,000 RPM and it was (we believe) one of the first times that the engine was loaded down. Once it passed that test they started tuning more and figuring ways to feed the big beast more fuel. According to Gavin, they tried adding a pair of 1,300 CFM Dominators to go along with the carb on the engine but their carb box moved everything so far out of whack it wasn’t going to work. Hey, we’re super excited to know that the guy actually got the thing on a dyno and it seems like humongous power is fuel and large amounts of boost away. We can’t wait to keep up with the progress and you should be keeping up as well.

Gavin has started a Facebook page for the engine, you can visit it by CLICKING HERE – give that page a like and you’ll be up to date!

HERE’S THE VIDEO OF THE ENGINE RUNNING AT A MERE 2,000 RPM ON THE DYNO MAKING 600 LB/FT OF TORQUE! SCROLL DOWN TO SEE THE DYNO READINGS FROM THE 3,500 RPM PULL!