Nerd’s Eye View: The Cars of PRI

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Radical cars are pretty amazing toys.  They offer a variety of engines for them as well.  This SR3 is powered by a tuned up Hayabusa engine.  But ‘Busa swaps are only the tip of the iceberg.
If you want to go REALLY crazy, you order one of these bad boys: the RPE 2.7L V8!  No, your eyes do not deceive you, that is a V8 made from two Hayabusa engines welded together.  Ok, it’s actually a bit more complicated than that.  Radical creates their own forged flat plane crank and drops it into a bespoke engine block with a built-in dry sump oil system.  The rods, pistons, heads, and parts of the intake are all taken from the Hayabusa engine.  Talking to one of the engineers, this was a pretty big project.  Care had to be taken to transfer timing across the length of the block and keep all of the valves synced properly.  Remember in a normal V8, the heads are symmetrical, but since Radical was using OEM Hayabusa heads, installing them so the intake and exhaust flowed in the right direction required the timing chains to be on opposite side of the block.  Note how the timing gear bulge is on the front of the engine on the right bank, while the left bank has its timing gears near the transmission.  It’s a pretty impressive engine that must sound amazing.  Since I’m already crowdfunding an Atom, let’s get the budget to drop in an RPE V8!
The Plowboy Diesel was one insane farm truck.  Not only did it have just the right amount of patina…
But under the hood were a pair of heavily boosted Cummins 12V engines!  Somehow the two behemoth motors were sandwiched into the old 1970 Dodge Sweptline.  A custom made gearbox was built and installed to tie the engines together before they go in to the single Allison transmission.  Radiators are kept in the bed as between the two engines, the turbos, and the giant intercooler, there is no room for radiators up front.
Erik already gave you a preview of the most badass Prius ever built, so here is a bit more of it.  Obviously converted to RWD, this thing eats rubber with the help of a Dodge hellcat engine.  The firewall is heavily modified to make it all fit.  Which begs the question: can a second Hellcat engine fit under the hatch now that all the batteries are gone?

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