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This oddity has been around for a quarter of a century now, so you may have seen it before. But now you can actually buy it. This homebuilt 48-cylinder motorcycle goes up for sale at the Bonhams Spring Stafford Sale in England next month.
Built over the course of a few years in a shed in Britain by Simon Whitelock, the Tinker Toy (as it is named) holds the Guinness World Record for the motor vehicle with the most cylinders. Whitelock took 16 Kawasaki two-stroke, three-cylinder engines and cobbled them together into six banks of eight, inline cylinders. Those banks of cylinders are held together by thick, custom-made aluminum plates, bolted into an extended frame, and finished with a front end from a Honda Gold Wing and a rear shaft drive and gearbox from a BMW K1000.
Bonhams estimates the winning bid will be between £40,000 and £60,000 ($51,600 to $77,400). You can see more of the Tinker Toy at the Bonhams listing but for a real look at this unique piece of homebrew engineering, you should check out the series of six videos about the build that Whitelock posted on YouTube.
As you can see in the third episode of the build, a separate small engine was attached to the 48-cylinder monster just to turn it over, because no normal starter would do the job. In fact, the first effort, using a 50 cc engine, didn't have enough power.
That's just one of countless engineering problems Whitelock had to solve to build this contraption. You probably wouldn't want to ride it, because sitting atop 48 air-cooled cylinders lined up in rows of eight sounds like a great way to become a human barbeque. But if you want to save yourself a few years of effort in a shed and have a truly unique, world-record conversation piece, get ready to place your bid.
