What is humanity's greatest achievement? Harnessing electricity? Landing on the Moon? Democracy? It's an impossible question to answer, made all the more difficult by this late entry. YouTuber Lets Learn Something just made the V8-powered drill of our dreams.
The engine is a 28-cc nitro-burning V8 from Toyan, which makes about 4.3 horsepower at 11,200 rpm. Redline is a crazy 12,500 rpm. These are typically used to power RC cars, but apparently it can be used to replace the battery in a cordless drill.
It takes a ton of work, though. The YouTuber has to make a remote oil sump and fuel tank. They also fabricate a box with an electric starter where the battery normally goes, and a mechanical linkage connecting the trigger and the engine's throttle. Plus, they have to fabricate a piece to connect the drill chuck to the engine crankshaft. It's not the work of a moment.
Myself and other members of the Motor1 staff are obsessed with tiny engines like this, and I've always wondered if they could be used with power tools. My first thought was using a tiny V8 to charge a battery, making a series hybrid tool. Though the V8-only solution is perhaps more effective. Certainly a little bit lighter, though one imagines this is a hefty drill.
In This Is Spinal Tap, Michael McKean's David St. Hubbins once says "[i]t's such a fine line between stupid and clever." This drill lives right on that line. There is some very clever engineering here, all in service of something silly. It's high- and low-brow colliding in one spectacular handheld device.
