It's bad to be speechless when you're supposed to be writing about a custom motorbike build, isn't it?
Luckily, that period of being utterly stunned by what I was seeing seems to have passed quickly. If you're the type of person who enjoys seeing someone insanely talented cobble together an amazing new creation out of scraps, then you'll definitely want to make a little time to watch this build video. In it, a guy who goes by the name Le Dan on YouTube decided to build himself a teeny, tiny little Yamaha scooter with a crossplane inline four-cylinder engine.
No, no, don't misunderstand me. He did NOT transplant an R1 engine into a scooter. I mean, that engine would probably weigh as much as the chassis of this lil guy, and the strengthening modifications to make it not twist into a pretzel immediately wouldn't make that combo very feasible.
Instead, he took inspiration from a crossplane R1 engine and simply ... built his own! Out of discarded parts from four (possibly more, honestly) tiny little single-cylinder scooter engines, mostly. Some additional parts appear to be machined from billet aluminum as well, but there's a whole lot of creative reuse of existing parts involved in this build.
It's not clear how many hours of work we're seeing cleverly timelapsed and edited into a video that's just over half an hour long, but it's obviously a lot. The engines are simple, humble singles, with tiny little bores and two valves apiece. But when they're reconfigured this way, the end result is both unbelievable to watch come together, and extremely pleasing to listen to as he and his friends take it for a test ride when it's complete.
I think most things are better through headphones, just generally speaking. But you'll especially want your favorite set on (or in) your ears here, because this is absolutely the best-sounding scooter you're ever going to hear, hands down.
