Luckys Merlin.

In 1985 Lucky Keizer (above) from Australia built this bike, using the front two cylinders of a Rolls-Royce Merlin aircraft engine. To this 5000 cc monster he added nitrous-oxide injection -and later a blower.

The creation of the engine and its first use in a drag bike took some 2000 hours hard work. Found lying around an Australian outback farm, the original 1938 Rolls Royce Merlin V12 model 25 engine was beginning to deteriorate. Lucky made a clever purchase, and carefully dismantled the engine to figure out how best to use it. The quality of it's engineering impressed him greatly, and he strove to maintain this in its new guise. Two cylinders seemed enough capacity for mortal man, so Lucky sliced off a pair and started work.

As two pistons are inherently unbalanced in comparison to the original twelve, a great deal of thought went into the 300 hours that Lucky spent designing and fabricating a suitably balanced crankshaft. Until it is seen running, most observers expect the engine to jump around and shake itself to death. The results of his work are impressive, and the observers become open mouthed when they find how smoothly it runs. It does have its vibration periods, but they are not troublesome.

Lucky later went onto to build a Rolls Royce Merlin engined Streamliner that was built around a Neptune bomber drop tank.