It goes without saying that there isn’t an application for strapping a pair of Suzuki GSX-R engines together, fabricating a custom eight-into-one exhaust, and reducing it down to about half an inch so those engines can play a trombone duet. YouTuber Maisteer doesn’t craft his creations for the scientific process, he just bodge welds a bunch of metal together for the sole reason that it’s fun and weird. This is art for art’s sake. This mechanical maniac with a Werner Herzog accent is doing it for the love of the game, and I could not be more here for it.
If you’ve been following along for a while, we’ve discussed Maisteer before, when he figured out how to make any engine sound like an F1 car. Sort of. In this 15,000 RPM flame-shooting tryout for trombone first chair, he even brings out a few pieces from his previous experiments to hack apart and turn into this new test rig. The fact that this whole build was done without using any new components, except the CNC and 3D-printed components supplied by sponsors, is in itself a fascination.
From the very first second of this video, I’m hooked, and I hope you are, too. The results really speak for themselves. Nothing else on the planet sounds like this.
Flames!
In the video Maisteer walks us through the engineering process, despite saying many times that he is not an engineer. Using mainly scraps of tubing and a bunch of other bits laying around the shop, he spends the first few minutes simply rigging everything to work together. Why did this need to be two motorcycle engines? Because why the heck not? I suppose. In any case, to get the thing to work properly, the engines have to be lashed together with a series of convoluted chains, sprockets, shafts, and clutches.
It’s never really made clear why the engines have to drive anything at all, and can’t just be free-revved with matched electronics. Perhaps the next Maisteer video will see this whole shooting match installed into a car and provide an incredibly strange split eight-cylinder’s worth of 15,000 RPM motivation.
Ultimately, who cares? Even if the whole point was just to spit flames and make a trombone chooch for half a second, the experiment was a success, and we were entertained for 26 minutes and 39 seconds. I’m calling that a resounding success.
