Anyone thinking about swapping a container ship engine into your '86 Celica? Better think again — these things are huge. You'd probably need something with more room, like a Toronado, or if you're thinking of the 25,480L, 14 cylinder Wärtsilä RTA96-C, maybe something even bigger. Like a vacant lot.
The RTA96-C (or the newer RTAflex96-C) is a two-stroke, turbocharged diesel engine designed to run at very low speeds. When each cylinder is 1820 liters, you don't really need all that much speed. In fact, the engine runs at a fairly lethargic 22- 102 RPM, though even at those low speeds you're getting 5,608,310 lb-ft of torque and up to 108,920 BHP. Holy crap. That's the sort of power that God's dad's boss's Ultra-Camaro makes.
But the best thing about the RTA96-C engine is the sheer, improbable scale of it, and how it still, fundamentally, looks like the sort of engine's we're all familiar with. That means in photos of people next to the engine or engine parts, our brains want to read these people as victims of a shrink-ray. These pictures always make me do a double-take.
Also remarkable is that this engine gets mentioned in meme-ified screenshots from the Fast and Furious movies:
Now let's all sit back and bask in just how big this thing is. Look at this picture of a bent rod from one of these. Now just contemplate the forces involved with that.
Holy crap, right?
The Largest Piston Engine In The World Makes People Look Shrink-Ray'd