S3 E-Type

During my rebuild of my engine I needed 2 connecting rods... it happened that I was able to get hold of a V12 that had been truly worn out, with signs of overheating almost everywhere.

So, what to do with the remainder of an 'unusable' and 'unwanted' V12? Well I'd already noted that the 90mm bore was well suited to the average wine bottle (~80mm), so the only question was vertical or horizontal. I originally planned a 'static' vertical installation, using the flat gearbox face of the block. However, I realised it would be much more fun to mount the crank on a base (the base instead of the flywheel) and have the block rotate around the fixed base/crank.

It needed a lot of cleaning, eventually I decided to sandblast the block and nickel plate the crank. Other parts are zinc plated.

The base is a nice chunk of wood, heres the result:





Here's where we started: