Cor, that's one impressive souvenir Costas!
I would seriously consider having it mounted on a stand or something.
My biggest bang was on a 400cc motorcycle (these things have a 15,000rpm red line, which is great fun to use).
I was on the A1(M) near Peterborough, accelerating hard to catch up with some other riders, when there the engine suddenly "spluttered".
This was followed by a loud crack from below - most disconcerting when it happens right between your legs
- and then the road behing me literally disappeared.
Honestly, my mirrors were just pure white. It went up like a Formula 1 engine, producing a smoke screen that James Bond would have been proud of.
A driver immediately pulled in behind me as I coasted onto the hard shoulder, He was most impressed, and he turned out to be from Lotus and was conducting secret vehicle testing by driving up and down the A1. Unfortunately he couldn't stop for long as part of his brief was to maintain as steady an average speed as possible. I think the car he was driving was a Proton, and it had a laptop linked into the ECU. But it was very hush-hush and he couldn't tell me any more.
I had to be brought home by the AA. On removing the head I found that one of the valve heads and a complete piston had totally disappeared!
It looks as though the valve stem had fatigued and the head had broken off. This had then hit the piston which simply exploded. Half of the bits went out of the exhaust pipe, and the rest went down into the gearbox. The largest chunk of aluminium I found was about the size of a walnut, and you could still see the piston ring grooves in it.
The con-rod was S shaped, and the combustion chamber looked peppered like the piston face above.
I wish I had pictures.
It all got rebuilt and worked fine until the motorbike got stolen and recovered. Now it's a "long term project", but the engine is one of the bits I'm most confident in.
