The car world has seen some unusual engine designs, from rotaries in Mazdas to "W" arrangements in Volkswagen products. But the 1939 Plymouth pick-up truck in the latest episode of Jay Leno's Garage is one of the strangest.
The truck was built by Gary Corns, his sons and some friends. Corns explains in the video that he and his crew built the whole thing in just a year and a half, and afterward they took it out to the Bonneville salt flats to run it through its paces. The truck features a seven-cylinder Jacobs radial engine from a junked Cessna seaplane Corns purchased. This clearly wasn't a straightforward swap, so to make this bizarre powertrain work, Corns and company connected the propeller shaft to a boat v-drive with a massive supercharger belt. Power then goes from the v-drive into an automatic transmission and back to the rear wheels. It seems to work well, but Corns mentions that they do have difficulty keeping it cool, and can only run it for about 15 minutes at a time.
The crew didn't stop with airplane power, though. The entire truck is airplane-themed. The body is bare-metal and covered in aircraft-style rivets. Even the interior received the seats from the donor Cessna and has two fully functional steering wheels like in a real plane. This truck is a very impressive machine, and to fully appreciate the work, check out the video above.
Related Video:
The truck was built by Gary Corns, his sons and some friends. Corns explains in the video that he and his crew built the whole thing in just a year and a half, and afterward they took it out to the Bonneville salt flats to run it through its paces. The truck features a seven-cylinder Jacobs radial engine from a junked Cessna seaplane Corns purchased. This clearly wasn't a straightforward swap, so to make this bizarre powertrain work, Corns and company connected the propeller shaft to a boat v-drive with a massive supercharger belt. Power then goes from the v-drive into an automatic transmission and back to the rear wheels. It seems to work well, but Corns mentions that they do have difficulty keeping it cool, and can only run it for about 15 minutes at a time.
The crew didn't stop with airplane power, though. The entire truck is airplane-themed. The body is bare-metal and covered in aircraft-style rivets. Even the interior received the seats from the donor Cessna and has two fully functional steering wheels like in a real plane. This truck is a very impressive machine, and to fully appreciate the work, check out the video above.
Related Video:
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