Yahoo Autos Jamming a Seaplane's Engine into a 1930s Pickup
What happens when you own a $500 Plymouth pickup truck from 1939, get the opportunity to buy a Cessna 195 floatplane with not one, but two Jacobs R-755 radial engines from the early forties, and have access to a massive wrecking yard? You build a truck with a terrible gas milage and end up on the cover of Hot Rod Magazine.
Gary Corns and his two sons from Colorado cut their Plymouth wide open. Then, they cleaned up all seven cylinders of their Jacobs engine to get around 300 horsepower out of its 757 cubic inches of twin-spark fury, linked it to a V-drive from a speedboat and a Turbo 400, and put as much this unusual drivetrain into the truck as they could. To keep an air-cooled radial engine from overheating for at least 15 minutes, they had to fit the car with the biggest radiator they could find, and fill it up with 8.5 gallons of separately cooled oil.
The interior and exterior design is also true to the forties aero theme, with riveted and polished metal panels hiding such extras as a stunt smoke fluid container. A Clark aircraft tug completes the package, which is much needed since the truck can't cover much distance on its own without blowing up in blue smoke.
The craziest radial-engined car I ever saw was a Glas Goggomobil, but this truck is an equally impressive build.
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