6 is good (very good indeed) - what might be better ?

Hi guys
Last weekend I heard rumours that a certain project is moving ahead, I^ve been able to catch a bad picture, yet is says a lot:

Enjoy

Holger
 

image is too small to have a good look for photoshop but it's too late for April fools.  Crank, cams, carbs would all be very difficult. I hope it's real though and more than just a display piece (needs better curtain material for the stand)

It is real, I have seen the crank, bottom end and head in real life. His aim is to reach 200 HP with a normally aspirated engine.  That will make his sidecar rig fly on the Autobahn! 

Well I hope that they have been videoing the development and build to share like the great Allen Millyard 

Allen's YouTube channel

I remember seeing these pics somewhere a while back. So that'll be a 1715cc straight 8 if he's using standard pistons?

Craftmanship to create these kind of modification certainly very impressive - anyone who has seen Allen Millyard's videos would see how much detailed machining/welding work is involved.  However, whilst inline 8 cylinder engines are theoretically capable of perfect primary and secondary balance if firing order is optimised, these are not used in practice due to inherent torsional vibration issues that cause fatigue cracking and crank failure.  It should be possible to add harmonic viration dampers (as most inline sixes do as well) but the calculations required to specify these are quite complex and would probably require expensive software. Adding these to the end of the crank would make the engine even wider.

Just a thought but still appreciate the conversion work involved.