RPE-V8: Developing a 500 HP, 10,500 RPM Hayabusa-Based Monster
Radical Sportscar’s RPE-V8 combines two individual Hayabusa engines at the crank to create a completely bespoke billet block.
The Suzuki Hayabusa is a motorcycle that even people that have never sat on a bike in their life know about. It has almost mythical levels of notoriousness for being the world’s fastest production motorcycle at its release back in the late 1990’s. This bike was capable at right around 194 mph and if you could imagine going that speed in a car, think about how mind-numbing that speed would be on a motorcycle. The sub-10 second quarter-mile times and the overall ability of this bike that would be nicknamed “‘Busa” cemented it in history as being one of the greatest products of automotive engineering ever.
The secret recipe to make this ‘Busa reach these incredible speeds was no surprise, it had a masterpiece of a inline-4 cylinder engine. The second generation Hayabusa engine had a total displacement of 1,340cc and made 194 HP at around 10,000 rpm. Since then, people have been tinkering with these engines, knowing their world-class capabilities. One such company is Radical Sportscars, who have developed a V8 engine derived from the legendary 1,350cc engine powering the Hayabusa. How exactly do you turn a 4-cylinder into a V8? Thanks to High Performance Academy on YouTube, we get to understand the details around this bespoke engine.
For those that don’t know, Radical has been making “sportscars” for several decades now. Their vehicles are built for the sole purpose of racing and going fast. These aren’t race cars for the road, they are just straight up race cars (with one expensive exception). The team over at Radical has been using the factory Hayabusa 4-banger for many years for their entry-level end models such as the SR1 and SR3. However, the SR8 features their bespoke RPE-V8, which is designed, manufactured, and developed completely in house at Radical.
This RPE-V8 is offered in a variety of different displacements, including 2.7L, 3.0L, and 3.2L according to owner preference and specification. The base 2.7L engine makes over 400 HP at 10,500 rpm and weighs less than half of a conventional car engine. This V8 shares a unique 72 degree layout compared to the industry-standard 90 degree angle simply due to packaging. The team wanted to make this engine have the smallest footprint possible. With this unique layout comes some crafty solutions to balance out the engine harmonics and other issues that arise.
If you want a full technical breakdown about how this engine works and some of the engineering solutions the team came up with, check out the full video for all the details.
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