The Briggs & Stratton lawnmower uses a fully homemade V8 engine

The V8 engine was built from scratch from scrap aluminum, including all castings and milling of all parts.

Search YouTube for V8 lawnmowers and you’ll find no shortage of homemade curiosities. Only those created by Florida Man could take days to see. But how about a fully homemade V8 lawnmower, one where the engine was completely built by a person in their garage? Needless to say, it caught our attention.

We like weird things like homemade vehicles or weird, weird and downright weird creations. The old Ford Maverick with a lawnmower carburetor is what we’re still talking about. But we also can’t get enough of the creations on Lyckebo Mekaniska’s YouTube channel, starting with how he makes his own V8 engine out of scrap aluminum.

He then mills and assembles the parts, including the cylinder head, crankshaft and camshafts. The only thing not done in his shop is the Ford dealer he bought on eBay. He designed the engine himself and the end result is a work of art. Everything from the drawings to the fabrication and final assembly looks incredibly professional. We know very little about the craftsman behind this engineering feat. The YouTube bio description just says, “I like engines of all kinds that make noise.”

Did we mention the guy is thorough? Some people would be satisfied with starting their home build engine. But this guy is working to make it better. Install an oil pressure relief valve to fix an oil leak at high RPM. The engine runs too lean, and requires throttle all the time, so it makes an adjustable main jet.

The real reason we’re all here is to see if this actually works. Looking around the shop, we see a yellow Partner P115 garden tractor. We can’t help but think that he specifically planned the engine for this particular mower. His work is too precise to be an afterthought. But the tractor thing is thrown in for a “hold my beer” kind of moment, which adds to the entertainment value.

The end results speak for themselves. The air-cooled V8 sounds like a single-engine airplane and is more than up to the challenge of motivating the vehicle. We have no idea how fast this thing would be. But for its maker, it’s clear that the fun comes from building a working engine from scratch.