In prior \u00bfQuantos Pistones?<\/em> posts, I wrote about engines with which I had personal experience.\u00a0 When dealing with five-cylinder engines, though, I cannot do that.\u00a0 I don’t think I’ve ever even seen a five-cylinder motorcycle.\u00a0 They exist, though, and I found them by poking around a bit on the Internet.\u00a0 The best source was Wikipedia, which lists several.\u00a0 I used Wikipedia as the basis for further research, and I went beyond that to include others found online.<\/p>\n The Straight Fives<\/strong><\/p>\n These fall into two categories:\u00a0 Custom-built motorcycles created from stock bikes, and Honda’s 1960s small displacement Grand Prix racing motorcycles.<\/p>\n Honda built the RC148 (the first edition of their 125cc inline five-cylinder, four-stroke engine), and the RC 149 (which was a further development effort).\u00a0 The RC149 is reported to have reached speeds of over 130 mph.\u00a0 It had an 8-speed transmission and the pistons must have been about the size of thimbles.\u00a0 Well, not really.\u00a0 This engine was originally based on Honda’s 50cc twin (can you imagine such a thing).\u00a0 Take two and a half 50cc twins, throw in some Honda pixie dust, and voil\u00e0<\/em>, you get an inline 125cc 5-cylinder GP bike.\u00a0 It must have been exciting, being an engineer at Honda back in the 1960s.<\/span><\/p>\n Here’s a video I found of Honda techs evaluating an RC149 on a Honda test track.\u00a0 If you like listening to engines wail (their, um, ExhaustNotes), you’ll enjoy this one:<\/p>\n