Parts

LEGO® pneumatic cylinders are originally used to mimic the hydraulic cylinders of construction vehicles. Therefore the air nozzles are needle sized, which creates the effect of a shock absorber. This of course greatly inhibits engine performance, and requires the nozzles to be bored to a bigger diameter, to allow the engine to work like a real engine.

The cylinder nozzle boring process is a delicate procedure which requires the cylinders to be dissasembled. The cylinders are bored to the maximum safe bore of 2mm (otherwise the walls of the inlets become too thin and are breaking easily). There is no need to dissasemble the cilynders yourself. You do so at your own risk.

LEGO® pneumatic switches are used to regulate and redirect the air flow to cylinders. Stock nozzles have an inner diameter slightly bigger than those of the cylinders, but we bore them anyway, to ensure maximum performance. Also, the default lego switches have notches, that make switching hard. The switch therefore has to be opened, so that the boring residue and the notches can be removed. The resealing process is delicate and requires alot of expirience. If you open the switches yourself you do so at your own risk.

The tubing is made out of a special plastic tube, that is used in pneumatic industry applications. That makes the engine very reliable, because the tubing does not pop off. The recomended pressure to run the engines is <6 bars. The engines have been tested on pressures up to 8 bars that exceed the safe / recomended pressure.   Run the engines on pressures above the recomended 6 bars at your own risk.

All of the above modifications are necessary to increase engine performance. The engine as you have it in front of you would run without these modifications, but it would run much slower and it would produce much less power.