Yup, it's true, I built a Hangar 9 sundowner 50, put in a 42 year old rusty engine I found, not sure what it is but it looks like about a 50 size. Powered it with KFC cooking oil after watching mythbusters. Put an APC 10x4 prop on it, got a reading of 97,000rpm on the tachometer, but I think it was rich because the chicken didn't quite smell cooked.
Then I took it out to the local school yard where they had an AMC pacer there to drag race me to verify speed.
After the 2nd pass it looked like the sundowner was about 10 times faster than the pacer so we timed it by counting 1 mississippi 2 mississippi etc to verify. We didn't have dopler but my dog whined when she heard the engine.
Yup, it's an amazing airplane and that used chicken grease lubricates really well, best part is, my dog cleaned my airplane for me when I was done!
