Engines have pistons that move up and down inside metal tubes called cylinders. Imagine riding a bicycle: Your legs move up and down to turn the pedals. Pistons are connected via rods they're like your shins to a crankshaft, and they move up and down to spin the engine's crankshaft, the same way your legs spin the bike's—which in turn powers the bike's drive wheel or car's drive wheels.
Depending on the vehicle, there are typically between two and 12 cylinders in its engine, with a piston moving up and down in each. What powers those pistons up and down are thousands of tiny controlled explosions occurring each minute, created by mixing fuel with oxygen and igniting the mixture. Each time the fuel ignites is called the combustion, or power, stroke. The heat and expanding gases from this miniexplosion push the piston down in the cylinder.
Almost all of today's internal-combustion engines to keep it simple, we'll focus on gasoline powerplants here are of the four-stroke variety. Beyond the combustion stroke, which pushes the piston down from the top of the cylinder, there are three other strokes: intake, compression, and exhaust.
Engines need air namely oxygen to burn fuel. During the intake stroke, valves open to allow the piston to act like a syringe as it moves downward, drawing in ambient air through the engine's intake system. When the piston reaches the bottom of its stroke, the intake valves close, effectively sealing the cylinder for the compression stroke, which is in the opposite direction as the intake stroke. The upward movement of the piston compresses the intake charge. Fret not, we explain it all.
What do all those numbers mean? Most cars and SUV engines have four, six, or eight cylinders. Generally, an engine with more cylinders produces more power, while an engine with fewer cylinders gets better fuel economy. Cylinders will either be arranged in a straight line an inline engine, i. Engines are measured by displacement, usually expressed in liters L or cubic centimeters cc. Displacement is the total volume of all the cylinders in an engine.
An engine with four cylinders of cc each totals cc, and will be rounder off and referred to as a 2. Larger engines tend to produce more power — specifically more torque see below — but use more fuel.
Up until the early s, engines were measured in cubic inches. One liter equals about 61cc, so a cubic inch engine is about 5. A turbocharger is a device that is used to boost the power of an engine. The cylinder consists of a piston and two valves at the top; an inlet and exhaust valves.
The piston moves up and down, and its reciprocating motion generates power that moves your vehicle. Generally, the more cylinders your engine has, the more power is produced.
Most cars have a 4, 6, or 8 cylinder engine. The numbers indicate the number of cylinders, and they will either be laid out in a straight line, V -shaped or in a flat arrangement.
To understand how cylinders work, you need to understand how an engine works. The engine is made of a set of cylinders and a piston. The engine has to go through a chain of four steps a four-stroke to power your car; Intake, Compression, Power, and Exhaust. During the Intake stroke, a piston moves inside the cylinder and the inlet valve opens so the fuel is mixed with air.
The Compression stroke allows the piston to compress the fuel-air mixture, making it combustible. The 4 cylinder engine operates as a normal engine, but the turbo provides added power when you need it.
As noted above, the combustion created by air, gasoline and a spark is what pushes a piston. A turbo works by adding more air into the chamber, which causes each combustion to be more powerful. This makes the piston move with more force, which is transferred to the driveshaft, moving the vehicle. A turbo does not operate constantly, which helps to keep fuel consumption down. It will generally engage only when the engine is pushed for more speed or power.
The key to deciding between a 4, 6 or 8 cylinder engine depends upon the vehicle you are considering, your driving habits and what kind of performance or efficiency you want from your vehicle. Keeping this information in mind will hopefully help to make the final decision much easier! Related Posts. Previous Post Next Post.
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