Many people know something about cars and they probably already know the basics. But they don’t even know the most basic thing: how a car engine works. Car engines are pretty complicated, and if you want to be able to pick out the best one for your needs, you’ll need to understand how it all works.
The car’s motor is made up of pistons, cylinders and a crankshaft, and these three things work in tandem to make sure that your vehicle is running efficiently. In this article, we’ll look at the parts of a car motor and how each of them works compiled by Actknw.
The Piston
Your car’s engine is what runs your vehicle. You start your car by turning on the key, which starts up a series of pistons that turn a crankshaft, which turns the wheels and makes your car move. While it’s easy enough to say that a piston moves up and down in a cylinder, it’s actually far from simple.
In order to make sure that your vehicle keeps running smoothly no matter how many miles you put on it, the pistons must be made carefully. In most engines, they are made of aluminum or cast iron with a steel rod running through them.
The more weight (or pressure) on the piston, the harder it will push down. The bigger the engine, the heavier or more powerful pistons needed to make sure that it can handle these types of demands.
In smaller engines, only one piston is used, but as engines grow in size and power, two or more pistons are present. In this case, special tools are used to hold the pistons in place so they do not move during operation.
How a Piston Works:
When a car’s engine is running smoothly, the pistons move up and down between their top and bottom positions without much resistance from other parts. Sometimes, though, you’ll hear a sound that resembles dripping water when the pistons are not moving.
This happens when air pressure is being pumped into or out of the cylinder so quickly that it pushes on the pistons before they have time to move down. The only way to put this pressure back on is by adding air intake or exhaust valves which allow for this instant fill-to-empty effect. Make sure you don’t overfill your cylinders; otherwise, your engine will be ruined in no time.
Ignition and Compression (Combustion)
To start your car and make it run, you need to turn on the key and press a trigger. How is this done if the engine doesn’t even turn over? The answer lies in how it gets started: through compression. The pressure that builds up as the pistons compress your mixture as they go up and down puts out enough energy to start the engine. This happens at different times in different engines, but all of them work similarly.
When you first turn on your car’s engine, the piston is at its top position. This is called the compression stroke . The pressure exerted by the pistons then forces the mixture into cylinders, where it “dies” through combustion. This causes air to enter the cylinder and push down on top of that pressure. Eventually, it causes enough energy to turn over the crankshaft and make your car move.
Ignition (Starting)
Once you start your engine to get it started, what happens next may surprise you: You don’t actually start running until you let off on your gas pedal. That’s because cars don’t use gasoline but compressed air (air fuel). In many cars, the air comes from a tank of air under your hood.
But in most cars, there’s another method for starting your engine: a small cylinder under the hood called a dynamo. This dynamo uses a rotating magnetic field to produce electricity, which makes it spin and glow red. This not an electric battery lights up your car’s ignition system and starts running your engine.
As with all dynamos, the dynamo starts spinning only when there is voltage present from a power source . In most modern vehicles, this is provided by a 12-volt battery.
The Crankshaft
Once your engine is running, it’s up to the crankshaft to make everything run smoothly. Your vehicle will move forward depending on how fast the crankshaft turns. The force of pistons moving up and down creates different types of strokes that turn the pistons in one direction .
On top, there are three strokes: intake, compression and exhaust . On bottom, there are two more: power and scavenging . As the pistons move up and down, they take in air fuel mixture from either side of the engine. Compression occurs when this mixture is forced into the cylinders under high pressure.
Exhaust stroke
This pressure then dies through combustion, which opens up holes that allow the remaining force to continue moving upward. This is the exhaust stroke. The power stroke occurs when air is sucked into the cylinders from under the pistons and mixed with fuel before being compressed again for another combustion event.
Scavenging occurs when air is pushed out of the cylinders from behind, which uses a type of compression stroke to move it out of the cylinder chamber, just as with an exhaust cycle . When humans first figured out how a car motor works, they made sure that every part was carefully designed so that it could withstand all kinds of abuse.