How a car motor works
How a car motor worksHave you ever gotten smoked in a stoplight confrontation by a lesser car that you should have creamed? Does your buddy with his almost stock car pull away from you in a roll on a consistent basis? Tired of losing in front of the crowds at the local strip? Does the local "Guru" who works at your friendly neighborhood speed shop intimidate you with quasi-scientific B.S. when you try to buy something. Are you running out of hard-earned money? How do you know if the mail order house phone salesman is giving you the straight scoop on that turbo kit? If this sounds like you, then this is something you should be reading!
In the weeks to follow we will explain all of the basics, starting at first base, of how to extract more power from the chunk of metal connected to the wheels. Your new knowledge can be put to good use when selecting hop up parts for your ride, helping you make good solid choices of where best to spend your hard to come by money. Coming soon, we will explain how all the popular hop up parts work, how to understand there specifications and how to pick the right parts to best fit your needs.
To understand how the latest in speed parts work, you first need to obtain a basic understanding of how an engine works! Next we will dig into the guts of an engine to see what makes it tick. Many of you will find this stupefyingly simple but some of you readers will be glad we took the time to really explain it to you!
Cars, for the most part with the exception being the rotary Mazda, are powered by what is called a 4 Stroke engine. A 4 Stroke is called that because there are basically 4 strokes to the power cycle, the intake stroke, the compression stroke, the power stroke and the exhaust stroke. We will explain those in a minute. The 4 stroke cycle is how an explosion of gasoline and air can be smoothly transferred into useable power to hurl you down the track or take you to work.
An engine has some major functional parts, the block, the crank, the pistons and the rods. These parts work in close harmony in an exacting manner to harness the chemical energy in gasoline, converting many small explosions of air and fuel into a rotary motion to spin your wheels and hurl you down the track. These assemblies when combined are called the engines bottom end or short block.
Lets start with the main parts first, the engines bottom end.
The Block
The block is the main part of the engine that contains the reciprocating components that harnesses the explosive power of...
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