Car engine is an integral part of a car. Be it a petrol or diesel driven, or it is an electrically powered or hybrid car, all cars need an engine to move. In fact, an engine is called the heart of a car! The main purpose of the car engine is to convert the energy of the fuel and air to kinetic energy, thereby making the wheels move.

A car engine is a cluster of many different components. When all the components work altogether, the engine comes into action. The basic and most important components of a car engine include-

• Cylinder- Cylinder is the core of a car engine. Engines may have one to eight cylinders.
• Pistons- Pistons are the cylindrical metal pieces that move up and down inside the cylinder to keep the oil out of the combustion chamber.
• Crankshaft- Crankshaft is attached to the pistons, which turns the piston’s up and down motion into circular motion. The rotation of the crankshaft, through various mechanical connections, turns the car wheels and makes it possible to move on the road.
• Valve Train- Valve train regulates the in and out of air and fuel at regular intervals of time.
• Intake Stroke- Intake stroke sucks air and fuel into the combustion chamber
• Compression Stroke- Compression stroke compresses the fuel-air mixture inside the cylinder.
• Power Stroke- Power stroke is used to ignite the engine.
• Exhaust Stroke- Exhaust stroke pulls out unused fuel from the engine.

The basic principle of car engine working lies on energy conversion. Most car engines make use of a four stroke combustion cycle in order to convert the energy of fuel into kinetic energy. The four strokes refer to intake stroke, compression stroke, power stroke and exhaust stroke.

During the process of energy conversion, the pistons are pulled down on the intake stroke in order to open the intake valve. This further helps to pull the mixture of fuel and air into the cylinder. As the pistons reach the bottom, the intake valve closes and the mixture is being trapped into the cylinder. When the mixture gets trapped, compression stroke helps in compressing the fuel-air mixture by the upward movement of the pistons. When pistons move to the top, the stroke compresses the mixture to almost one-tenth of the original volume. Then, power stroke enables spark plug to ignite the compressed fuel-air mixture. The ignited mixture produces vapor expansion, which pushes the piston with great force and turns the crankshaft. And rotation of the crankshaft provides the power to start the engine. Now, the pistons at the bottom pushes the exhaust valve to open. The exhaust stroke expels the gas with a great force and thus pushes the pistons upwards, thereby making all the exhaust gases to get out of the valve.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 1st, 2009 at 11:30 am and is filed under Buying a Car. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.