How A Car Engine Works? | OnlyVehicle

How Car Engine Works In Detail

A car engine generates power from the expansion of compressed air in a contained cylinder with the help of fuel.  That is why it's called an internal combustion engine.  Before getting into the working, let's see the main parts involved in the working of an engine.

First the crankshaft. This is the part which converts the linear motion of the piston to a rotational force.

Next, the pistons and the piston rods. The pistons will be pushed down by the expansion of compressed air and turns the crankshaft. and the valves, which controls the flow of air and fuel into the cylinders.

These vowels are driven by the intake camshaft and the exhaust camshaft and the camshafts are driven by the crank itself using a timing belt. There will be idler pulleys and attention to a pulley to hold the belt tight in place.

This here is the internal structure of a four-stroke inline 4-cylinder DOHC (Dual Over Head Camshaft) engine which is commonly found in most hatchback and sedan cars.

A four-stroke engine should pass through four different strokes to complete one cycle to produce power. They are intake, compression, power and exhaust stroke.

The crank two camshaft ratio is 2 is to 1 which means it will take to crank revolutions to complete one camshaft revolution. and the camshafts are designed in a responsive manner to open or closed based on the corresponding strokes of each cylinder.

Let's take a look at a single cylinder and see how a four-stroke engine works in detail. In order to ignite the air fuel-mixture, a spark plug is used. This will ignite the compressed air fuel mixture with the help of an electrical spark.

The intake stroke the inlet valve opens and the downward movement of the piston creates a suction. This pulls the air fuel mixture into the cylinder. Once the air fuel mixture is in the cylinder compression stroke begins compressing the mixture.

At this time both Inlet and outlet valves stay closed. At the end of the compression stroke, the air fuel mixture is ignited by the spark plug.

The explosion exerts pressure and pushes the piston down. This is the power stroke which produces power to the crank. At the exhaust stroke, the outlet valve opens and the piston pushes out the burned gas. The cycle starts again from the intake stroke keeping the engine running and produces power.

For a carburetor engine, the air and fuel are mixed inside the carburetor assembly and fed to the cylinders. In the case of a fuel-injected engine the fuel is injected into the intake manifold or directly into the cylinders.

Since only a power stroke produces power, you may wonder how the engine turns continuously. Well, the answer is in the crank itself.

The flywheel and the crank counterweights provide momentum - which keeps the crankshaft from stopping immediately.

For a four-cylinder engine considering any time instance one cylinder is always in power stroke - which produces more power and less vibrations compared to a single cylinder engine. And that is how a car engine produces power simply.