How HEMI Engines Work" If you like cars, then you have probably heard of the HEMI engine. If you were born in the 1960s or before, you remember the phenomenon created by Chrysler's HEMI engines in the 1950s, '60s and '70s. If you follow muscle cars or drag racing, you know that the 426 HEMI engine is a popular engine because of its performance. You've probably also heard of the HEMI engines that Chrysler began using in 2003 Dodge trucks. But even if you know little or nothing about cars and engines, the word "HEMI" might still mean something to you. The word has become a synonym for big, powerful engines. In this article, you'll learn about the HEMI engine and find out why engines using the HEMI design are such awesome machines. Birth of the HEMI The HEMI engine for automobiles was born in 1948 -- Harry Westlake and several others developed a Hemi 6-cylinder engine for Jaguar.
These days, 180 horsepower sounds like nothing. The 426 block and heads are still available today from Dodge. How Gas Turbine Engines Work" How Diesel Engines Work" One of the most popular HowStuffWorks articles is How Car Engines Work, which explains the basic principles behind internal combustion, discusses the four-stroke cycle and talks about all of the subsystems that help your car's engine to do its job.
For a long time after we published that article, one of the most common questions asked (and one of the most frequent suggestions made in the suggestion box) was, "What is the difference between a gasoline and a diesel engine? " Diesel's story actually begins with the invention of the gasoline engine. Nikolaus August Otto had invented and patented the gasoline engine by 1876. This invention used the four-stroke combustion principle, also known as the "Otto Cycle," and it's the basic premise for most car engines today. In its early stage, the gasoline engine wasn't very efficient, and other major methods of transportation such as the steam engine fared poorly as well.
If diesel engines are so efficient, why don't we use them more often? How Rotary Engines Work" A rotary engine is an internal combustion engine, like the engine in your car, but it works in a completely different way than the conventional piston engine. In a piston engine, the same volume of space (the cylinder) alternately does four different jobs -- intake, compression, combustion and exhaust. A rotary engine does these same four jobs, but each one happens in its own part of the housing. It's kind of like having a dedicated cylinder for each of the four jobs, with the piston moving continually from one to the next. The rotary engine (originally conceived and developed by Dr. In this article, we'll learn how a rotary engine works. How Two-stroke Engines Work"
If you have read How Car Engines Work and How Diesel Engines Work, then you are familiar with the two types of engines found in nearly every car and truck on the road today. Both gasoline and diesel automotive engines are classified as four-stroke reciprocating internal-combustion engines. There is a third type of engine, known as a two-stroke engine, that is commonly found in lower-power applications. Some of the devices that might have a two-stroke engine include: Lawn and garden equipment (chain saws, leaf blowers, trimmers)Dirt bikesMopedsJet skisSmall outboard motorsRadio-controlled model planes In this article, you'll learn all about the two-stroke engine: how it works, why it might be used and what makes it different from regular car and diesel engines. How Steam Engines Work"
Automatic Transmission. How Car Engines Work" Have you ever opened the hood of your car and wondered what was going on in there? A car engine can look like a big confusing jumble of metal, tubes and wires to the uninitiated. You might want to know what's going on simply out of curiosity. Or perhaps you are buying a new car, and you hear things like "3.0 liter V-6" and "dual overhead cams" and "tuned port fuel injection.
" What does all of that mean? In this article, we'll discuss the basic idea behind an engine and then go into detail about how all the pieces fit together, what can go wrong and how to increase performance. The purpose of a gasoline car engine is to convert gasoline into motion so that your car can move. Two things to note: There are different kinds of internal combustion engines. Let's look at the internal combustion process in more detail in the next section. How Catalytic Converters Work" There are millions of cars on the road in the United States, and each one is a source of air pollution. Especially in large cities, the amount of pollution that all the cars produce together can create big problems. To solve those problems, cities, states and the federal government create clean-air laws that restrict the amount of pollution that cars can produce.
Over the years, automakers have made many refinements to car engines and fuel systems to keep up with these laws. One of these changes came about in 1975 with an interesting device called a catalytic converter. The job of the catalytic converter is to convert harmful pollutants into less harmful emissions before they ever leave the car's exhaust system. Catalytic converters are amazingly simple devices, so it is incredible to see how big an impact they have. How Automobile Ignition Systems Work" How Car Cooling Systems Work" Although gasoline engines have improved a lot, they are still not very efficient at turning chemical energy into mechanical power. Most of the energy in the gasoline (perhaps 70%) is converted into heat, and it is the job of the cooling system to take care of that heat. In fact, the cooling system on a car driving down the freeway dissipates enough heat to heat two average-sized houses!
The primary job of the cooling system is to keep the engine from overheating by transferring this heat to the air, but the cooling system also has several other important jobs. The engine in your car runs best at a fairly high temperature. When the engine is cold, components wear out faster, and the engine is less efficient and emits more pollution. So another important job of the cooling system is to allow the engine to heat up as quickly as possible, and then to keep the engine at a constant temperature.
In this article, we'll learn about the parts of a car cooling system and how they work. How Fuel Injection Systems Work" How Camshafts Work" If you have read the article How Car Engines Work, you know about the valves that let the air/fuel mixture into the engine and the exhaust out of the engine. The camshaft uses lobes (called cams) that push against the valves to open them as the camshaft rotates; springs on the valves return them to their closed position. This is a critical job, and can have a great impact on an engine's performance at different speeds. On the next page of this article you can see the animation we built to really show you the difference between a performance camshaft and a standard one.
In this article, you will learn how the camshaft affects engine performance. Let's start with the basics. Camshaft Basics The key parts of any camshaft are the lobes. To understand why this is the case, imagine that we are running an engine extremely slowly -- at just 10 or 20 revolutions per minute (RPM) -- so that it takes the piston a couple of seconds to complete a cycle. How Turbochargers Work"