Car Engine Basics

If you had asked Dominic Torreto from the fast and the furious about which car will make you win the race, he would have told you that “It is never about the car but the driver”.  To a certain extent,  I do agree with him. How you drive will determine whether you can win a race or not. Man and machine have to become one on the road therefore  understanding your car will help  you get the most out of it. We will talk about racing in detail another time. For now, we are going to explore under the hood of your car and narrow in on a major piece…the car engine. You will all agree with me that sometimes it is hard to tell the difference between car engines, right? Unless you have been schooled or grew up with a mechanic or car enthusiast, an engine is an engine, right? Well, let us take a step back and allow me to help you understand that an engine is not just an engine just in case you are buying a car and the salesman starts talking french-nglish.

Let us start with something called “Cylinders”

Car engines can be distinguished by the number of cylinders they have. A cylinder is a compartment within a car engine that houses a piston. So fuel and air get pumped into the cylinders and a spark is created by a spark plug within the cylinder creating an explosion that pushes the piston downwards with a force thus producing movement when aligned with other pistons in other cylinders. The combined force  of all cylinders  is then sent to the wheels via the gearbox. The number of cylinder  varies from engine to engine and can be 2, 3, 4, 5 , 6 , 8  or more. What this means is that the more the number of cylinders  and the  larger they are, the more powerful the engine. Why should cylinders be large you ask? Well, because the larger they are the more volume they produce. Understood? Okay, let move on to the next concept.

Arrangement of the cylinders AKA “Engine Layouts”

Now that we know what a cylinder is, let talk about the arrangement of cylinders in a car engine. Unless you disassemble the engine, it may be pretty hard to identify the cylinder arrangement to the untrained eye. Car makers often task their engineers to come up with engine configurations for a particular model  depending on use case. For example, when creating a high performance supercar, one may decide that the engine should have 12 cylinders and they should be large. After creating engine models, they find out that it is not possible to create an engine that will fit into the car with all 12 cylinders in a straight line. So the engineers decide to arrange the cylinders six on one side and the other six on the other side. Cases like this are what gives birth to the varied arrangements of cylinders. Below are some of the popular cylinder arrangements used by car manufacturers today:

Vee (V)

In this engine layout, the cylinders are arranged in ‘V’ shape  with the cylinder bank facing outwards. This layout is very popular among supercar manufacturers as it allows for adding more cylinders without ballooning the overall engine size such that is doesn’t fit into the car. So the next  time the salesman tells you, “ this is one of a kind purchase, this baby comes with  a sweet  V12 engine that will leave other drivers in your rear view”, just know  that the “baby” has 12 cylinders arranged in a V layout.

Double U (W)

The VW group developed a type of engine called the VR. The VR is similar to the V layout except that the distance between the two rows of cylinders is so narrow that they can fit in one block. The W engine layout takes two VR engines and joins them at the base. A double U (W) engine can also mean  3 rows of cylinders arranged at an angle to form a “w”.

Straight

The Straight layout positions the cylinders in parallel with the car going from the front to the back as opposed to across the engine bay. So when you hear the salesman say “one of a kind model, a lot of customers are enquiring about this very car. It consists of a straight 6…”, just know  it is a straight layout engine with 6 cylinders.

Inline

This arrangement has cylinders arranged in an upward facing position and perpendicular to the car.

Flat

In a flat layout, cylinders are mounted horizontally  with the two rows facing outwards.

These are the basics of car engines. Note that,  hatchbacks and other smaller family cars usually  adopt the inline layout whilst powerful sedans commonly use the straight or V layout and the supercars use the V or W layout.