Set in motion the drive train

A drive train refers to the parts of the engine that transfer power to the road surface. Drive trains include transmission, driveshaft,axles and wheels. The transmission allows your car to operate whether moving, cruising, or stopping by using gear ratios. Today almost all vehicles have a manual or automatic transmission. In a manual transmission gears are determined by the driver;in automatic transmission,by the transmission itself.  The driveshaft transfers the torque of the engine to other parts of the vehicle including the wheels. An axle is a shaft that rotates the wheel. The wheel Is what sets the Car in motion by spinning on the road. I got all the information above from Wikipedia,   wise-geek , and autos.com. Now that I have discussed how an engine functions, I will go into how to fix these parts when they break.

The core and the parts within

The engine's core is the cylinder and all of the parts and functions I talked about last post are within the cylinder.  Most cars today contain 4, 8, or even 12 cylinders in the engine.  They can be aligned straight, also called an inline engine, they can be shaped in a v, or they can be flat.  Within the cylinder besides the parts discussed in my previous post are also the spark plug, the piston rings, the sump, and the valves. The piston rings serve as a barrier to seperate the piston and the cylinder.  They also keep oil in the slump so that it is not burned up in the combustion area.  Sumps act as an oil pan surrounding the crankshaft.  Valves open at the right time to let out exhaust and take in air and fuel.  I found this information from auto.howstuffworks.com. Now that all of the inner working parts of the cylinder have been discussed, in my next post I will talk about the drive train. The drive train include a group of parts that sets in the motion!

Back to basics: the piston

In order to understand how an engine works, we first need to understand what kind of engine we are dealing with. Almost all cars today boast a four stroke internal combustion engine.  These engines employ a four stroke process that includes intake stroke, compression stroke, combustion stroke, and exhaust stroke. Auto.howstuffworks.com

I obtained my information from the website above. The writer talks about how an engine operates almost like a potato gun. A part of the engine dubbed the piston strokes down to let air and gas come in.  This process is called the intake stroke. The piston then shoots  back up to compress the air gas mixture and make it more explosive. This action of forming pressure is the compression stage.  When the piston reaches the top of its stroke the spark plug ignites the gasoline forcing the piston  back down.  The explosion created by the piston and spark plug is the combustion stroke.  At the bottom of the piston's stroke the gasses are released out of the exhaust pipe, thus completing the exhaust stroke. Force from the piston's downward motion makes a part called the crank shaft shift in a circular motion. Car wheels are rotated by this process. Now that we know how the piston works, in the next post we will discover how this mechanism affects the rest of the engine.   Just simply the piston was amazing to me and I can't wait to see how it plays into the bigger whole that is the engine. Hopefully learning about the piston helps you understand how an engine functions. I know learning about the piston helped me more. In the next post I will look more into the engine as a whole. What really drives those car wheels forward?

My interest

I've always wondered how engines work, and the parts of the engine and their functions. I often hear people say I wish I learned how to fix my car. Well that will be my mission over the next few months, to learn what to do when an engine part malfunctions. My goal is to aid anyone who needs help to fix their vehicles. For English class we will be working on this project all year. I will be posting things I learn about how a car engine works and the parts that make it function. I will also be posting how to know if one of these parts is not working correctly and how to fix them.