Engine

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Overview
The internal combustion engine is the heart of an automobile. It is what powers the entire thing. For automobiles, engines either can run off of gasoline or diesel. For this article, we will focus on gasoline engines. The basic premise of a combustion engine is that the engine compresses gasoline and ignites it, using the energy from the ignition in order to power the car. In the next few sections, we will discuss the operation, layout, and components of an engine.



How it works
A car's engine is called a 4-stroke engine, as there are 4 main actions that occur
 * 1) Gas particles/air flow in, using the fuel injector and that the piston opens up area for it to do so
 * 2) The piston goes back up, decreasing the volume, compressing the gas in the chamber
 * 3) A spark ignites,causing a great release in energy that forces the piston back down, rotating a shaft as you can see in the diagram
 * 4) The piston moves back up and lets exhaust gasses escape

Primary Engine Components

 * Piston: The piece that either contracts or expands the volume of the cylinder
 * Cylinder: The area where the gas expands/contracts/explodes
 * Crankshaft: The part the piston is connected to and rotates to power the car
 * Spark Plug: Creates spark to ignite fuel
 * Valves: Either flows in gasoline or flows out exhaust gases
 * Fuel Injector: injects vaporized gasoline

Engine Layouts
An engine can have various layouts, by having varying numbers of cylinders and by placing those cylinders in different layouts


 * Possible shapes are Rotary, Inline, V, Flat, W
 * Anywhere from 2 - 16+ cylinders are possible
 * A V configuration, with 8 cylinders = V8