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List of Contents
S.No 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. Topic What is Automotive? Chassis Suspension Unit Braking System Steering Transmission Page 3 3 5 8 11 18
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7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13.

The IC Engines Engine Layouts Spark plugs Ground Electrodes Carburetors Valves & Valve Mechanisms Feedback form & Website links

33 33 34 36 36 38 44

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What is Automotive?
Automotive is that branch of engineering which deals with anything which is automatically in motion. Automotive engineering is the combination of mechanical engineering, vehicle dynamics, drive train engineering and engine design to form a subject that deals with all aspects of vehicle.

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CHASSIS
TYPES OF CHASSIS
LADDER FRAME CHASSIS: Its construction, indicated by its name, looks like a ladder - two longitudinal rails interconnected by several lateral and cross braces. The longitude members are the main stress member. They deal with the load and also the longitudinal forces caused by acceleration and braking. The lateral and cross members provide resistance to lateral forces and further increase torsional rigidity. TUBULAR SPACE FRAME CHASSIS: As ladder chassis is not strong enough, motor racing engineers developed a 3 dimensional design - Tubular space frame. Tubular space frame chassis employs dozens of circular-section tubes (some may use square-section tubes for easier connection to the body panels, though circular section provides the maximum strength), position in different directions to provide mechanical strength against forces from anywhere. These tubes are welded together and forms a very complex structure, as you can see in the above pictures. For higher strength required by high performance sports cars, tubular space frame chassis usually incorporate a strong structure under both doors (see the picture of Lamborghini Countach), hence result in unusually high door sill and difficult access to the cabin. MONOCOQUE FRAME CHASSIS: Monocoque is a one-piece structure which defines the overall shape of the car. While ladder, tubular space frame and backbone chassis provides only the stress members and need to build the body around them, monoque chassis is already incoporated with the body in a single piece, as you can see in the above picture showing a Volvo V70. In fact, the "one-piece" chassis is actually made by welding several pieces together. The floorpan, which is the largest piece, and other pieces are press-made by big stamping machines. They are spot welded together by robot arms (some even use laser welding) in a stream production line. The whole process just takes minutes. ULSAB MONOCOQUE : Hydroform is a new technique for shaping metal to desired shape, alternative to pressing. Conventional pressing use a heavy-weight machine to press a sheet metal into a die, this inevitably creates inhomogenous thickness - the edges and corners are always thinner than surfaces. To maintain a minimum thickness there for the benefit of stiffness, car

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designers have to choose thicker sheet metal than originally needed. Hydroform technique is very different. Instead of using sheet metal, it forms thin steel tubes. The steel tube is placed in a die which defines the desired shape, then fluid of very high pressure will be pumped into the tube and then expands the latter to the inner surface of the die. Since the pressure of fluid is uniformal, thickness of the steel made is also uniformal. As a result, designers can use the minimum thickness steel to reduce weight. Sandwich steel is made from a thermoplastic (polypropylene) core in between two very thin steel skins. This combination is up to 50 percent lighter compared with a piece of homogenous steel without a penalty in performance. Because it shows excellent rigidity, it is applied in areas that call for high bending stiffness. However, it cannot be used in everywhere because it needs adhesive bonding or riveting instead of welding. BACKBONE FRAME CHASSIS: Backbone chassis is very simple: a strong tubular backbone (usually in rectangular section) connects the front and rear axle and provides nearly all the mechanical strength. Inside which there is space for the drive shaft in case of front-engine, rear-wheel drive layout like the Elan. The whole drivetrain, engine and suspensions are connected to both ends of the backbone. The body is built on the backbone, usually made of glass-fibre. It's strong enough for smaller sports cars but not up to the job for high-end ones. ALUMINIUM SPACE FRAME: ASF consists of extruded aluminum sections, vacuum die cast components and aluminum sheets of different thicknesses. They all are made of high-strength aluminium alloy. At the highly stressed corners and joints, extruded sections are connected by complex aluminum die casting (nodes). Besides, new fastening methods were developed to join the body parts together. It's quite complex and production cost is far higher than steel monocoque. CARBON-FIBER MONOCOQUE There are several Carbon-fibers commonly used in motor industry. Kelvar, which was developed by Du Pont, offers the highest rigidity-to-weight ratio among them. Because of this, US army's helmets are made of Kelvar. Kelvar can also be found in the body panels of many exotic cars, although most of them simultaneously use other kinds of carbon-fiber in even larger amount. Production process:Carbon-fiber panels are made by growing carbon-fiber sheets (something look like textile) in either side of an aluminium foil. The foil, which defines the shape of the panel, is sticked with several layers of carbon fiber sheets impregnated with resin, then cooked in a big oven for 3 hours at 120C and 90 psi pressure. After that, the carbon fiber layers will be melted and form a uniformal, rigid body panel.

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SUSPENSION UNIT
Suspension is the term given to the system of springs, shock absorbers and linkages that connects a vehicle to its wheels. SPRING RATE Spring rate is a ratio used to measure how resistant a spring is to being compressed or expanded during the spring's deflection. The magnitude of the spring force increases as deflection increases according to Hooke's Law. Briefly, this can be stated as F = -kx Wheel Rate Wheel rate is the effective spring rate when measured at the wheel. This is as opposed to simply measuring the spring rate alone. The wheel rate is calculated by taking the square of the lever arm ratio (0.5625) times the spring rate. Squaring the ratio is because the ratio has two effects on the wheel rate. The ratio applies to both the force and distance traveled. Roll couple percentage Roll couple percentage is the effective wheel rates, in roll, of each axle of the vehicle. Critical in accurately balancing the handling of a vehicle. Commonly adjusted through the use of anti-roll bars or by use of different springs.
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Weight Transfer The total amount of weight transfer is affected by 4 factors: the distance between the wheel centers the height of centre of gravity mass of the vehicle acceleration experienced

Two types of weight transfers:

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Un sprung Weight Transfer Sprung weight transfer

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Jacking Forces Jacking forces are the sum of the vertical force components experienced by the suspension links. 6

TRAVEL Travel is the measure of distance from the bottom of the suspension stroke (such as when the vehicle is on a jack and the wheel hangs freely), to the top of the suspension stroke (such as when the vehicles wheel can no longer travel in an upward direction toward the vehicle). Camber Control Camber changes with wheel travel and with body roll. A tire wears and brakes best perpendicular to the road. Depending on the tire, it may hold the road best at a slightly different angle. Small changes in camber, front and rear, are used to tune handling. Anti-dive and Anti-squat Anti-dive is front diving under braking Anti-squat is the rear squatting under acceleration

Macpherson Strut or McPherson strut This is currently, without doubt, the most widely used front suspension system in cars of European origin. It is simplicity itself. The system basically comprises of a strut-type spring and shock absorber combo, which pivots on a ball joint on the single, lower arm. At the top end there is a needle roller bearing on some more sophisticated systems. The strut itself is the load-bearing member in this assembly, with the spring and shock absorber merely performing their duty as oppose to actually holding the car up. In the picture here, you can't see the shock absorber because it is encased in the black gaiter inside the gaiter. The steering gear is either connected directly to the lower shock absorber housing, or to an arm from the front or back of the spindle (in this case). When you steer, it physically twists the strut and shock absorber housing (and consequently the spring) to turn the wheel. Simple. The spring is seated in a special plate at the top of the assembly which allows this twisting to take place. If the

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spring or this plate are worn, you'll get a loud 'clonk' on full lock as the spring frees up and jumps into place. This is sometimes confused for CV joint knock. Double wishbone suspension systems Coil Spring type 1 This is a type of double-A or double wishbone suspension. The wheel spindles are supported by an upper and lower 'A' shaped arm. In this type, the lower arm carries most of the load. If you look head-on at this type of system, what you'll find is that it's a very parallelogram system that allows the spindles to travel vertically up and down. When they do this, they also have a slight side-to-side motion caused by the arc that the wishbones describe around their pivot points. This side-to-side motion is known as scrub. Unless the links are infinitely long the scrub motion is always present. There are two other types of motion of the wheel relative to the body when the suspension articulates. The first and most important is a toe angle (steer angle). The second and least important, but the one which produces most pub talk is the camber angle, or lean angle. Steer and camber are the ones which wear tyres. Coil Spring type 2 This is also a type of double-A arm suspension although the lower arm in these systems can sometimes be replaced with a single solid arm (as in my picture). The only real difference between this and the previous system mentioned above is that the spring/shock combo is moved from between the arms to above the upper arm. This transfers the load-bearing capability of the suspension almost entirely to the upper arm and the spring mounts. The lower arm in this instance becomes a control arm. This particular type of system isn't so popular in cars as it takes up a lot room. Multi-link suspension This is the latest incarnation of the double wishbone system described above. It's currently being used in the Audi A8 and A4 amongst other cars. The basic principle of it is the same, but instead of solid upper and lower wishbones, each 'arm' of the wishbone is a separate item. These are joined at the top and bottom of the spindle thus forming the wishbone shape. The super-weird thing about this is that as the spindle turns for steering, it alters the geometry of the suspension by torquing all four suspension arms. They have complex pivot systems designed to allow this to happen. Car manufacturers claim that this system gives even better road-holding properties, because all the various joints make the suspension almost infinitely adjustable. There are a lot of variations on this theme appearing at the moment, with huge differences in the numbers and complexities of joints, numbers of arms, positioning of the parts etc. but they are all fundamentally the same. Note that in this system the spring (red) is separate from the shock absorber (yellow). Click on the image for a reverse view of the same system (this will popup a separate window).
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BRAKING SYSTEM
TYPES OF BRAKING SYSTEM
Drum brakes Disc brakes Pneumatic braking system Hydraulic braking system Anti locking braking system
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Drum brakes Two semicircular brake shoes sit inside a spinning drum which is attached to the wheel. When you apply the brakes, the shoes are expanded outwards to press against the inside of the drum. This creates friction, which creates heat, which transfers kinetic energy, which slows you down. The example below shows a simple model. The actuator in this case is the blue elliptical object. As that is twisted, it forces against the brake shoes and in turn forces them to expand outwards. The return spring is what pulls the shoes back away from the surface of the brake drum when the brakes are released. ADVANTAGES Often applied to the rear wheels since most of the stopping happens in the front of the vehicle and therefore the heat generated in the rear is significantly less. Occasionally fitted as the parking (and emergency) . In hybrid vehicle applications, wear on braking systems is greatly reduced by energy recovering motor-generators DISADVANTAGES When the drums are heated by hard braking, the diameter of the drum increases slightly due to thermal expansion of the material, this means the brakes shoes have to move farther and the brake pedal has to be depressed more. If the surface overheats to the point where it becomes glazed the reduction in braking efficiency is more permanent. Excessive heating of the brake drums can cause the brake fluid to vapourise, which reduces the hydraulic pressure being applied to the brake shoes.[

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DISC BRAKES
Disc brakes are an order of magnitude better at stopping vehicles than drum brakes, which is why you'll find disc brakes on the front of almost every car and motorbike built today. Sportier vehicles with higher speeds need better brakes to slow them down, so you'll likely see disc brakes on the rear of those too. Disc brakes are again a two-part system. Instead of the drum, you have a disc or rotor, and instead of the brake shoes, you now have brake caliper assemblies. The caliper assemblies contain one or more hydraulic pistons which push against the back of the brake pads, clamping them together around the spinning rotor. The harder they clamp together, the more friction is generated, which means more heat, which means more kinetic energy transfer, which slows you down.

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Self-Adjusting Brakes
The single-piston floating-caliper disc brake is self-centering and self-adjusting. The caliper is able to slide from side to side so it will move to the center each time the brakes are applied. Also, since there is no spring to pull the pads away from the disc, the pads always stay in light contact with the rotor (the rubber piston seal and any wobble in the rotor may actually pull the pads a small distance away from the rotor). This is important because the pistons in the brakes are much larger in diameter than the ones in the master cylinder. If the brake pistons retracted into their cylinders, it might take several applications of the brake pedal to pump enough fluid into the brake cylinder to engage the brake pads.

Anti locking braking system

Stop without skidding, and maintain control of the vehicle. That's the premise of ABS. It was first introduced in the 1980's and has been undergoing constant refinement ever since. The system is typically comprised of 4 ABS rings, 4 sensors, an ABS computer and a number of pressure-management circuits in the brake lines. The ABS rings are attached either to the wheels, or more often, to the brake discs. They look like a notched ring - see the image to the right. The sensors are magnetic field sensors which are held very close to the ABS rings and can detect the slight change in magnetic field as the teeth on the ring pass them. The pulsing field tells the ABS computer that the wheels are spinning, and how fast they're spinning. When you brake, the wheel rotation starts to slow down. The ABS computer "listens" to the input from the sensors and can detect if one wheel is slowing down much quicker than the others - the precursor to the wheel locking up. (This all happens in milliseconds, by the way). When the computer detects this condition, a pressure regulator in the brake circuit interrupts the pressure in the brake lines by momentarily reducing it so that the brakes release just enough to give the wheels a chance to keep spinning rather than locking

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up. The computer then instructs the regulator to re-apply full pressure and again measures the wheel rotation. This on/off/measure cycle happens around 15 to 30 times a second. If the ABS kicks in, you'll feel it through the brake pedal as a vibration because the pulsing in the brake circuit affects all the components.

Power Brakes
Power brakes (also known as power assisted brakes) are designed to use the power of the engine and/or battery to enhance your braking power. Whilst you can generate a fair amount of force using your foot, using systems from elsewhere in the car to help you apply even more force means that you get more powerful brakes as a result. The four most common types of power brakes are: vacuum suspended; air suspended; hydraulic booster, and electrohydraulic booster. Most cars use vacuum suspended units (vacuum boosters). In this type of system, when you press the brake pedal, the push rod to the master cylinder opens a vacuum control valve. This allows vacuum pressure (normally from the intake manifold) to "suck" on a diaphragm inside the vacuum assist unit. This extra vacuum suction helps you to produce more force at the pedal end of the brake system. Hydraulic booster systems usually utilise pressure from the power steering system to augment pressure on the master brake cylinder. Electrohydraulic booster systems use an electric motor to pressurize the hydraulic system downwind of the brake pedal which has the effect of amplifying the internal pressure in the whole system.The advantage to this system is that as long as you have battery power, you have power brakes even if the engine fails. With vacuum-assist brakes, no engine means no assistance.If you're curious about how power brakes work, go out to your car and with the engine off, step on the brakes. They'll have a slightly solid, almost wooden feel to them. Turn the engine on and do it again and you'll notice a lot less back-pressure on the pedal. This is the power assist which is making it easier for you to depress the pedal. Brake fluids Brake fluid does not compress. It's a good job too - if you put your foot on the brake pedal and it went all the way to the floor, you'd be worried. But that's exactly what can happen if you disregard the "health" of your brake fluid. Brake fluid is hygroscopic - that means it attracts and soaks up water. This is why it comes in sealed containers when you buy it, and why when the crazy guy four doors down offers you some of the 15 gallons of brake fluid he's had in his garage since the war, you should turn him down. The problem with it being hygroscopic is that if it does start to take on water, Bad Things can happen. Pull up a chair and allow me to explain.

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Your typical DOT 4 brake fluid (see later for DOT ratings) boils at about 446F (230C). Water boils at 212F (100C). Imagine your brakes are getting hot because of a long downhill stretch. Whilst the brake fluid is quite OK, the temperature of the brake components might get up over the boiling point of water. If that happens, the water boils out of the brake fluid and forms steam - a compressible gas. Next time you put your foot on the brake, rather than braking, all the pressure in the brake system is taken up with Page | compressing the steam. Your brakes go out, you don't stop. Getting a little more complex, the boiling point of a liquid goes up with its pressure (Physics 101). So when you step on the brake, the boiling point of the 11 brake fluid might actually go up to 500F (260C) and the boiling point of the water content might raise up to 250F (121C). This is great, you might think, because now the boiling point is higher than the temperature of the brake fluid. At least it is until you take your foot off the brake again. Now the pressure in the system returns to normal, the boiling points revert to normal and instantly the water boils off into steam again. The symptoms are slightly different now. Under this scenario, the brakes work the first one or two times, but on the third or fourth press, they stop working because now the temperature and pressures have conspired to boil the water. The worst possible scenario is brake-fade (see right at the top) combined with air in the system. If this has happened to you, then you're likely reading this page from beyond the grave, because in most accidents where weak brakes become no brakes, there aren't any survivors.

STEERING
Rack-and-pinion Steering
Rack-and-pinion steering is quickly becoming the most common type of steering on cars, small trucks and SUVs. It is actually a pretty simple mechanism. A rack-and-pinion gearset is enclosed in a metal tube, with each end of the rack protruding from the tube. A rod, called a tie rod, connects to each end of the rack.

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The pinion gear is attached to the steering shaft. When you turn the steering wheel, the gear spins, moving the rack. The tie rod at each end of the rack connects to the steering arm on the spindle (see diagram above). The rack-and-pinion gearset does two things:

It converts the rotational motion of the steering wheel into the linear motion needed to turn the wheels. It provides a gear reduction, making it easier to turn the wheels.

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Recirculating-ball Steering
Recirculating-ball steering is used on many trucks and SUVs today. The linkage that turns the wheels is slightly different than on a rack-and-pinion system.

The recirculating-ball steering gear contains a worm gear. You can image the gear in two parts. The first part is a block of metal with a threaded hole in it. This block has gear teeth cut into the outside of it, which engage a gear that moves the pitman arm (see diagram above). The steering wheel connects to a threaded rod, similar to a bolt, that sticks into the hole in the block. When the steering wheel turns, it turns the bolt. Instead of twisting further into the block the way a regular bolt would, this bolt is held fixed so that when it spins, it moves the block, which moves the gear that turns the wheels.

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Instead of the bolt directly engaging the threads in the block, all of the threads are filled with ball bearings that recirculate through the gear as it turns. The balls actually serve two purposes: First, they reduce friction and wear in the gear; second, they reduce slop in the gear. Slop would be felt when you change the direction of the steering wheel -- without the balls in the steering gear, the teeth would come out of contact with each other for a moment, making the steering wheel feel loose.

Power Steering
There are a couple of key components in power steering in addition to the rack-and-pinion or recirculatingball mechanism.

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Pump The hydraulic power for the steering is provided by a rotary-vane pump (see diagram below). This pump is driven by the car's engine via a belt and pulley. It contains a set of retractable vanes that spin inside an oval chamber.
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As the vanes spin, they pull hydraulic fluid from the return line at low pressure and force it into the outlet at high pressure. The amount of flow provided by the pump depends on the car's engine speed. The pump must be designed to provide adequate flow when the engine is idling. As a result, the pump moves much more fluid than necessary when the engine is running at faster speeds. The pump contains a pressure-relief valve to make sure that the pressure does not get too high, especially at high engine speeds when so much fluid is being pumped.

Rotary Valve A power-steering system should assist the driver only when he is exerting force on the steering wheel (such as when starting a turn). When the driver is not exerting force (such as when driving in a straight line), the system shouldn't provide any assist. The device that senses the force on the steering wheel is called the rotary valve. The key to the rotary valve is a torsion bar. The torsion bar is a thin rod of metal that twists when torque is applied to it. The top of the bar is connected to the steering wheel, and the bottom of the bar is connected to the pinion or worm gear (which turns the wheels), so the amount of torque in the torsion bar is equal to the amount of torque the driver is using to turn the wheels. The more torque the driver uses to turn the wheels, the more the bar twists.

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The input from the steering shaft forms the inner part of a spool-valve assembly. It also connects to the top end of the torsion bar. The bottom of the torsion bar connects to the outer part of the spool valve. The torsion bar also turns the output of the steering gear, connecting to either the pinion gear or the worm gear depending on which type of steering the car has. As the bar twists, it rotates the inside of the spool valve relative to the outside. Since the inner part of the spool valve is also connected to the steering shaft (and therefore to the steering wheel), the amount of rotation between the inner and outer parts of the spool valve depends on how much torque the driver applies to the steering wheel.

Airbag Inflation
The goal of an airbag is to slow the passenger's forward motion as evenly as possible in a fraction of a second. There are three parts to an airbag that help to accomplish this feat: The bag itself is made of a thin, nylon fabric, which is folded into the steering wheel or dashboard or, more recently, the seat or door. The sensor is the device that tells the bag to inflate. Inflation happens when there is a collision force equal to running into a brick wall at 10 to 15 miles per hour (16 to 24 km per hour). A mechanical switch is flipped when there is a mass shift that closes an electrical contact, telling the sensors that a crash has occurred. The sensors receive information from an accelerometer built into a microchip. The airbag's inflation system reacts sodium azide (NaN3) with potassium nitrate (KNO3) to produce nitrogen gas. Hot blasts of the nitrogen inflate the airbag.

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The airbag and inflation system stored in the steering wheel. See more airbag images. Early efforts to adapt the airbag for use in cars bumped up against prohibitive prices and technical hurdles involving the storage and release of compressed gas. Researchers wondered:

If there was enough room in a car for a gas canister Whether the gas would remain contained at high pressure for the life of the car How the bag could be made to expand quickly and reliably at a variety of operating temperatures and without emitting an ear-splitting bang

They needed a way to set off a chemical reaction that would produce the nitrogen that would inflate the bag. Small solid-propellant inflators came to the rescue in the 1970s.

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The inflation system uses a solid propellant and an igniter. The inflation system is not unlike a solid rocket booster (see How Rocket Engines Work for details). The airbag system ignites a solid propellant, which burns extremely rapidly to create a large volume of gas to inflate the bag. The bag then literally bursts from its storage site at up to 200 mph (322 kph) -- faster than the blink of an eye! A second later, the gas quickly dissipates through tiny holes in the bag, thus deflating the bag so you can move. Even though the whole process happens in only one-twenty-fifth of a second, the additional time is enough to help prevent serious injury. The powdery substance released from the airbag, by the way, is regular cornstarch or talcum powder, which is used by the airbag manufacturers to keep the bags pliable and lubricated while they're in storage.

Airbag Deactivation In response to concerns about children -- and others, especially smaller people -- being killed or seriously injured by malfunctioning or overly powerful airbags, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) in 1997 issued a final rule to allow auto manufacturers to use lower-powered airbags. This rule permits airbags to be depowered by 20 to 35 percent. In addition, starting in 1998, repair shops and dealers were allowed to install on/off switches that allow airbags to be deactivated. Vehicle owners could now be authorized (by the NHTSA) to get on/off switches installed for one or both airbags in their car if they (or other users of their car) fell into one or more of these specific risk groups:

For both driver and passenger sides - Individuals with medical conditions in which the risks of deploying the airbag exceed the risk of impact in the absence of an airbag For the driver side (in addition to medical conditions) - Those who cannot position themselves to properly operate their cars at least 10 inches (25.4 cm) back from the center of the driver airbag cover

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For the passenger side (in addition to medical conditions) - Individuals who need to transport a baby in a rear-facing child restraint in the front seat because the car has no rear seat, the rear seat is too small to accommodate a rear-facing child seat or because it's necessary to constantly monitor a child's medical condition For the passenger side (in addition to medical conditions) - Individuals who need to carry children between one and 12 years old in the front seat because (a) the car has no rear seat, (b) the vehicle owner must carry more children than can fit into the back seat or (c) because it's necessary to constantly monitor a child's health .

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Transmission
Types of Transmission system
Manual transmission Automatic transmission Semi automatic Transmission Continuously variable transmission

Manual transmission
A Real Transmission The following animation shows you the internal workings of a four-speed transmission with reverse. The five-speed manual transmission is fairly standard on cars today. Internally, it looks something like this:

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There are three forks controlled by three rods that are engaged by the shift lever. Looking at the shift rods from the top, they look like this in reverse, first and second gear:

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Keep in mind that the shift lever has a rotation point in the middle. When you push the knob forward to engage first gear, you are actually pulling the rod and fork for first gear back. You can see that as you move the shifter left and right you are engaging different forks (and therefore different collars). Moving the knob forward and backward moves the collar to engage one of the gears.
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Reverse gear is handled by a small idler gear (purple). At all times, the blue reverse gear in this diagram is turning in a direction opposite to all of the other blue gears. Therefore, it would be impossible to throw the transmission into reverse while the car is moving forward -- the dog teeth would never engage. However, they will make a lot of noise! .

Before the gearbox - the clutch So now you have a basic idea of how gearing works there's a second item in your transmission that you need to understand - the clutch. The clutch is what enables you to change gears, and sit at traffic lights without stopping the engine. You need a clutch because your engine is running all the time which means the crank is spinning all the time. You need someway to disconnect this constantly-spinning crank from the gearbox, both to allow you to stand still as well as to allow you to change gears. The clutch is composed of three basic elements; the flywheel, the pressure plate and the clutch plate(s). The flywheel is attached to the end of the main crank and the clutch plates are attached to the gearbox layshaft using a spline. You'll need to look at my diagrams to understand the next bit because there are some other items involved in the basic operation of a clutch. (I've rendered the clutch cover in cutaway in the first image so you can the inner components.) So here we go.

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In the diagram above, the clutch cover is bolted to the flywheel so it turns with the flywheel. The diaphragm springs are connected to the inside of the clutch cover with a bolt/pivot arrangement that allows them to pivot about the attachment bolt. The ends of the diaphragm springs are hooked under the lip of the pressure plate. So as the engine turns, the flywheel, clutch cover, diaphragm springs and pressure plate are all spinning together. The clutch pedal is connected either mechanically or hydraulically to a fork mechanism which loops around the throw-out bearing. When you press on the clutch, the fork pushes on the throw-out bearing and it slides along the layshaft putting pressure on the innermost edges of the diaphragm springs. These in turn pivot on their pivot points against the inside of the clutch cover, pulling the pressure plate away from the back of the clutch plates. This release of pressure allows the clutch plates to disengage from the flywheel. The flywheel keeps spinning on the end of the engine crank but it no longer drives the gearbox because the clutch plates aren't pressed up against it. As you start to release the clutch pedal, pressure is released on the throw-out bearing and the diaphragm springs begin to push the pressure plate back against the back of the clutch plates, in turn pushing them against the flywheel again. Springs inside the clutch plate absorb the initial shock of the clutch touching the flywheel and as you take your foot off the clutch pedal completely, the clutch is firmly pressed against it. The friction material on the clutch plate is what grips the back of the flywheel and causes the input shaft of the gearbox to spin at the same speed.

Burning your clutch You might have heard people using the term 'burning your clutch'. This is when you hold the clutch pedal in a position such that the clutch plate is not totally engaged against the back of the flywheel. At this point, the flywheel is spinning and brushing past the friction material which heats it up in much the same was as brake pads heat up when pressed against a spinning brake rotor (see the Brake Bible). Do this for long

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enough and you'll smell it because you're burning off the friction material. This can also happen unintentionally if you rest your foot on the clutch pedal in the course of normal driving. That slight pressure can be just enough to release the diaphragm spring enough for the clutch to occasionally lose grip and burn.
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A slipping clutch The other term you might have heard is a 'slipping clutch'. This is a clutch that has a mechanical problem. Either the diaphragm spring has weakened and can't apply enough pressure, or more likely the friction material is wearing down on the clutch plates. In either case, the clutch is not properly engaging against the flywheel and under heavy load, like accelerating in a high gear or up a hill, the clutch will disengage slightly and spin at a different rate to the flywheel. You'll feel this as a loss of power, or you'll see it as the revs in the engine go up but you don't accelerate. Do this for long enough and you'll end up with the above - a burned out clutch. Automatic transmission If you have ever driven a car with an automatic transmission, then you know that there are two big differences between an automatic transmission and a manual transmission: There is no clutch pedal in an automatic transmission car. There is no gear shift in an automatic transmission car. Once you put the transmission into drive, everything else is automatic. Both the automatic transmission (plus its torque converter) and a manual transmission (with its clutch) accomplish exactly the same thing, but they do it in totally different ways. It turns out that the way an automatic transmission does it is absolutely amazing! Just like that of a manual transmission, the automatic transmission's primary job is to allow the engine to operate in its narrow range of speeds while providing a wide range of output speeds.

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Mercedes-Benz CLK, automatic transmission, cut-away model Without a transmission, cars would be limited to one gear ratio, and that ratio would have to be selected to allow the car to travel at the desired top speed. If you wanted a top speed of 80 mph, then the gear ratio would be similar to third gear in most manual transmission cars. You've probably never tried driving a manual transmission car using only third gear. If you did, you'd quickly find out that you had almost no acceleration when starting out, and at high speeds, the engine would be screaming along near the red-line. A car like this would wear out very quickly and would be nearly undriveable. So the transmission uses gears to make more effective use of the engine's torque, and to keep the engine operating at an appropriate speed. The key difference between a manual and an automatic transmission is that the manual transmission locks and unlocks different sets of gears to the output shaft to achieve the various gear ratios, while in an automatic transmission, the same set of gears produces all of the different gear ratios. The planetary gearset is the device that makes this possible in an automatic transmission.

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Compound Planetary Gearset This automatic transmission uses a set of gears, called a compound planetary gearset, that looks like a single planetary gearset but actually behaves like two planetary gearsets combined. It has one ring gear that is always the output of the transmission, but it has two sun gears and two sets of planets. Let's look at some of the parts:

How the gears in the transmission are put together Left to right: the ring gear, planet carrier, and two sun gears The figure below shows the planets in the planet carrier. Notice how the planet on the right sits lower than the planet on the left. The planet on the right does not engage the ring gear -- it engages the other planet. Only the planet on the left engages the ring gear.

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Planet carrier: Note the two sets of planets. Next you can see the inside of the planet carrier. The shorter gears are engaged only by the smaller sun gear. The longer planets are engaged by the bigger sun gear and by the smaller planets.

Inside the planet carrier: Note the two sets of planets Automatic transmission uses torque converter instead of clutch Just like a manual gearbox, an automatic gearbox needs a method of decoupling the constantly-spinning engine from the gearbox components. To do this it uses a torque converter which is a viscous fluid coupling (because it's full of hydraulic fluid). A torque converter consists of three basic elements. The impeller, the turbine and the stator. The impeller is attached to the torque converter housing which itself is attached to the engine flywheel. The impeller is basically a centrifugal pump. As the flywheel spins, so does the impeller and the vanes take the fluid from the central part of the torque converter and fling it to the outside creating a pumping action. The fluid then circulates around the outer edge of the torque converter and back into the turbine. The turbine is basically the opposite of the impeller - it's like a ships's propeller in

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that the fluid passing through it causes it to spin. The turbine is connected to the input shaft of the gearbox via a splined shaft so as the turbine spins, so does the input shaft to the gearbox. The fluid passes through the turbine from the outside towards the inside. Finally, as the fluid reaches the central core, it passes through the stator which is designed to help redirect the flow into the inner vanes of the impeller. (Without the stator, the whole system would be a lot less efficient) With this mechanism, the fluid is constantly being Page | circulated. In the image below I've rendered the various parts of an example torque converter taken apart 26 so you can see the internal construction.

When the engine is idling, the fluid is pumping around without a lot of force and the amount of torque on the turbine is minimal. As you accelerate, the impeller speeds up and creates larger forces on the turbine which in turn spins more quickly and with more torque. Because it's connected to the input shaft of the gearbox, this feeds more rotational speed and torque into the gearbox and the car starts to move forwards. It's because of this viscous liquid coupling that automatic gearboxes have a certain amount of 'slop' in them - the engine can rev up and down without the car actually changing speed too much. It's also the reason automatics are less fuel efficient because the torque converter uses up energy from the engine simply in its design by spinning the hydraulic fluid.

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Semi-automatic Gearboxes Despite the name, these are actually an advanced type of manual gearbox. It's better to refer to them clutchless manual gearboxes because that more accurately describes what they are. Semi-automatics do not use planetary gearsets and torque converters; they use layshafts, output shafts, clutches and selector Page | forks just like a manual. They come in three flavours, all of which have the same internal mechanisms. Two 27 of those use the familiar paddle-shifters or up-down gearstick for changing gears. (This begins to explain why you cannot simply look at a gearstick or paddle-shifter and tell what the gearbox is. Up/down gearsticks or paddleshifters can both control sequential manual, clutchless manual or TipTronic type gearboxes.) The third type has a pure manual gearstick. None of the three types have a clutch pedal though so how do they work? Well in the case of the first type, when you click the gearstick up or down, or press one of the paddleshifters, a hydromechanical system disengages the clutch and then moves the gearbox selector forks into the position for the next gear before re-engaging the clutch. Because the system takes inputs from load- and torque-sensors as well as road speed, throttle position and engine demand sensors, and because it's all computer controlled, it can shift more quickly and more smoothly that you or I ever could. The third type uses the same hydromechanical system underneath but has additional sensors coupled to the gearstick. With this type, the action of moving the gearstick out of the gate for one of the gears (for example pulling it back from first) passes a hall effect sensor which tells the clutch to disengage. When you push the gearstick into the gate for the new gear, another hall effect sensor detects the final position of the gearstick and tells the clutch to re-engage. Effectively it's identical to driving a manual car only without a clutch pedal.

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CVT (continuously variable transmission)

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The most basic CVT has two variable pulleys and a steel-core rubber belt. One pulley is connected to the flywheel and the other to the gearbox output shaft. A belt loops around between the two. On simple scooter-type CVTs, the pulleys change geometry simply by rotational forces - the faster the engine pulley spins, the more it closes up and the faster the output pulley spins, the more it opens out. In automotive applications, the geometry of the pulley is governed by a hydraulic piston connected to the ECU. The pulley itself is basically a splined shaft with a pair of sliding conical wedges on it. The closer the wedges are together, the larger the radius 'loop' the belt has to make to get around them. The further they are apart, the smaller the radius 'loop' the belt has to make. Based on the principles established right at the top of the page when I was talking about intermeshing gears, if the flywheel pulley has a small radius and the output pulley has a large radius, then the transmission is essentially in low gear. As the car gets up to speed, the two pulleys are adjusted together so that they present an infintely changing series of radii to the belt which ends up with the flywheel pulley having the largest radius and the output pulley having the smallest. On then to the pictures. This first image shows the basic layout of a pulley-based CVT with the two sliding pulleys and the drive belt. This is the equivalent of 'low gear' - the drive pulley spins two or three times for each rotation of the output pulley. It's the equivalent of a small gear meshing with a large gear in a regular manual gearbox.

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This image shows the same system in 'high gear'. The drive pulley has closed up forcing the drive belt to travel a larger radius. At the same time, the output pulley has pulled apart giving a smaller radius. The result is that for each turn of the drive pulley, the output pulley now spins two or three times. It's the equivalent of a large gear meshing with a small gear in a regular manual gearbox. The difference here is that to get from the low gear to the high gear, the infinite adjustment of the position of the pulleys Page | basically means an infinite number of gears with no point where the drive is ever disconnected from the 29 output.

Advantages of CVT It increases the pick up of the vehicle. i.e. vehicle runs on CVT will take 7.5 secs for 100mtrs while the vehicle with manual transmission will take 10 secs. It improves the mileage of vehicle as it has infinite gear ratios. Noise cut off.

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Differentials With one or two exceptions, every car has a differential. This was a great surprise to an insurance adjuster I spoke to a few years back when he came to process a claim. He eloquently informed me that my claim was Page | being rejected because my car didn't have a differential to replace. In the following few paragraphs you'll 30 learn why that loss adjuster was talking bollocks. So how best to begin to talk about differentials? I suppose to start with you need to understand a very simple concept to do with circles. When you make a car go around a corner, the outer wheels travel further than the inner wheels. Have a look at the diagram below to see what I'm talking about.

The first thing you'll notice is that the rear wheels take a different path to the front wheels, but the other thing to notice is that because the car's wheels are describing different radius arcs, the further away from the centrepoint of the arc, the larger the distance that gets travelled. In car terms, that means the outer wheels need to turn more times than the inner ones every time you go around a corner, because they're describing a larger arc. The brighter ones amongst you will now have figured out that if the outer and inner wheels were joined together with a solid axle, one of them could not turn more times than the other they'd have to turn at the same rate. That, dear reader, is the crux of the matter. Differentials basically allow two wheels on the same axle to turn at different rates. (As well as allowing the wheels on the same axle to turn at different rates, the differential also acts as the final gear reduction in the driveline.) Open Differentials We'll deal with open differentials first because they're the easiest to explain, they're the most common, and they supply the same amount of torque to each output. Open differentials have a few essential components, illustrated below. The input pinion gear is the gear that is driven from the drivetrain - typically the output shaft from the transmission. It drives the ring gear which, being larger, is what gives that final gear reduction I mentioned. Attached to the ring gear is the cage, containing two captive pinion gears that

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are intermeshed with the two output pinion gears, one connected to each axle. The captive pinions are free to rotate how they wish.

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As the input pinion spins, it meshes with the ring gear. The ring gear spins, spinning the cage and the two captive pinions. When the vehicle is travelling in a straight line, neither drive pinion is trying to spin any differently from the other, so the captive pinions don't spin and the turning of the ring gear is translated directly to both drive pinions. These are connected to the driveshafts to the wheels, so effectively, the ring gear spins the wheels at the same speed that it is turning. When the vehicle starts to turn a corner, one of the wheels is going to want to spin more quickly than the other. At this point, the captive pinions come into play, allowing the two drive pinions to spin at slightly different speeds whilst still transmitting torque to them. Clever. You can tell if your vehicle's differential is working properly by jacking the driven axle up off the ground and spinning one wheel. When you do, because the gearbox is stationary, it holds the ring gear solid, the captive pinions spin in opposite directions, and the other wheel on the axle spins the other way around. This also explains why a two-wheel-drive vehicle can get into trouble when one wheel has less friction with the ground than the other. The open differential cannot compensate for this. If one drive pinion is held solid compared to the other, then all the input gets redirected to the drive pinion that has the least resistance. This is why when you gun a two-wheel-drive car with one wheel on ice and the other on the road, the wheel on the ice spins and the wheel on the road doesn't. You don't go anywhere because all the engine power is directed to the wheel with least resistance - the one on the ice. Imagine the same scenario on a four-wheel-drive vehicle that has open differentials on the front and rear. If you're off-roading in such a vehicle and get it into a situation where one front wheel and one rear wheel are off the ground, you're stuck. The differentials will spin the airborne wheels and send no torque to the ones on the ground. That leads us nicely on to the next topic :

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Limited-slip differentials Physically there's not a lot of difference in the design of a limited-slip differential. It still has all the components of an open differential but there is two crucial extra elements. The first are spring pressure plates which are a pair of springs and pressure plates nestled in the cage between the two drive pinions. Page | These push the drive pinions outwards where the second extra element comes into play - clutch packs. The 32 backside of the drive pinions have friction material on them which presses against clutch plates built into the cage. This means that the clutch is always going to try to behave as if the car was moving in a straight line by attempting to make both output pinions spin at the same speed as the ring gear and cage. However, when a car with a limited-slip differential goes into a corner, there are enough forces at play that the drive pinions begin to slip against the clutch material, thus allowing them to turn at different speeds again. The stiffness of the spring pack coupled with the friction of the clutch pack together determine the amount of torque required to overcome the clutch. So lets go back to our hapless driver stuck with one wheel on the ice and another on the road. With a limited-slip differential, because of the spring- and clutch-packs, even though one wheel is on the ice, the differential is going to attempt to spin both drive pinions at the same speed. With low engine revs and steady throttle control, the wheel on the road will get enough spin to move the vehicle forwards. If the engine is revved hard though, it can still generate sufficient torque to overcome the clutch pack and once again, only the wheel on the ice will spin. To get around this, it's a good idea to try to pull away in second gear - that gives the limited-slip differential a chance to do its job. The render below shows the generic open differential from above modified to be a limited-slip differential.

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IC ENGINES
Engine layouts
Below are some illustrations of the most common types of cylinder layout you'll find in engines Page | today. Singles are typically used in motorbikes, snowblowers, chainsaws etc. V-twins are also found 33 in motorbikes. The triple is almost unique to Triumph motorbikes where they call it the Speed Triple, or the 675. Inline-fours are the mainstay of car engines, as well as being found in some motorbikes too such as the BMW K1200S. Inline fives used to be used a lot in Audis but have found a new home in current Volvos. The V5 is something you'll find in some VWs. The V6 has the benefits of being smoother than an inline-four but without the fuel economy issues of a V8. Boxer engines are found in BMW motorbikes (twins) and Porsches and Subarus (fours and sixes). You had no idea, did you?

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Top Dead Centre (TDC) and ignition timing

When a piston in an engine reaches the top of its travel, that point is known as Top Dead Centre or TDC. This is important to know because I don't think any engine actually fires the spark plug with the pistons at TDC. More often than not, they fire slightly before TDC. So how does your ignition system Page | work, and what is ignition timing all about? 34 Well generating the spark is the easy part. The electrical system in your car supplies voltage to your coil and ignition unit. The engine will have a trigger for each cylinder, be it a mechanical trigger (points), electronic module or crank trigger. Whatever it is, at that point, the engine effectively sends a signal to the coil to discharge into the high voltage system. That charge travels into the distributor cap and is routed to the relevant spark plug where it is turned into a spark. The key to this, though, is the timing of the spark in relation to the position of the piston in the cylinder. Hence ignition timing. Having the spark ignite the fuel-air mixture too soon is basically the same as detonation and is bad for all the mechanical components of your engine. Having the spark come along too late will cause it to try to ignite the fuel-air mixture after the piston has already started to recede down the cylinder, which is inefficient and loses power. Timing the spark nowadays is usually done with the engine management system. It measures airflow, ambient temperature, takes input from knock sensors and literally dozens of sensors all over the engine. It then has an ignition timing map built into its memory and it cross references the input from all the sensors to determine the precise time that it should fire the spark plug, based on the ignition timing map. At 3000rpm, in a 4 cylinder engine, it does this about 100 times a second. In older systems, the spark timing was done using simple mechanical systems which had nowhere near the ability to compensate for the all the variables involved in a running combustion engine.

Typically as an engine revs quicker, the ignition timing needs to advance because the spark needs to get to the cylinder more quickly due to the engine running faster. In modern systems, this is all taken account of in the ignition timing map. On older mechanical system, they used mechanical or vacuum advance systems, so that the more vacuum generated in the intake manifold (due to the engine running quicker), the more advanced the timing became.

Spark plugs
And engine without a spark plug is useless, unless it's a diesel engine in which case it uses a glowplug instead. But we're talking about regular petrol engines here so the next topic to get to grips with is the spark plug. It does exactly what it says on the tin - it's a plug that generates a spark. Duh. So why spend time talking about it? Well with apologies to George Orwell not all spark plugs are created equal. Some are more equal than others. They'll all do the job but the more you pay, the better the plug. All spark plugs share the same basic design and construction though.

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The high voltage from your vehicle's high-tension electrical system is fed into the terminal at the top of the spark plug. It travels down through the core of the plug (normally via some noise-suppression components to prevent electrical noise) and arrives at the centre electrode at the bottom where it jumps to the ground electrode creating a spark. The crush washer is designed to be crushed by tightening the spark plug down when it's screwed into the cylinder head, and as such, it helps keep the screw threads under tension to stop the spark plug from shaking loose or backing out. The insulator basically keeps the high-tension charge away from the cylinder head so that the spark plug doesn't ground before it gets a chance to generate the spark.

The type of plug I've illustrated here is known as a projected nose type plug, because the tip extends below the bottom of the spark plug itself. The other main type of spark plug has the centre electrode recessed into the plug itself and merely grounds to the collar at the bottom. The advantage of the projected nose type is that the spark is better exposed to the fuel-air mixture.

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Ground electrode (ground strap)

types.There are plenty of different types of grounding electrodes kicking around in spark plug designs nowadays, from 'Y' shaped electrodes (like SplitFire plugs) to grooved electrodes like you'll find on Champion plugs all the way up to triple-electrode plugs like the high-end Bosch items. Page | They're all designed to try to get a better spark, and to that end, you'll now find all sorts of exotic 36 materials turning up too. Titanium plugs, for example, have better electrical conductivity than brass and steel plugs, and the theory is that they'll generate a stronger, more reliable spark. Gapping a spark plug. Gapping a spark plug is the process of ensuring the gap between the two electrodes is correct for the type of engine the plug is going to be used in. Too large a gap and the spark will be weak. Too small and the spark might jump across the gap too early. Generally speaking, the factory-set spark plug gap is just fine, but if you're running an older engine, or a highly tuned engine, then you need to pay attention to the gap. Feeler gauges are used to measure the gap, and a gapping tool is used to bend the outer electrode so that the gap is correct. Heat ranges. Something that is often overlooked in spark plugs is their heat rating or heat range. The term "heat range" refers to the relative temperature of the tip of the spark plug when its working. The hot and cold classifications often cause confusion because a 'hot' spark plug is normally used in a 'cold' (low horsepower) engine and vice versa. The term actually refers to the thermal characteristics of the plug itself, specifically its ability to dissipate heat into the cooling system. A cold plug can get rid of heat very quickly and should be used in engines that run hot and lean. A hot plug takes longer to cool down and should be used in lower compression engines where heat needs to be retained to prevent combustion byproduct buildup.

Carburetors

A carburettor is basically a shaped tube. The shape of the tube is designed to swirl the incoming air and generate a vacuum in a section called the venturi pipe (or just the venturi). In the side of the venturi is a fuel jet which is basically a tiny hole connected to the float chamber via a pipe. It's normally made of brass and has a miniscule hole in the end of it which determines the flow of fuel through it. In more complex carburettors, this is an adjustable needle valve where a screw on the outside of the carburettor can screw a needle in and out of the valve to give some tuning control over the fuel flow. The fuel is pulled through the jet by the vacuum created in the venturi. At the bottom of the tube is a throttle plate or throttle butterfly

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which is basically a flat circular plate that pivots along its centreline. It is connected mechanically to the accelerator pedal or twist-grip throttle via the throttle cable. The more you push on the accelerator or twist open the throttle, the more the throttle butterfly opens. This allows more air in which creates more vacuum, which draws more fuel through the fuel jet and gives a larger fuel-air charge to the cylinder, resulting in acceleration. Page | When the throttle is closed, the throttle butterfly in the carburettor is also closed. This means the engine is trying to suck fuel-air mix and generating a vacuum behind the butterfly valve so the 37 regular fuel jet won't work. To allow the engine to idle without shutting off completely, a second fuel jet known as the idle valve is screwed into the venturi downwind of the throttle butterfly. This allows just enough fuel to get into the cylinders to keep the engine ticking over.

Float and diaphragm chambers.

To make sure a carburettor has a good, constant supply of fuel to be sucked through the fuel jets, it has a float chamber or float bowl. This is a reservoir of petrol that is constantly topped up from the fuel tank. Petrol goes through an inline filter and a strainer to make sure it's clean of contaminants and is then deposited into the float chamber. A sealed plastic box is pivotted at one end and floats on top of the fuel. Believe it or not, this is called the float. A simple lever connects to the float and controls a valve on the fuel intake line. As the fuel drops in the float chamber, the float drops with it which opens the valve and allows more fuel in. As the level goes up, the float goes up and the valve is restricted. This means that the level in the float chamber is kept constant no matter how much fuel the carburettor is demanding through the fuel jets. The quicker the level tries to drop, the more the intake valve is opened and the more petrol comes in to keep the fuel level up. This is why carburettors don't work too well when they're tipped over - the float chamber leaks or empties out resulting in a fuel spill - something you don't get with injectors. To combat this, another type of chamber is used where carburettors can't be guaranteed to be upright (like in chainsaws). These use diaphragm chambers instead. The principle is more or less the same though. The chamber is full of fuel and has a rubber diaphragm across the top of it with the other side exposed to ambient air pressure. As the fuel level drops in the chamber, the outside air pressure forces the diaphragm down. Because it's connected to an intake valve in the same way that the float is in a float chamber, as the diaphragm is sucked inwards, it opens the intake valve and more fuel is let in to replenish the chamber. Diaphragm chambers are normally spill-proof.

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Valves and valve mechanisms.

If you've got this far down the page, hopefully you understand that the valves are what let the fuel- Page | air mixture into the cylinder, and let the exhaust out. Seems simple enough, but there are some 38 interesting differences in the various types of valve mechanism.

Spring-return valves.
Spring return valves are about the most commonly-used and most basic type of valvetrain in engines today. Their operation is simplicity itself and there are only really three variations of the same style. The basic premise here is that the spinning camshaft operates the valves by pushing them open, and valve return springs force them closed. The cam lobes either operate directly on the top of the valve itself, or in some cases, on a rocker arm which pivots and pushes on the top of the valve. The three variations of this type of valve-train are based on the combination of rocker arms (or not) and the position of the camshaft. The most basic type has the camshaft at the top of the engine with the cam lobes operating directly on the tops of the valves. The second more complex type still has the camshaft at the top of the engine, but the cam lobes operate rocker arms, which in turn pivot and operate on the tops of the valves. With some of these designs, the rocker arm is pivoted in the middle (as shown below) and with other designed, it's pivoted at one end and the cam lobe operates on it at the midpoint. Think of a fat bloke bouncing in the middle of a diving board whilst the tip of the board hits a swimmer on the head and you'll get the general idea. The third type which you'll find in some motorcycle engines and many boxer engines are pushrodactivated valves. The camshaft is actually directly geared off the crank at the bottom of the engine and the cam lobes push on pushrods which run up the sides of the engine. The top of the pushrod then pushes on a rocker arm, which finally pivots and operates on the top of the valve. The image here shows the three derivatives in their most basic form so you can see the differences between them. Note that the pushrod type shows the camshaft in the wrong place simply for the purpose of getting it into the image. In reality the camshaft in this system is right at the bottom of the engine near the crank. The rocker arms shown here are also called fingers, or followers depending on who you talk to.

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Tappet Valves
Tappet valves aren't really a unique type of valve but a derivative of spring-return valves. For the most part, the direct spring return valve described above wouldn't act directly on the top of the valve itself, but rather on an oil-filled tappet. The tappet is basically an upside-down bucket that covers the top of the valve stem and contains the spring. It's normally filled with oil through a small hole when the engine is pressurised. The purpose of tappets is two-fold. The oil in them helps quiet down the valvetrain noise, and the top of the tappet gives a more uniform surface for the cam lobe to work on. From a maintenance point of view, tappets are the items which wear and are a lot easier to swap out than entire valve assemblies. The image on the left shows a simple tappet valve assembly. I've rendered the tappet slightly transparent so you can see the return spring inside.

Desmodromic Valves

Desmodromic valve systems are unique to Ducati motorbikes. From the Ducati website: The word 'desmodromic' is derived from two Greek roots, desmos (controlled, linked) and dromos (course, track). It refers to the exclusive valve control system used in Ducati engines: both valve movements (opening and closing) are 'operated." Classy, but what does it mean. Well in both the above systems, the closure mechanism on the valve relies on mechanical springs or hydraulics. There's nothing to actually force the valve to close. With the Ducati Desmodromic system, the camshaft has two lobes per valve, and the only spring is there to take up the slack in the closing system. That's right; Ducati valves are forced closed by the camshaft. The marketing people

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will tell you it's one of the reasons Ducati motorbike engines have been able to rev much higher than their Japanese counterparts. The idea is that with springs especially, once you get to a certain speed, you're bound by the metallurgy of the spring - it can no longer expand to full length in the time between cylinder strokes and so you get 'valve float' where the valve never truly closes. With Desmodromic valves, that never happens because a second closing rocker arm hooks under the top Page | of the valve stem and jams it upwards to force the valve closed. In fact, the stroke length, rods, and pistons all play their part in valve timing and maximum engine speed - it's not just the springs and 40 valve float. This is why F1 cars use such a small stroke and pneumatic valves springs. In truth, both systems, spring or Desmodromic only work well up to a limit. Newer Japanese bikes have engines that can rev to the same limit as a Ducati just using spring-return valves. You can see the basic layout of a desmodromic valve on the right. As the cam spins, the opening lobe hits the upper rocker arm which pivots and pushes the valve down and open. As the cam continues to spin, the closing lobe hits the lower rocker arm which pivots and hooks the valve back up, closing it. The red return spring is merely there to hold the valve closed for the next cycle and doesn't provide any springing force to the closing mechanism. This is a fairly simple layout for the purposes of illustration. The real engines have Desmo-due and Desmo-quattro valve systems in them where pairs of valves are opened and closed together via the same mechanism.

Engine Air cooling

You don't see this much on car engines at all now. The most famous cars it was used on were rear-engined boxers like the original VW Beetle, Karmann Ghia, and Porsche Roadsters. It is still used a lot on motorbike engines because it's a very simple method of cooling. For air cooling to work, you need two things - fins (lots of them) and good airflow. An aircooled engine is normally easy to spot because of the fins built into the outside of the cylinders. The idea is simple - the fins act as heat sinks, getting hot with the engine but transferring the heat to the air as the air passes through and between them. Air-cooled engines don't work particularly well in long, hot traffic jams though, because obviously there's very little air passing over the fins. They are good in the winter when the air is coldest, but that illustrates a weak spot in the whole design. Air cooled engines can't regulate the overall temperature of the cylinder heads and engine, so the temperature tends to swing up and down depending on engine load, air temperature and forward speed. A famous problem with air-cooling is associated with V-twin motorcycles. Because the rear

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cylinder is tucked in the frame behind the front cylinder, its supply of cool, uninterrupted air is extremely limited and so in these designs, the rear cylinder tends to run extremely hot compared to the front. The image on the right is Ducati and shows the engine from the Monster 695 motorbike. It's a good example of modern air-cooled design and you can see the fins on the engine are all angled Page | towards the direction of travel so the air can flow through them freely.
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Oil cooling
To some extent, all engines have oil-cooling. It's one of the functions of the engine oil - to transfer heat away from the moving parts and back to the sump where fins on the outside of the sump can help transfer that heat out into the air. But for some engines, the oil system itself is designed to be a more efficient cooling system. BMW 'R' motorbikes are known for this (their nickname is 'oilheads'). As the oil moves around the engine, at some points it's directed through cooling passageways close to the cylinder bores to pick up heat. From there it goes to an oil radiator placed out in the airflow to disperse the heat into the air before returning into the core of the engine. Actually, in the case of the 'R' motorbikes, they're air- and oil-cooled as they have the air-cooling fins on the cylinders too. For a quick primer on how the radiator itself works.

Water cooling
This is by far and away the most common method of cooling and engine down. With water cooling, a coolant mixture is pumped around pipes and passageways inside the engine separate to the oil, before passing out to a radiator. The radiator itself is made of metal, and it forces the coolant to flow through long passageways each of which have lots of metal fins attached to the outside giving a huge surface area. The coolant transfers its heat into the metal of the radiator, which in turn transfers the heat into the surround air through the fins - essentially just like the air-cooled engine fins. The coolant itself is normally a mixture of distilled water and an antifreeze component. The water needs to be distilled because if you just use tap water, all the minerals in it will deposit on the inside of the cooling system and mess it up. The antifreeze is in the mix, obviously to stop the liquid from freezing in cold weather. If it froze up, you'd have no cooling at all and the engine would overheat and weld itself together in a matter of minutes. The antifreeze mix normally also has other chemicals in it for corrosion resistance too and when mixed correctly it raises the boiling point of water, so even in the warmer months of the year, a cooling system always needs a water / antifreeze mix in it.

The coolant system in a typical car is under pressure once the engine is running, as a byproduct of the water pump and the expansion that water undergoes as it heats up. Because of the coolant mixture, the water in the cooling system can get over 100C without boiling which is why it's never a

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good idea to open the radiator cap immediately after you've turned the engine off. If you do, a superheated mixture of steam and coolant will spray out and you'll spend some quality time in a burns unit.
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The complexities of water cooling. Water cooling is the most common method of cooling and engine down, but it's also the most complicated. For example you don't want the coolant flowing through the radiator as soon as you start the engine. If it did, the engine would take a long time to come up to operating temperature which causes issues with the emissions systems, the drivability of the engine and the comfort of the passengers. In truly cold weather, most water cooling systems are so efficient that if the coolant flowed through the radiator at startup, the engine would literally never get warm. So this is where the thermostat comes in to play. The thermostat is a small device that normally sits in the system in-line to the radiator. It is a springloaded valve actuated by a bimetallic spring. In layman's terms, the hotter it gets, the wider open the valve is. When you start the engine, the thermostat is cold and so it's closed. This redirects the flow of coolant back into the engine and bypasses the radiator completely but because the cabin heater radiator is on a separate circuit, the coolant is allowed to flow through it. It has a much smaller surface area and its cooling effect is nowhere near as great. This allows the engine to build up heat quite quickly. If you look at the first of the two diagrams on the right, you can see the representation of the coolant flow in a cold engine.

As the coolant heats up, the thermostat begins to open and the coolant is allowed to pass out to the radiator where it dumps heat out into the air before returning to the engine block. Once the engine is fully hot, the coolant is at operating temperature and the thermostat is permanently open, redirecting almost all the coolant flow through the radiator. If you look at the second of the two diagrams on the right, you can see the representation of the coolant flow in a cold engine. It's the action of the thermostat that allows a water-cooled engine to better regulate the heat in the engine block. Unlike an air-cooled engine, the thermostat can dynamically alter the flow of coolant depending on engine load and air temperature to maintain an even temperature.

The radiator fan. In the good old days, car radiators had belt-driven fans that spun behind the radiator as fast as the engine was spinning. The fan is there to draw the warm air away from the back of the radiator to help it to work efficiently. The only problem with the old way of doing it was that the fan ran all the time the engine was running, and stopped when the engine stopped. This

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meant that the radiator was having air drawn through it at the same rate in freezing cold conditions as it was on a hot day, and when you parked the car, the radiator basically cooked because it had no airflow while it was cooling down. So nowadays, the radiator fan is electric and is activated by a temperature sensor in the coolant. When the temperature gets above a certain level, the fan comes on and because it's electric, this can happen even once you've stopped the engine. This is why Page | sometimes on a hot day, you can park up, turn off, and hear the radiator fan still going. It's also the reason there are big stickers around it in the engine bay because if you park and open the hood to 43 go and start messing with something, the fan might still come on and neatly separate you from your fingers.

The cabin heater. Most water-cooled car engines actually have a second, smaller radiator that the coolant is allowed to flow through all the time for in-car heating. It's a small heat-exchanger in the air vent system. When you select warm air with the heater controls, you will either be allowing the coolant to flow through that radiator via an inline valve in the cooling system (the old way of doing it) or moving a flap to allow the warm air already coming off that radiator to mix in with the cold air from outside. It's all these combinations and permutations of plumbing in a water-cooled engine that make it so relatively complex. The rendering below shows the basic elements a water-cooled engine.

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