Make your Car engine
perform more efficiently
Increase displacement - More
displacement means more power because you can burn more gas during each
revolution of the Car engine. You can increase displacement by making the
cylinders bigger or by adding more cylinders. 12 cylinders seems to be the
practical limit.
Increase the compression ratio - Higher compression
ratios produce more power, up to a point. The more you compress the
air/fuel mixture, however, the more likely it is to spontaneously burst
into flame (prior to the spark plug igniting it). Higher octane gasolines
prevent this sort of early combustion. That is why high-performance cars
generally need high octane gasoline - their engines are using higher
compression ratios to get more power.
Stuff more into each
cylinder - If you can cram more air (and therefore fuel) into a cylinder
of a given size, you can get more power from the cylinder (in the same way
that you would by increasing the size of the cylinder). Turbo chargers and
super chargers pressurize the incoming air to effectively cram more air
into a cylinder.
Cool the incoming air - Compressing air raises its
temperature. You would like to have the coolest air possible in the
cylinder because the hotter the air is the less it will expand when
combustion takes place. Therefore many turbo charged and super charged
cars have an intercooler. An intercooler is a special radiator through
which the compressed air passes to cool it off before it enters the
cylinder.
Let air come in more easily - As a piston moves down in
the intake stroke, air resistance can rob power from the car engine. Air
resistance can be lessened dramatically by putting two intake valves in
each cylinder. Some newer cars are also using polished intake manifolds to
eliminate air resistance there. Bigger air filters can also improve air
flow.
Let exhaust exit more easily - If air resistance makes it
hard for exhaust to exit a cylinder, it robs the engine of power. Air
resistance can be lessened by adding a second exhaust valve to each
cylinder (a car with 2 intake and 2 exhaust values has 4 valves per
cylinder, which improves performance - when you hear a car ad tell you the
car has 4 cylinders and 16 valves, what the ad is saying is that the
engine has four valves per cylinder). If the exhaust pipe is too small or
the muffler has a lot of air resistance then this can cause back-pressure
which has the same effect. High-performance exhaust systems use headers,
big tail pipes and free-flowing mufflers to eliminate back-pressure in the
exhaust system. When you hear that a car has "Dual Exhaust", the goal is
to improve the flow of exhaust by having two exhaust pipes instead of one.
Make everything lighter - Lightweight parts help the car engine
perform better. Each time a piston changes direction it uses up energy to
stop the travel in one direction and start it in another. The lighter the
piston, the less energy it takes.
Inject the fuel - Fuel injection
allows very precise metering of fuel to each cylinder. This improves
performance and fuel economy.
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