At first glance, the concept of engine compression is simple enough:It's the ratio of the volume of the combustion chamber and bore when thepiston is at bottom dead center (BDC) versus when it is at ...

As you may know, an engine's compression ratio is directly linked to its combustion efficiency. All else being equal, higher-compression engines tend to make more power while offering better fuel ...

A.Here's a pressure-volume diagram for a combustion engine. Although rough, it is an approximation of the so-called air-standard cycle. '' Point (a) is at atmospheric pressure, after which the air is ...

Gearheads and faithful Jalopnik readers already know the basics of an engine's bore and stroke, but for those that might be new here, let's dip our toes in the shallow end. An engine's bore refers to ...

Practical techniques for hand-propping and other manual engine starts when an electric starter isn't available. The post ...

A fundamental difference between gasoline and diesel engines is that a gasoline engine uses spark ignition while a diesel engine uses compression ignition. Before we delve deeper, let's understand how ...

Two-stroke engines have steadily fallen out of favor over the last 50 years or so. While they sport great power-to-weight ratios and are often much simpler mechanically than their four-stroke ...

Joel was previously an editor at Autoblog for nearly a decade, covering cars from humble economy hatchbacks to high-end sports cars. He has extensive driving experience with plenty of track time, and ...