how does a car work???

Question

i need to know what the gas in a car does.

Answer 1

from howstuffworks.com:
"The purpose of a gasoline car engine is to convert gasoline into motion so that your car can move. Currently the easiest way to create motion from gasoline is to burn the gasoline inside an engine. Therefore, a car engine is an internal combustion engine -- combustion takes place internally."
check out the website. it has good diagrams as well.

Answer 2

The gas is injected into a cylinder. The cylinder has a piston, intake and exhaust valves and a spark plug. When the piston is at the top of it's stroke both valves are closed and the gas is pressurized. At that moment the spark plug ignites the gas causing it to explode. The burning fuel expands releasing it's energy and pushes the piston forward. The piston is connected to a piston rod. The piston rod is connected to an offset shaft called the crank shaft. When the piston rod pushes the crank shaft the crank shaft turns translating the up and down motion of the pistons into a circular motion to drive the car. After the piston has moved the length possible the exhaust valve opens so when the piston starts to move back up it can let the used remains from the gas escape. Then the exhaust valve closes and the intake valve opens to let in new gas mixed with air to be compressed and ignited. Also in a diesel engine the compression is strong enough to ignite the fuel without the use of a spark plug. This probably isn't perfect but it's pretty close on the basic concepts of how an engine works and what the gas does.

Answer 3

The simple answer to your question is that gasoline provides the combustible material that an internal combustion engine needs in order to run.

To break it down further, let's start with one of the cylinders in an engine. Each cylinder has a piston inside it that moves up and down, a spark plug at the top in the center, and 2 or 4 valves at the top on either side of the spark plug. They operate on a 4-cycle system. Here's how the cycles work.

INTAKE CYCLE: The piston starts at the top of its travel but is now traveling downward. As it travels downward, 1 or 2 intake valves open and shoot a mixture of gasoline and air (usually at a ratio of 1 part gasoline to 15 parts air) into the cylinder.

COMPRESSION CYCLE: The valves have now closed and the cylinder begins to travel back up, so now that there is no place for the gas and air mixture to escape it gets compressed as the cylinder goes up to the top of its travel.

IGNITION CYCLE: When the piston hits the top of its travel, the spark plug produce a high-energy spark that ignites the gas and air mixture, causing it to explode inside the cylinder. That explosion forces the cylinder back down.

EXHAUST CYCLE: Once the cylinder hits the bottom of its travel, 1 or 2 exhaust valves open, and the exhaust from the explosion is forced out of the cylinder as it travels back up to the top of its travel.

Now, imagine a 4-cylinder engine. To make the engine run as smoothly and efficiently as possible, the 4 cylinders do not do the same things at the same times. A 4-cylinder engine is designed so the "outside" cylinders, also known as cylinders 1 and 4, are all the way up while the inside cylinders, also known as 2 and 3, are all the way down. When cylinders 1 and 4 are at the top of their travel, one of them is igniting while the other one is pushing exhaust fumes out (cylinders 2 and 3 work on the same principle). So what you get is cylinders igniting in the order 1-2-4-3. Bear in mind that each cylinder ignites about 5 times per second on average when the engine is idling, so it all happens VERY fast.

All 4 pistons are connected to a drive shaft, which is connected to the transmission at the back of the engine. A transmission is simply a complicated box of gears that is designed to make the car move. When a car is at a dead stop, it requires a lot of engine power to make the car move, so first gear is actually a system of gears that makes the wheels turn one rotation for every 3, 4, 5 or 6 rotations of the drive shaft in the engine. As the car gets moving, the gear ratios shift so that it takes fewer turns of the drive shaft for every one turn of the wheels.

The drive shaft is also attached to a very large gear called a flywheel, which is near the front of the engine. When you stick your key in the ignition and turn it all the way clockwise, the battery sends a signal to your starter and to your ignition system. The starter shoots out a little gear that spins the flywheel (making the entire engine turn) and the battery supplies the spark to the spark plug until the engine "catches," which means it can now run on its own. At that point, you let the key go back to the run position, the starter disengages, and the battery doesn't send any electricity to anything anymore because your alternator (which used to be more appropriately called a generator) which is one of the gadgets on the serpentine belt of your engine, is now producing electricity to run everything the car has that requires electricity.

Does that give you a basic idea of how a car engine works?

Answer 4

1. Fill the gas tank.
2. Pump the gas from the tank to the carburetor or fuel injector.
3. Vaporize the gas with the carburetor or fuel injector inside the cylinder of an engine.
4. Compress the vaporized mixture of gas and air.
5. Ignite the compressed mixture.
6. The ignition of the fuel will then turn into rotational energy via a rotating shaft.
7. The rotating shaft will transfer the energy to either a clutch or torque converter assembly that will couple the engine to the transmission.
8. And then to a set of gears that are called a transmission that regulate engine power to the conditions of the motion of the car.
9. The transmission will then direct energy to a differential and shaft assemblies.
10. Which will then finally find its way to the tires to rotate them.

Answer 5

in the engine of a care there are cylinders if you have a V6 or V8 or I4 all define how many cylinders you have. V6 is 6 cylinders in a V shape and V8 is 8 cylinders in a V shape then I4 is 4 cylinders but IN-LINE. ON the top and side of each cylinder there are ports where fuel mixed with air is inserted into the cylinder and the other port is where the spark plug is. The Spark PLug is what makes a spart to ignite the fuel and air to create combustion. from the bottom of each cylinder there is a Piston which is attached to a rod everytime 1 cylinder creates combustion the piston is pushed down spinning the rod making power and after the next cylinder has a combustion it spins the rod more pushing the first piston back up. This happens all throughout the cylinders but always one after another they never combust at the same time (Sequence). After the combustion occurs the mixed air/fuel (burnt mixed) is sucked out through the other port in each cylinder and is referred to as carbon dioxide C02 and sent out through your exhaust pipe on the back of your car unless you have a turbo which rams this used air back into the cylinder but that is more than the basics of the engine.

Answer 6

You might want to know what's going on simply out of curiosity. Or perhaps you are buying a new car, and you hear things like "3.0 liter V-6" and "dual overhead cams" and "tuned port fuel injection." What does all of that mean?

If you have ever wondered about this kind of stuff, then read on -- In this article, we'll discuss the basic idea behind an engine and then go into detail about how all the pieces fit together, what can go wrong and how to increase performance.


The purpose of a gasoline car engine is to convert gasoline into motion so that your car can move. Currently the easiest way to create motion from gasoline is to burn the gasoline inside an engine. Therefore, a car engine is an internal combustion engine -- combustion takes place internally. Two things to note:

There are different kinds of internal combustion engines. Diesel engines are one form and gas turbine engines are another. See also the articles on HEMI engines, rotary engines and two-stroke engines. Each has its own advantages and disadvantages.

There is such a thing as an external combustion engine. A steam engine in old-fashioned trains and steam boats is the best example of an external combustion engine. The fuel (coal, wood, oil, whatever) in a steam engine burns outside the engine to create steam, and the steam creates motion inside the engine. Internal combustion is a lot more efficient (takes less fuel per mile) than external combustion, plus an internal combustion engine is a lot smaller than an equivalent external combustion engine. This explains why we don't see any cars from Ford and GM using steam engines.

Inside a typical car engine
Almost all cars today use a reciprocating internal combustion engine because this engine is:

Relatively efficient (compared to an external combustion engine)
Relatively inexpensive (compared to a gas turbine)
Relatively easy to refuel (compared to an electric car)
These advantages beat any other existing technology for moving a car around.
To understand the basic idea behind how a reciprocating internal combustion engine works, it is helpful to have a good mental image of how "internal combustion" works. One good example is an old Revolutionary War cannon. You have probably seen these in movies, where the soldiers load the cannon with gun powder and a cannonball and light it. That is internal combustion, but it is hard to imagine that having anything to do with engines.

A more relevant example might be this: Say that you took a big piece of plastic sewer pipe, maybe 3 inches in diameter and 3 feet long, and you put a cap on one end of it. Then say that you sprayed a little WD-40 into the pipe, or put in a tiny drop of gasoline. Then say that you stuffed a potato down the pipe.

am not recommending that you do this! But say you did... What we have here is a device commonly known as a potato cannon. When you introduce a spark, you can ignite the fuel.

What is interesting, and the reason we are talking about such a device, is that a potato cannon can launch a potato about 500 feet through the air! There is a huge amount of energy in a tiny drop of gasoline.


Internal Combustion
The potato cannon uses the basic principle behind any reciprocating internal combustion engine: If you put a tiny amount of high-energy fuel (like gasoline) in a small, enclosed space and ignite it, an incredible amount of energy is released in the form of expanding gas. You can use that energy to propel a potato 500 feet. In this case, the energy is translated into potato motion. You can also use it for more interesting purposes. For example, if you can create a cycle that allows you to set off explosions like this hundreds of times per minute, and if you can harness that energy in a useful way, what you have is the core of a car engine!

Almost all cars currently use what is called a four-stroke combustion cycle to convert gasoline into motion. The four-stroke approach is also known as the Otto cycle, in honor of Nikolaus Otto, who invented it in 1867. The four strokes are illustrated in Figure 1. They are:

Intake stroke
Compression stroke
Combustion stroke
Exhaust stroke

Figure 1
You can see in the figure that a device called a piston replaces the potato in the potato cannon. The piston is connected to the crankshaft by a connecting rod. As the crankshaft revolves, it has the effect of "resetting the cannon." Here's what happens as the engine goes through its cycle:
The piston starts at the top, the intake valve opens, and the piston moves down to let the engine take in a cylinder-full of air and gasoline. This is the intake stroke. Only the tiniest drop of gasoline needs to be mixed into the air for this to work. (Part 1 of the figure)
Then the piston moves back up to compress this fuel/air mixture. Compression makes the explosion more powerful. (Part 2 of the figure)
When the piston reaches the top of its stroke, the spark plug emits a spark to ignite the gasoline. The gasoline charge in the cylinder explodes, driving the piston down. (Part 3 of the figure)
Once the piston hits the bottom of its stroke, the exhaust valve opens and the exhaust leaves the cylinder to go out the tailpipe. (Part 4 of the figure)
Now the engine is ready for the next cycle, so it intakes another charge of air and gas.
Notice that the motion that comes out of an internal combustion engine is rotational, while the motion produced by a potato cannon is linear (straight line). In an engine the linear motion of the pistons is converted into rotational motion by the crankshaft. The rotational motion is nice because we plan to turn (rotate) the car's wheels with it anyway.

Now let's look at all the parts that work together to make this happen......

You can continue reading at this site... This is one of the most amazing sites I have seen! It also has animated live pictures to show you what they are talking about. When you are done reading this you will truley understand how a car works! Hope this helps, Take Care
http://auto.howstuffworks.com/engine.htm

Answer 7

Gasoline is the fuel consumed in an internal combustion engine to produce the rotating force needed to turn the wheels of the car and produce motion. The fuel is converted to a vapor or spray that is ignited electrically, generating a rapidly expanding gas. It is not an explosion but simply a rapid burn.

Answer 8

To produce power to drive the vehicle forward, energy must be transformed from 1 state to another. Gasoline is the beginning state in this combustion reaction. The combustion of gasoline is basically a controlled explosion, limited by the amount of gasoline, the confined space of the combustion chamber, and the amount of air introduced. Alternative fuels, such as hydrogen or electricity have been used to power vehicles as well.

Answer 9

When you say, "gas in a car" are you referring to gasoline, or when my friend Eric farts when I'm giving him a ride somewhere? The first one fuels the car's internal combustion engine, while the second causes everyone to roll down the windows as quickly as possible while almost vomiting.

Answer 10

the gas goes into the pistons. The pistons move up and down when they are down it compresses the gas. then the spark plug egnites the gas and makes a small explosiopn forcing the piston back up. This happens at a very rapid pace.