Defining the automotive experience for a digital world
Internal combustion engines are at the heart of most modern automobiles. These complex machines essentially turn the chemical energy stored in fuels like gasoline and diesel into the kinetic energy your car or truck needs to move down the road.
While the history of the internal combustion engine lacks any single flashpoint, the first successful designs were commercialized in the 1860s after the widespread development of petroleum resources. By the turn of the century, many of the designs and technologies we use today had already appeared.
Heater cores are like tiny radiators that use the hot coolant from your engine’s cooling system to warm up the interior of your car.
Transmissions represent one of the two main components in automotive powertrains. They can be either manual or automatic, but there are also a few other variations on the theme.
The MacPherson strut was invented in the 1950s, but it didn’t really pick up steam until a few decades later. Today, MacPherson strut suspension systems are exceedingly popular, especially in smaller cars. They are both simpler and cheaper than other suspensions, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they are superior.
Water pumps have been around a lot longer than the internal combustion engines that they help keep cool.
Mass air flow sensors come in a handful of different flavors, but they’re all designed to help your ECU determine the mass of the air that’s entering your engine. Although they are relatively simple, these innocuous little components are instrumental in the proper operation of your engine.
Catalytic converters are major components in both exhaust and emission control systems. Through oxidation and reduction, they turn harmful pollutants into less dangerous compounds. They are also prime targets for theft due to the precious metals that they contain.
Monocoque designs originated in aircraft construction, and they first appeared in the automotive industry in the 1920s, but body-on-frame continued to dominate for decades. Today, a modified type of monocoque construction, known as unibody, is dominant.
In simplest terms, a chassis is “everything but the body” in a vehicle that utilizes body-on-frame construction techniques, but it is a little more complex than that.
