ClassX Video Lessons Youtube Channel SmarterEveryDay This TRANSPARENT ENGINE is Fascinating (How Engines Work) – Smarter Every Day 292
Welcome to an exciting exploration of internal combustion engines! In this article, we’ll dive into the fascinating world of engines, focusing on a unique transparent engine that allows us to see the inner workings of this incredible technology. Join me as we embark on a journey to understand how engines function, with insights from a visit to a remarkable garage in Nebraska.
Imagine being able to see the pistons moving inside an engine as it operates. That’s exactly what a creative individual named Brian has achieved with his transparent engine. This engine is based on a standard 5.3 LS engine, a common model produced by General Motors. Brian transformed a broken engine into a visual masterpiece by replacing parts with transparent materials, allowing us to observe the engine’s internal processes.
To appreciate the transparent engine, it’s essential to understand the four-stroke cycle that powers most internal combustion engines. This cycle consists of four stages: intake, compression, power, and exhaust. Let’s break down each stage:
During the intake stroke, the intake valve opens, allowing a mixture of fuel and air to enter the cylinder. The piston moves downward, creating a vacuum that draws in this mixture.
Next, the intake valve closes, and the piston moves upward, compressing the fuel-air mixture. This compression increases the mixture’s potential energy, preparing it for ignition.
The power stroke is where the magic happens. A spark plug ignites the compressed fuel-air mixture, causing an explosion that forces the piston downward. This movement turns the crankshaft, generating power.
Finally, the exhaust valve opens, and the piston moves upward again, pushing the burned gases out of the cylinder. This clears the way for a new intake stroke, and the cycle repeats.
Timing is crucial in an engine to ensure that each stroke occurs at the right moment. The camshaft and crankshaft work together to control the opening and closing of valves and the movement of pistons. The camshaft’s lobes push against lifters, which in turn move pushrods and rockers to operate the valves.
Brian’s transparent engine showcases these components in action, providing a clear view of how they interact. The engine’s timing is controlled by a magnetic switch that synchronizes the firing of spark plugs with the pistons’ movements.
Brian’s craftsmanship is impressive. Using basic tools and a lot of skill, he meticulously cut and assembled the transparent parts of the engine. His dedication to creating a functional and educational model is truly inspiring.
Exploring Brian’s transparent engine offers a unique opportunity to witness the inner workings of an internal combustion engine. By understanding the four-stroke cycle and the role of various components, we gain a deeper appreciation for the engineering marvels that power our vehicles. This transparent engine not only serves as a captivating visual aid but also as a testament to human ingenuity and the pursuit of knowledge.
Whether you’re a seasoned engineer or simply curious about how engines work, this transparent engine provides a fascinating glimpse into the heart of automotive technology. So, let’s continue to get smarter every day by exploring the wonders of the world around us!
Engage in a hands-on project by constructing a small-scale transparent engine model. Use clear materials to replicate the engine components and observe the four-stroke cycle in action. This activity will deepen your understanding of engine mechanics and enhance your appreciation for engineering design.
Immerse yourself in a virtual reality experience that simulates the inner workings of an engine. Explore each component and observe the timing and movement of parts during the four-stroke cycle. This interactive activity will provide a unique perspective on engine functionality.
Participate in a simulation game that challenges you to manage the timing of an engine’s components. Adjust the camshaft and crankshaft settings to ensure optimal performance. This engaging activity will help you understand the importance of timing in engine operation.
Work in groups to research different types of engines and their applications. Prepare a presentation to share your findings with the class, focusing on how the four-stroke cycle is adapted in various engine designs. This collaborative activity will enhance your research and communication skills.
Test your knowledge by identifying engine components in a transparent engine model. Use diagrams and labels to match parts with their functions. This activity will reinforce your understanding of engine anatomy and the role of each component in the four-stroke cycle.
Sure! Here’s a sanitized version of the YouTube transcript:
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Where should the camera be? Oh, wherever. [Engine roars] (Giddy laughter) Hey, it’s me, Destin. Welcome back to Smart Every Day. We have explored internal combustion engines on this channel, and I think they’re amazing. In the past, we visited a YouTube channel in New Jersey called 805RoadKing, where Everett and his buddies created a transparent head on a Briggs and Stratton engine so you could see the flame inside pushing the piston down. It was amazing. Also here on Smart Every Day, we made a transparent carburetor. You can see the jet of fuel that comes up. And then we used slow motion to show the atomization of the fuel as it gets blown through the Venturi. It’s amazing. That’s a great video. We also learned how carburetors are made. We went to a manufacturing facility owned by Holley Carburetors in Kentucky. It was fantastic. We got to see the assembly line working. I loved it.
I saw a video on the internet of a person who made a transparent engine. You could see the pistons moving, and I thought, this is incredible. So I decided to go to Nebraska to meet this guy. When I got there, I realized this person is quite unique. The guy’s channel name is Awdcutlass for All Wheel Drive Cutlass. One look at his channel, and you know this guy is smart. It is not normal for someone to build a carbon fiber framed vehicle in their garage by themselves. He made an all-wheel drive Cutlass. Just so you know, an Oldsmobile Cutlass is not made to be all-wheel drive, but he made it all-wheel drive. It’s incredible.
I’m incredibly excited to take you to Nebraska with me to visit Brian’s garage, where we’re going to see a transparent engine and learn how it works. Let’s go get Smarter Every Day. [Intro guitar riff]
Okay, let’s start our adventure by flying to Nebraska, which is an awesome state. They have a ton of irrigation pivots, which I love, as you know. Anyway, let’s go to the address that Brian gave us. Okay, I think we’re at the right house. Brian and I greeted each other, and then he took me to the workshop where the magic happens. I’m in Nebraska, and this is Brian King, and you built this, right?
Yeah. The reason I am in Brian’s garage is that I saw this video he made, and it’s amazing. You built a see-through engine. When I was doing research on fuel injection, I was trying to understand timing, and I found this. I was a little upset, to be honest, because I saw that 12,000 people have viewed your video, and I think it’s amazing. I want way more people to see your video because this is an incredible project. That’s why I’m here.
Yeah, that’s awesome. Can you explain to me what this is and how you did it?
Basically, it’s just a V8 engine based on that engine sitting over there, the same concept, same internal parts and all that.
This is an LS engine, right?
Standard 5.3 LS engine, which GM probably has a billion of them floating around out there. Hard to say. But needless to say, that was one that was broken, and I bought it for 50 bucks, tore it all apart, and put a bunch of plastic around it, and there it is.
And you made the most amazing visual learning aid I’ve ever seen. Can you please show me how it works?
Sure. Let’s plug it in here real quick.
So, it’s got everything, right? Before you make it move, because that’s amazing, it’s got actual pistons that move in cylinders. Do you have seals on the pistons?
Nope, I took the rings off because it didn’t need to have them, I guess, the way I designed this. I wanted it to move freely, if that makes sense.
Okay. You’ve got the crankshaft down there. And what do you call the rod?
Connecting rod.
The connecting rod. You’ve got connecting rods in there, and that’s the wrist pin right there. And so what is this right here on this side?
So you’ve got the timing chain on the outside. You’ve got your oil pump right behind this cover here.
It actually has oil on it?
Yeah.
Okay. And where does the oil go?
It goes right up to the top here, right above the camshaft, which is the center.
So it’s hard to see, but there’s a pipe. So the oil comes up here. It goes through this metal pipe.
I’ll get an air bubble in there. That way you can see where it’s…
Oh, wait.
See that air bubble right there?
Yeah.
Oh, and you’re doing that with your hand.
Do it again. So bring the oil toward you. You just pump it.
Over, okay?
And then it’ll start spraying out the end there, and it gives you an idea that the oil is circulating.
And that’s how an actual engine works. So does the oil always come to the… Is this the back of the engine?
Yeah. So with an actual engine, that would be sealed off. So it keeps pressure, I guess, if that makes sense. So as that pump is turning, it builds that oil pressure way up and forces it into the places they want it to go. With this, I don’t need all that pressure because it’s just a display piece.
So you’re just recycling the oil?
Yeah, it just pours it out.
But on a real engine, there are places where the oil would go.
Well, if you look in here, you can actually see the veins. So behind each black screw, I drilled the hole to get down to the lifters.
It’s so hard to see on this camera, but yeah, you see this… Let me see if I can articulate this. This is the main feeding manifold, so to speak, of the oil. And then there’s little holes.
Oil galleries going left and right.
Gallaries? That’s the word?
Yeah.
And what’s going on with the lights here?
That would be your firing order. So if you look, that would be when your actual spark plug fires the electricity across the electrode, and that’s when it’s firing or lighting the gas in the air.
I want to take a second to review the strokes of a four-stroke engine. Most engineers and mechanics refer to it as suck, squeeze, bang, blow. Earlier, I talked about a video we made with 805RoadKing where we could see through a transparent engine head and see the four different strokes of an engine. That video is fascinating, and you might want to check that out later. But for now, let’s look at the animation that we made in that video to describe these strokes.
We have the piston on the left moving up and down inside the cylinder and two valves on the right. Let’s take a look at how a four-stroke engine works and count off each of the four strokes along with me. The first thing that happens is one of the valves on the right opens, allowing a fuel-air mixture to be drawn into the cylinder. This stroke is called the intake. When the piston gets near the bottom of the cylinder, the intake valve closes, and then the piston starts to compress the gas. This is called the compression stroke. The third stroke is the pretty one. This is called the power stroke. The explosion happens and increases the pressure inside the cylinder, which applies force to the face of the piston, pushing it down. When all those gases have burned after that third stroke, the exhaust valve then opens, and the fourth stroke, called the exhaust stroke, clears the cylinder of all those exhaust gases. The intake valve then opens back up, and the process starts over and over again.
Timing is everything in an engine to make sure it works properly. For example, you want to make sure the spark happens just before the piston is at top dead center because you want the pressure to be building up at the same time as that piston is ready to start moving back down. So seeing these four strokes as an animation is one thing, but seeing the whole thing work as a physical model, that’s completely awesome.
Let’s go back to Brian’s garage and check it out.
So we’re watching this one here. So as the piston is going down, that intake valve opens, and now air is getting sucked into that cylinder. And then, of course, as it’s doing that, it’s also spraying the injector. Now it’s in the compression stroke, so it’s compressing all that air and fuel in that little spot. Now it should light up, bang. So that’s your spark plug firing. And what that does is create a little spark, igniting all the fuel. Then it forcefully shoves this piston down. That provides power to the crankshaft when it does that. Now the exhaust valve is just starting to open, so they have to relieve the pressure somewhere.
Which one is the exhaust valve?
The one closest to you there, the smaller one. Now that opens up. Now you’re pushing all the burnt fuel out.
Where does the exhaust go?
Basically, the port would be right here, and it just goes out into your exhaust manifold.
And that would go out to your exhaust system?
Yeah. Now we’re back to the vacuum side again, and fuel being squirted right there. Spark.
Wow, this is so cool.
And there’s exhaust. We start the cycle again. It’s intake, compression, power.
Now, keep in mind that all this timing of the pistons and the valves opening and closing is mechanically coupled to the spinning of the crankshaft. As you can see, much of the engine system is purely mechanical. It’s designed to do just the right thing at just the right time. All it needs to keep going is that spark of the spark plug to keep lighting off the gas and keep the engine cycle going.
Okay, so how are you controlling the firing of these cylinders right now? Like the lights, how are you doing that?
I’m using a magnetic switch on the front here. So if you look across the front here, there’s one little magnet.
Let’s try to find it for you here.
Yeah, right there, the little silver dot.
That little thing right there?
Yep. And then if you look where that magnet lines up with those little glass tubes, it closes that switch, and that’s when I made it fire the light.
So one rotation of that is two plunges of each cylinder?
Yep.
Okay. And that’s normal in an engine? You haven’t had to change it?
On a four-stroke engine, yeah, that would be normal.
Okay. And so that’s how your timing is controlled. And that’s rotating the camshaft?
Yep.
And the camshaft, you can see it right there. And so the camshaft is rotating.
That’s a little harder to see, isn’t it?
I can take this cover off. Would that help?
Yeah, let’s do that.
That would be great.
Can you really do that?
Yeah, it comes apart.
Okay, before Brian takes that cover off, a big thank you to Drake State Technical and Community College that put me in touch with Huntsville Engine, which gave me a crankshaft and a camshaft so that we could see it.
Right here, we have a crankshaft. Now, the crankshaft is, you can see right here, this is where the pistons are connected. You have one piston going that way and one piston going that way. You’ve heard of V8. It’s shaped like a V, and there are eight pistons going that way and that way, right? That’s connected to the crankshaft.
Now, there are a couple of really cool things about the crankshaft. For example, the fact that you have these big counterweights on here that oppose the amount of force and acceleration caused by those pistons going in and out. There are a couple of other things going on here. Look at the lobe, the counterweight. If you look really close, you’ll see right here that it’s been drilled out, and here it’s been drilled out a lot. You can add and subtract those weights to balance out the engine and reduce the vibration, which is a really cool feature to have.
Another thing to think about is how do you hold this thing in the engine block? Because you’ve got all this crooked stuff happening and lots of weights being thrown around. Well, you do that by resting the engine. I think of it as resting it on the journals. There are three, four, five. Those are the journals that hold the crankshaft in place along the axis of the engine itself. That’s where your journal bearings are, five locations.
Now, the crankshaft sits above the crankshaft like that right there. You’ll notice on the camshaft, you have a bunch of little offsets. They look like cylinders, but they’re not. You see, it’s like a cylinder with a protrusion. Let me hold this like that. Those are the cams, you see them? As you rotate this thing, those protrusions go up and down, and that’s what controls your valves. Your valves control the intake and the exhaust of the engine.
Basically, we’ve got two things going on. We have the power transmitted out of the engine that way to the transmission, and we’ve got the timing and control of the valves as a separate thing. That’s the camshaft up above.
Now, if you think about it, where this is radially indexed to that is very, very important. Mechanics have little tricks that are built in. If you look really close here, that’s that little notch right there. That’s top dead center for the engine. They can radially rotate that until that’s aligned. And then you would have a similar mark on the front of the camshaft, and those things are hooked together with the timing chain, which is on the front of the engine.
Now that you have a visual map of all the stuff going on, let’s go back to Brian’s shop and check it out in running condition.
How did you cut everything so exact?
Just like cutting wood. I have a bunch of skill saws, and I’ve got a couple of rotary saws. I mean, just, I don’t know, all free-hand mostly, believe it or not, and then hand-filing everything. But yeah, it was a little tedious work.
I am incredibly impressed with your work.
Oh, yeah, we can see way better now.
Okay, absolutely.
This would be your lifter, that’s your push rod, and there’s your oil gallery down the center.
So there’s a cam right there, and is it basically an off-centered cylinder, or is it a weird lobe-looking shape?
Like a lobe. I guess if you look at it, you can see the lobes coming up in different areas. Like a teardrop, I guess, in individual areas.
Okay, and so the lifter rides on the cam.
Rides on that lobe there, which you see it’ll push it up.
Yep. And that moves this rod. Is this called the pushrod?
The pushrod, yeah.
The pushrod goes up here to the…
To the rocker.
The rocker, okay.
And the rocker pushes on the valve, and the valve spring opens up the valve.
Keep going, and I’ll see the rocker move.
Okay, so right there.
And then on this other side.
So the rocker is just a seesaw.
Pretty much.
And then it controls the valve.
Okay, this could not be more clear.
[Both laugh]
It’s pretty straightforward.
That’s pretty amazing is what that is. But what’s so incredible is the tolerances on a… Is this an aluminum block?
That’s actually cast iron as well.
This is a cast iron block. Okay, so on this cast iron block, everything is precisely machined, but you just did this with normal tools.
Right behind you. I use that tool right there. Literally everything was done right on that.
On the Smithy?
On the good old Smithy.
That’s amazing. I have so much respect for you. I really do.
Okay, so yeah, let’s see it go.
All right.
You’ve got the little tube in there for your LEDs.
Yeah.
That’s so clever.
I had to solder all them in. Every LED, they run warm, so I put a heat sink on them, and that’s what that aluminum channel is. It pulls the heat away from the light. Otherwise, the LEDs get so hot they burn out.
Really?
That was one thing I ran into right away, so I had to figure out something different.
You’re good at electronics as well.
So-so. It’s something I did in college a little bit here and there and then switched over to automotive.
That’s awesome.
Jack of all trades again. A master of few is better than… How does that go? Better than a master of one or something. I don’t remember the whole term.
That’s amazing. I would say a PhD is an inch wide and a mile deep, but you’re an inch deep and a mile wide. It looks like you’re like half a mile deep, half a mile wide.
Well-rounded, I guess.
Yeah, it’s pretty good.
All right, so here we go.
It’s hard not to smile, isn’t it?
Yeah, I love it.
[Upbeat folk music begins playing]
You think we should turn the lights off and do that?
Yeah.
Let’s see what it does.
Oh, so it’s moving right to left.
Yeah, and then the other side is going the other way. So it’s really wild.
Can I slow it down?
That’s as slow as I can get it.
That’s as slow as it can get it.
Actually, hang on, I got an idea for you.
Just put a wrench or a drill on it?
Yeah, I’ve got a drill, and that’s what I was doing in the beginning before I put the electric motor on it.
Okay, yeah, this is telling the story. So boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.
Oh, so this one’s different.
No, I think it’s probably just having a misfire on the magnet.
Oh, this cylinder is misfiring.
Yeah, that magnet might be just strong enough that it’s grabbing that window switch and making the trigger wrong.
I see.
Yeah, I think we got a misfire.
We got a misfire.
[Both laughing]
We got a misfire.
Dang it.
Mechanical failure.
That’s fantastic.
We’re going to have to go back to R&D and figure it out.
That’s not great. It’s supposed to go right to left on
Engine – A machine designed to convert energy into useful mechanical motion, often used to power vehicles and machinery. – The efficiency of a car’s engine is crucial for maximizing fuel economy and performance.
Combustion – A chemical process of burning, in which a substance reacts with oxygen to give off heat and light. – In internal combustion engines, the combustion of fuel-air mixtures generates the power needed to move the vehicle.
Stroke – The movement of a piston in an engine from one extreme of its travel to the other, typically measured in cycles. – The four-stroke engine cycle includes intake, compression, power, and exhaust strokes.
Piston – A cylindrical component that moves back and forth within a cylinder in an engine, transferring force from expanding gas to the crankshaft. – The piston’s movement is essential for converting the energy from combustion into mechanical work.
Timing – The precise control of the sequence and duration of events in an engine, such as the opening and closing of valves. – Proper timing of the ignition system is crucial for optimal engine performance and efficiency.
Cycle – A series of events that repeat in a regular sequence, often used to describe the operation of engines and other mechanical systems. – The Otto cycle is a common thermodynamic cycle used to describe the functioning of a typical gasoline engine.
Power – The rate at which work is done or energy is transferred, often measured in watts or horsepower in the context of engines. – Engineers strive to increase the power output of engines while minimizing fuel consumption and emissions.
Components – Individual parts or elements that make up a larger system, such as an engine or machine. – Understanding the components of an engine is essential for diagnosing and repairing mechanical issues.
Ignition – The process of initiating combustion in an engine, typically by a spark or compression. – The ignition system must be precisely calibrated to ensure efficient combustion and engine performance.
Technology – The application of scientific knowledge for practical purposes, especially in industry and engineering. – Advances in engine technology have led to significant improvements in fuel efficiency and emissions reduction.
