Honda Car Forum

I had a question about car engines...What does it mean when a car has (#)Cylinders?Please explain what the cylinders do and the perpose of the amount of the cylinders you can have.....thank you

It is the chamber where the fuel and air mixtrure combusts to move the piston. It is shaped like a soup can and the piston moves up and down inside it. the number of cylinders is how many of these chambers are in your engine block. more cylinders = less rpms required.

this web site shold help you get an idea of what they do and the diff (more is better)































www.wisegeek.com

Cylinder = what the piston slides up and down in.The rest is self explainatory.

The cylinder is the sleeve that the piston rides up and down in. When a car has a 4 cylinder engine, it means that there are four pistons inside the engine producing power. The same holds true to other applications such as V6 ( 6 cylinder ) V8 ( 8 cylinder ) V10, V12, V16, etc.The V is the configuration of the cylinders ( there are a few different configurations ) V = V shaped engine block, L= inline or straight block, W= W shaped block ( W engines are usually only found in Hyper-Exotics such as Bugattis and Vectors ). And no, the cylinders in an engine are NOT like a soup can in any way, except for the geometric shape, which is called a cylinder.

Air and gas are injected into each cylinder which is then ignited by the sparkplug. The explosion that's produced pushes a piston which is like a person stepping on a bicycle pedal. The number of cylinders refers to how many "pedals" the engine has. All things being equal, the more cylinders you have, the more powerful the engine but the worst your gas mileage is. If you want lots of power, buy an 8 cylinder car. If you want good gas mileage, buy a 4 cylinder.