The main structural member of all automotive engines is a cylinder block that usually extends upward from the centre line of the main support for the crankshaft to the junction with the cylinder head. The block serves as the structural framework of the engine and carries the mounting pad by which the engine is supported in the chassis. Large, stationary power-plant engines and marine engines are built up from a foundation, or bedplate, and have upper and lower crankcases that are separate from the cylinder assemblies. The cylinder block of an automobile engine is a casting with appropriate machined surfaces and threaded holes for attaching the cylinder head, main bearings, oil pan, and other units. The crankcase is formed by the portion of the cylinder block below the cylinder bores and the stamped or cast metal oil pan that forms the lower enclosure of the engine and also serves as a lubricating oil reservoir, or sump.

The cylinders are openings of circular cross section that extend through the upper portion of the block, with interior walls bored and polished to form smooth, accurate bearing surfaces. The cylinders of heavy-duty engines are usually fitted with removable liners made of metal that is more wear-resistant than that used in the block casting.

There are two arrangements of cylinders in common automotive use—the vertical, or in-line, type (see part C of the figure) and the V type (see part D of the figure). The in-line engine has a single row of cylinders extending vertically upward from the crankcase and aligned with the crankshaft main bearings. The V type has two rows of cylinders, usually forming an angle of 60° or 90° between the two banks. V-8 engines (eight cylinders) are usually of the 90° type. Some small six-cylinder aviation engines have horizontally opposed cylinders (see above Opposed-piston engines).

A passage bored lengthwise in the block houses the camshaft that operates the valves. The location of camshafts for most automotive applications is overhead—overhead cam (OHC) or dual overhead cam (DOHC). A gear, chain, or belt compartment for the camshaft drive from the crankshaft is formed between the front or rear end of the block and a cover plate. On virtually all modern engines, a toothed belt is used to ensure accurate and responsive control of the valve train. The bell housing is formed at the rear of the cylinder block to enclose the flywheel and provide for attachment of a transmission housing. Water jackets are formed around the cylinders with suitable cored connecting passages for circulation of the coolant.

The design of the cylinder block is affected by the location of the valves of the four-stroke-cycle engine and by the provision of cylinder ports in the two-stroke type. An overhead-valve engine, which has largely replaced the L-head type, has its valves entirely in the cylinder head. The cylinder block of the L-head engine is extended to one side of the cylinder bores, with the valve seats and passages for inlet and exhaust, together with the valve guides, formed in this extension of the block. The cylinder head then becomes merely a water-jacketed cover, providing threaded locations for the spark plugs and with its underside so profiled that a combustion chamber of desired size and shape is formed above each cylinder bore. The shape of the space forming the combustion chamber when the piston is at its closest approach to the cylinder head and the volume contained therein in relation to the piston displacement volume are extremely important in their effect on performance. The cylinder head of the valve-in-head engine is narrower and deeper and carries the valve seats, valve guides, and valve ports.

Combustion chamber

The combustion chamber is defined by the size, location, and position of the piston within the cylinder. Bore is the inner diameter of the cylinder. The volume at bottom dead centre (VBDC) is defined as the volume occupied between the cylinder head and the piston face when the piston is farthest from the cylinder head. The volume at top dead centre (VTDC) is the volume occupied when the piston is closest to the cylinder head; the distance between the piston face and cylinder head at VTDC is called the clearance. The distance traveled by the piston between its VTDC and VBDC locations is the stroke. The ratio of VTDC to VBDC normalized to the VTDC value—i.e., (VBDC/VTDC):1—is the compression ratio of a reciprocating engine. Compression ratio is the most important factor affecting the theoretical efficiency of the engine cycle. Because increasing the compression ratio is the best way to improve efficiency, compression ratios on automobile engines have tended to increase. This requires stronger, more-durable materials. In practice, fuel ignition characteristics, often represented by octane number, limit engine compression ratios.

Pistons

The pistons are cup-shaped cylindrical castings of steel or aluminum alloy. The upper, closed end, called the crown, forms the lower surface of the combustion chamber and receives the force applied by the combustion gases. The outer surface is machined to fit the cylinder bore closely and is grooved to receive piston rings that seal the gap between the piston and the cylinder wall. In the upper piston grooves there are plain compression rings that prevent the combustion gases from blowing past the piston. The lower rings are vented to distribute and limit the amount of lubricant on the cylinder wall. Piston pin supports (bosses) are cast in opposite sides of the piston and hardened steel pins fitted into these bosses pass through the upper end of the connecting rod.

Connecting rod and crankshaft

A forged-steel connecting rod connects the piston to a throw (offset portion) of the crankshaft and converts the reciprocating motion of the piston to the rotating motion of the crank. The lower, larger end of the rod is bored to take a precision bearing insert lined with babbitt or other bearing metal and closely fitted to the crankpin. V-type engines usually have opposite cylinders staggered sufficiently to permit the two connecting rods that operate on each crank throw to be side by side. Some larger engines employ fork-and-blade rods with the rods in the same plane and cylinders exactly opposite each other.

Each connecting rod in an in-line engine or each pair of rods in a V-type engine is attached to a throw of the crankshaft. Each throw consists of a crankpin with a bearing surface, on which the connecting-rod bearing insert is fitted, and two radial cheeks that connect it to the portions of the crankshaft that turn in the main bearings, supported by the cylinder block. Sufficient throws are provided to serve all the cylinders, and the angles between them equal the angular firing intervals between the cylinders. The throws of a six-cylinder, four-stroke-cycle crankshaft are spaced 120° apart so that the six cylinders fire at equal intervals in two full rotations of the shaft. Those of an eight-cylinder engine are 90° apart. The position of each throw along the shaft depends upon the firing order of the cylinders. Firing sequence is chosen to distribute the power impulses along the length of the engine to minimize vibration. Consideration is also given to the fluid flow pattern in the intake and exhaust manifolds. The standard firing order for a six-cylinder engine is 1-5-3-6-2-4, which illustrates the practice of alternating successive impulses between the front and rear valves of the engine whenever possible. Balance is further improved by adding counterweights to the crankshaft to offset the eccentric masses of metal in the crank throws.

The crankshaft design also establishes the length of the piston stroke because the radial offset of each throw is equal to half the stroke imparted to the piston. The ratio of the piston stroke to the cylinder bore diameter is an important design consideration. In the early years of engine development, no logical basis for the establishment of this ratio existed, and a range from unity to 11/2 was used by different manufacturers. As engine speeds increased, however, and it became apparent that friction horsepower increased with piston speed rather than with crankshaft rotating speed, there began a trend toward short-stroke engines. Strokes were shortened to as much as 20 percent less than the bores.

From the requirement for the two-cylinder engine, a general rule for the layout of the throws of four-stroke-cycle multicylinder crankshafts can be expressed. Regardless of the number of cylinders, two pistons must arrive at top dead centre in unison so that a second cylinder is ready to fire exactly 360° after each cylinder fires. Half the cylinders will then fire during each turn of the crankshaft. To follow this rule, there must be an even number of cylinders in order that there may be pairs of cylinders whose pistons move in unison.

An eight-cylinder engine fires each time its crankshaft makes a quarter turn if the intervals between impulses are equal. The crankshaft for an eight-cylinder, in-line engine is designed with each of its eight throws a quarter turn away from another throw.

For best lengthwise balance, the cylinders whose pistons are in phase are the first and last cylinders of an in-line engine, the second and next to the last, continuing in that order with crank throws that are in alignment equidistant from the centre of the engine.

Valves, pushrods, and rocker arms

Valves for controlling intake and exhaust may be located overhead, on one side, on one side and overhead, or on opposite sides of the cylinder. These are all the so-called poppet, or mushroom, valves, consisting of a stem with one end enlarged to form a head that permits flow through a passage surrounding the stem when raised from its seat and that prevents flow when the head is moved down to contact the valve seat formed in the cylinder block. Another group of engines uses sliding valves that are usually of the sleeve type surrounding the cylinder bore.

The valve-in-head engine has pushrods that extend upward from the cam followers to rocker arms mounted on the cylinder head that contact the valve stems and transmit the motion produced by the cam profile to the valves. Clearance (usually termed tappet clearance) must be maintained between the ends of the valve stems and the lifter mechanism to assure proper closing of the valves when the engine temperature changes. This is done by providing pushrod length adjustment or by the use of hydraulic lifters.

Noisy and erratic valve operation can be eliminated with entirely mechanical valve-lifter linkage only if the tappet clearance between the rocker arms and the valve stems is closely maintained at the specified value for the engine as measured with a thickness gauge. Hydraulic valve lifters, now commonly used on automobile engines, eliminate the need for periodic adjustment of clearance.

The hydraulic lifter comprises a cam follower that is moved up and down by contact with the cam profile, and an inner bore into which the valve lifter is closely fitted and retained by a spring clip. The valve lifter, in turn, is a cup closed at the top by a freely moving cylindrical plug that has a socket at the top to fit the lower end of the pushrod. This plug is pushed upward by a light spring that is merely capable of taking up the clearance between the valve stem and the rocker arm. A small hole is drilled in the bottom of the valve-lifter cup to admit lubricating oil that enters the cam follower from the engine lubricating system through a passage in the cylinder block. A small steel ball serves as a check valve to admit the oil into the valve-lifter cup but prevent its escape. When the clearance in the entire linkage between the cam profile and the valve stem is being taken up by the spring in the valve lifter, oil flows into the lifter chamber, past the ball check, and is trapped there to maintain this no-clearance condition as the engine operates. Expansion or contraction of the valve linkage is compensated by oil seepage from the lifter to correct for expansion of parts and oil flow into the chamber if clearance tends to be produced between the pushrod and the lifter. Complete closure of the valve is then assured at all times without tappet noise.

The intake valve must be open while the piston is descending on the intake stroke of the piston, and the exhaust valve must be open while the piston is rising on the exhaust stroke. It would seem, therefore, that the opening and closing of the two valves would occur at the appropriate top and bottom dead-centre points of the crankshaft. The time required for the valves to open and close, however, and the effects of high speed on the starting and stopping of the flow of the gases require that for optimum performance the opening events occur before the crankshaft dead-centre positions and that the closing events be delayed until after dead centre.

All four valve events—inlet opening, inlet closing, exhaust opening, and exhaust closing—are accordingly displaced appreciably from the top and bottom dead centres. Opening events are earlier and closing events are later to permit ramps to be incorporated in the cam profiles to allow gradual initial opening and final closing to avoid slamming of the valves. Ramps are provided to start the lift gradually and to slow down the valve before it contacts its seat. Early opening and late closure are also for the purpose of using the inertia or persistence of flow of the gases to assist in filling and emptying the cylinder.