This guy, Bartosz Ciechanowski, does the most well described and understandable blog posts on science and engineering that I&#x27;ve come across online.

This is incredible. I remember the Gears example from the same site, but now with 3D renderings. Great work.

The text immediately before the first image says “You can drag it around to see it from other angles”. Our attention spans are deteriorating quickly…

I had no idea until I read your comment that you could click and drag the engine models! Insane!

If anyone is looking for a hands on educational model, my 6 year old and I put together a model V8 engine [1] (made by Haynes of technical manual fame I think) that does a pretty reasonable job of capturing the essence of the main parts of an internal combustion engine. It kept him (and me) thoroughly engrossed for a few hours.[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.themotorbookstore.com&#x2F;build-your-own-v8-engine-model.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.themotorbookstore.com&#x2F;build-your-own-v8-engine-m...</a>

This was really educational!  I love the design of the webpage, and I especially like how you can rotate the 3d diagrams and see each component from every angle.

What a great website, awesome animations, and intuitive interactives

He posted a bit of information on his Twitter:<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;BCiechanowski&#x2F;status&#x2F;1387827101294686210?s=19" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;BCiechanowski&#x2F;status&#x2F;1387827101294686210...</a>

I wonder if it&#x27;s completely written by hand from scratch or done with something like emscripten.

<pre><code> view-source:https:&#x2F;&#x2F;ciechanow.ski&#x2F;js&#x2F;ice.js
</code></pre>
I find this to be a very impressive implementation.

How were these animations made? They’re excellent!

[*] more reliable in theory. Mazda RX8 and rotary engines are famous for being a bit maintenance heavy and unreliable.The amount of engineering and brain power that has gone into making common ICE engines in cars in wide deployment reliable is staggering.

Rotaries are a funny case. Look good on paper. Thermal efficiency issues. Smog. Seals. Noise control difficulties. Weird patches like bridge ports.For modern passenger cars, it&#x27;s kind of like overcoming the difficulties of two-stroke.In anti-defense of 4-stroke ICE, it seems to me like we are hitting peak wacky complexity of those. Variable timing cams, turn off the cylinders, direct port injection, turbos, variable intake, complicated ECU. It&#x27;s a far cry from a flathead 6 or VW flat 4.Thank God electric cars are becoming more available, although I fear increasingly complex cooling and battery management and the 1000 things a software guy is going to add to them.

Reciprocating machines are fairly remarkable when you consider all of the components involved, forces, etc. Even more so when you think about how long a typical car engine lasts.These incredible forces are why rotary and turbine engines are substantially more reliable. Some gas turbines have only 1 moving part, and in some applications this moving part experiences zero wear due to magnetic&#x2F;aerodynamic&#x2F;active bearings.

&gt; &quot;What? The fuel tank capacity can&#x27;t have an inflated basketball in it that springs a leak during the race, leaving us with more fuel capacity?&quot;Pardon my ignorance- what is the motivation for temporarily reducing the fuel capacity in this example? And why was it disallowed?

The aero belly of his 1968 Camaro was interesting. The SBC-powered Indy car (probably the last of home-garage built vehicles for that race), the time he drove a NASCAR car back from an impound without the gas tank, etc.Not to say that cheating didn&#x27;t happen elsewhere. Check out the front-end sheet metal of the Trans-Am Boss 302s. Use of the headlight holes for brake ducting. The inline Autolite carb. There were some good minds at Holman-Moody, Kar Kraft, Bud Moore, etc.

He also had an infamous Fiero with a &quot;hot vapor engine&quot; that was claimed 50+ mpg and 250hp (when the stock 4cyl made ~90hp, it was the 80s after all): <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.legendarycollectorcars.com&#x2F;featured-vehicles&#x2F;other-feature-cars&#x2F;smokey-yunicks-hot-vapor-fiero-51-mpg-and-0-60-in-less-than-6-seconds-see-and-hear-it-run-in-our-exclusive-video&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.legendarycollectorcars.com&#x2F;featured-vehicles&#x2F;oth...</a>

&gt; Smokey YunickOh, man. I&#x27;m not a huge NASCAR fan, but that guy. That guy. He was an absolute master of &quot;But the rules didn&#x27;t say I couldn&#x27;t...&quot; and probably is responsible for half the thickness of the modern rulebook on his own!&quot;What? The fuel tank capacity can&#x27;t have an inflated basketball in it that springs a leak during the race, leaving us with more fuel capacity?&quot;&quot;What? The fuel lines have to be a short path between the tank and engine? Now, look, nowhere in this here book does it say I can&#x27;t stuff the frame rails with a couple hundred feet of spiraled fuel line. It gets an extra gallon or two in the car? Really? Huh...&quot;&quot;Nowhere in the book does it say the bodywork has to actually match the size or positioning of the stock car the race car is based on. I can&#x27;t help it if nobody else has totally redone the bodywork to improve aerodynamics... oh, OK, you&#x27;re bringing cardboard templates next season, got it, that trick is done.&quot;The guy was an absolute master of &quot;creative advantages that weren&#x27;t actually illegal at the time they were used.&quot;

We had a see through engine w&#x2F;strobe system at the uni I studied vehicle engineering at, it was really really educational to be able to adjust ignition timing and fuel mixture and see how it would change the color &amp; shape of the flame front.Probably a ton easier to simulate it these days but at the time it was absolute magic and really helped me understand how to ear-tune an engine to at least good enough to get on a dyno.

You can get clear valve covers for some BMW motorcycles now.
<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=BE71lpgJ4ng" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=BE71lpgJ4ng</a>

Kevin Cameron from Cycle World has written some of the most fantastic articles about these topics, in particular there&#x27;s one that I&#x27;m struggling to find about the problems with solid camshaft mass when rpms started to get really high and resulted in cam oscillation and failure, so they were made hollow, only to then discover they got too hot, which led to making the sodium filled, and on and on.Also a couple of great ones about the struggle to find alloys for radial engine cylinders that could flex without cracking. His writing is so insightful and concise!

How much of that was really metal elasticity and how much artifacts of the camera technology used, eg. rolling shutter?I work with metals all day every day, and damn can it flex, but would have imagined the high carbon steels used in engines would he fairly still.

i just got a driveshaft balanced for my 240z, it was 2&#x2F;3oz out on the front and 1&#x2F;3oz out on the tail. I was thinking how much force would that generate at speed.Hopefully the vibration problem is gone.

It&#x27;s a lot scarier when you see things going under load at speed. Lots of wiggling, twisty magic, waves.Smokey Yunick (blessed be his name) used to make see-through timing covers, oil pans, valve covers + strobe light + some sort of oscilloscope setup to watch the craziness. I think I remember seeing the results for small block Chevrolet timing gears on sprint car engines as the teeth wiggled more and more with rpm. Cam went backwards and forwards. Ooof.

I wasn&#x27;t. But then I&#x27;ve literally been working on engines since i was a little kid.

as someone who as a hobby occasionally builds engines (for the 24 hours of lemons), i was really impressed at how incredibly accurate and detailed this whole page is.i&#x27;m down w&#x2F;TDC...

Those who are curious about the oval piston skirts may find this interesting: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=15397926" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=15397926</a>

Mediocre in what way? Buy almost any new car from a well known brand today and it will run for 200,000+ miles. You almost need to deliberately buy a mediocre car. Biking and taking the metro is better for the environment, your health, and your budget though. If you are fortunate enough to have that option.

I&#x27;ve always felt cars were like computers; most people (me included) pay a premium for something mediocre because they don&#x27;t want to bother understanding it.My personal solution is to live near the metro and bike as much as possible.

Automatic transmissions also have hydraulic logic gates in the valve body (implemented with check-balls and piston servos), even if they&#x27;re also electronically controlled.  Drag-racers will reprogram the valve body to change the shift order, have launch control, etc.

VW group has a dual-clutch automatic transmission that includes an EV motor for their plug-in hybrids, the DQ400E. It looks pretty cool indeed!

I think automatic transmissions are more impressive looking than engines when they&#x27;re open. They resemble EV motors too!

&gt; there&#x27;s probably not that much magic left in an electric motor.I believe this sentence has been said about many technologies in the past that definitely invalidated it. I&#x27;m more playing devil&#x27;s advocate than trying to falsify you, likely for being burned sometimes reading or, worse, stating it, haha.

&gt; Additional cost for regen brakes of course.Regen braking has no physical cost associated - it&#x27;s pure software&#x2F;firmware. The exact same hardware that is used to power the car forwards can be used for regen braking. It can be as simple as a single negative sign in the code to cause the phase to be 180 degrees out, current to flow backwards, torque to go the other way, and the battery to be charged instead of discharged.One day regen braking will take over hydraulic brakes, and another big cost&#x2F;complexity of a car will be eliminated. The only reason that doesn&#x27;t happen today is there are lots of laws and regulations requiring hydraulic brakes, and braking systems typically require more redundancy than power systems.

&gt; I expect that batteries are the only hangup,Batteries are a huge hangup. For example, we don&#x27;t know how to recycle them and they aren&#x27;t good for dumps. And, used car batteries are expensive to replace and you get a lot fewer miles per charge out of older cars. Manufacturing of cars isn&#x27;t great for the environment so we should want older cars to last. This model helps push people to more new cars faster.

&gt; the low cost of flat panel TVs is a miracleThat&#x27;s really astounding, I just looked at a 55 inch brand name 4k TV going for 400 bucks retail.Guess it&#x27;s the same logic as cramming more CPU, etc. into the usual couple hundred sq. mm chip. But you get more CPU for the same money and chip size, which is not as spectacular as more screen size for less money ...

&gt;So one would think that when EVs reach the same scale they will be significantly cheaper than ICE vehicles.I expect that batteries are the only hangup, there&#x27;s probably not that much magic left in an electric motor. Additional cost for regen brakes of course.I agree on the amazing cheapness of it all if you stick with the common stuff. That, along with the low cost of flat panel TVs is a miracle of the modern age.

I built an LSX (Aftermarket GM) iron block engine (V8 LS) for a CTS V. I had to get some very precise tools (Have to measure to 10,000ths) or they were useless for bearing clearances and verifying cylinder diameters. My cylinders were 4.155 bore, and the bearing clearances were around 1.8 thousandths. Forged pistons, rods and crank.I had cracked a cylinder&#x2F;piston on the original LSA. I did not trust anyone to do the work so I did a lot of research and did it all myself. I appreciate someone asking because my friends and software dev co workers aren&#x27;t interested :)

Subaru EJ motors munch through rod bearings quite happily.

Any race or high power engine, especially those that rev quite high will need rebuild - not just in bottom end but often with piston rings and valves as well.You don&#x27;t really hear about those other engines much because their buyers understand that a race engine needs more maintenance than any other road car.Also, not beating on the engine until oil has warmed up to temp will elongate the bearing lifespan quite a bit. I have a friend with E60 6mt S85 that has factory bearings at 110k mi and has perfect oil analysis results.

I thought once you replaced the crappy OEM bearings you were all set on these engines. I guess it is not the case?

Nice! What engine did you build?&gt;The distance between a crank bearing or rod bearing is less than 2 thousandths on modern engines. A small amount of oil in that tiny space is all that keeps your engine from having metal on metal seizure.The BMW S65 and S85 engines are prime examples of what happens when the wrong tolerances are chosen. I can&#x27;t think of another engine family where rod bearings are considered a maintenance item.

competition, a bedrock element of fair markets, capitalism, and efficient economic allocation, something we seem to have collectively lost sight of.

...Because the whole nature of market competition? People will still choose the cheaper option if its available.

If people were willing to pay the higher cost for the same feature set, why would they well them for cheaper? Why not pocket the extra profit?I don&#x27;t like this line of thinking but I&#x27;m sure it&#x27;s going to or already is happening.

cmon man. the total weight of pricey metals in a car is so low, there is no way its going to offset the cost of precision machining. tolerances &lt; 1 thou and callouts for surface finish and perpendicularity are expensive!

Tesla already uses aluminum for power cabling because it’s cheap and lighter weight. Tesla Model S were induction motors (at first at least) with no rare earths, and Tesla is partnering with CATL for lithium iron phosphate batteries in lower cost versions of, if I believe, Model 3 and Y.

&gt; EVs don&#x27;t need a catalytic converter, so that&#x27;s a big thing in their favor.I feel there is some sort of scam going on with catalytic converters for the last few years. I actually worked in a small family owned auto shop in the early 2000&#x27;s. If a car came in with a clogged cat, we&#x27;d first fix the source of the issue (usually a mis-firing cylinder allowing raw fuel into the exhaust) and then we&#x27;d cut out the cat, and weld in a universal fit one that we&#x27;d get from the auto store for $20. Then charge the customer $200-$400 for labor. I still see universal fit ones[0] although they are $80 now. But still, if you aren&#x27;t dumping raw fuel or oil into your exhaust, cats are basically good for 300k+ &quot;normal&quot; driving miles. I assume they are expensive now because they are all mostly specially made&#x2F;custom fit since all car manufactures keep cramming bigger and bigger engines into smaller and smaller spaces.And while I&#x27;m ranting, there&#x27;s always a negative for every positive and no doubt for the catalytic converter. For a catalytic converter to convert &quot;greenhouse gases&quot;, the engine has to be burning fuel at a perfect air:fuel ratio of 14.7:1. While cruising down the highway, an engine could easily save fuel by running a more lean mixture, but this would cause more &quot;greenhouse gases&quot; to go out. So choose your poison I suppose.[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;imgur.com&#x2F;a&#x2F;7X0sPlk" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;imgur.com&#x2F;a&#x2F;7X0sPlk</a>

The raw materials may continue to cost more for EVs. Motor windings are generally copper, and batteries contain lithium and (usually) cobalt and nickel. Permanent magnet motors sometimes contain rare earths.One could make an EV with aluminum motor windings and electrical cabling, no rare earth magnets, and lithium iron phosphate batteries. That would keep expensive materials to a minimum.EVs don&#x27;t need a catalytic converter, so that&#x27;s a big thing in their favor.I&#x27;m looking forward to mass manufacturing continuing to bring down EV component prices. I think we&#x27;re a long ways from the point where material costs are the bulk of the expense.

Yes you are referring to another insanely complex thing that is very cheap relative to making one of cost due to mass production. But it isn&#x27;t machined metal :) I didn&#x27;t say I don&#x27;t appreciate electronics too.

They&#x27;re apples and oranges. Chips are not machined, they&#x27;re etched in batches. Their &quot;tolerances&quot;, so to speak, are limited by the wavelengths of visible or UV light they use for creating the masks and exposing the photoresist that protects the wafer from hydrofluoric acid and other etchants. There&#x27;s no mechanical force involved, except to spin wafers to apply coatings and move them between each stage of the process.Engine blocks, on the other hand, are CNC machined one at a time and the force of machining steel causes vibrations that move the cutting tools thousands of nanometers back and forth. Placing both in the same building, for example, would likely cripple the semiconductor fab. Having a machine shop in China make a one off would likely cost as much as a luxury car.

&gt; One thing I gained an appreciation for was how CHEAP cars and engines are. There&#x27;s probably nothing else with as precise machining that is as inexpensive.Not to denigrate the amount of engineering that went into car engines, but literally, what about chips? Devices that contain billions of transistors, arranged precisely on the order of nanometers. Yet they cost only hundreds of dollars.

The rest of the world figured that using prefixes with a predefined universal multiplier is more practical.Therefore you can use the milifoot equal to a thousandth of a foot, or the kiloinch equal to one thousand inches, or the microyard equal to one millionth of a yard, maybe even the centifurlong equal to one hundredth of a furlong.We are quiet proud of our prefixes. Now if only we would decide on a single reference unit to which to apply the prefixes. Conversion from megainch to hectofurlong is rather inconvenient.

&gt; I use inches here because in machine work thousandths of inches is the language du jour.Only in the USA ;)

Mmm.. not really. It&#x27;s just a cam and a spring. Pretty easy to get that bit working by yourself. Variable valve timing and lift is much more impressive.

Not only the tight measurements, but I&#x27;ve always been amazed at the precise timing of all the little moving parts, the valves all opening and closing at precise to-the-millisecond times so that each stroke happens, at 6000 RPM! So impressive. Especially with an interference engine, where getting that timing wrong means bent valves.

I just built an engine for my car. One thing I gained an appreciation for was how CHEAP cars and engines are. There&#x27;s probably nothing else with as precise machining that is as inexpensive.When cars started getting electronic engine controls, there was much internal grumbling about the cost. One Ford production guy, on hearing that the engine controller cost about $100, said &quot;I can make the whole engine for 100 bucks.&quot;

Ford (Aus) 4.0 was a great first build for me. I&#x27;m now taking my time on a Toyota 4K 1300cc, learning a lot more, and taking the time to design new components for it. Can&#x27;t recommend it highly enough, though not for everyone to be sure.

Anyone who has the inclination to build an engine, should.It is super rewarding not to mention you get to buy a bunch of really cool tools.I build a 350 Windsor from the block. The research and design decisions were one of the best parts of the project. Then to put it all together and realize the power was amazing.

I&#x27;m not denying the metric system. Just in the USA it is thou period. and if the measurement is a consistent unit of whatever it works. Also GM (and Holden in oz) are inch based. So using metric will subject you to mistakes possibly. I agree though in science SI is the way to go

Still widely used and taught in the machine shops of highly reputable universities over here in the U.S.If you&#x27;re under 40 and can&#x27;t use metric and imperial jargon without a second thought in the shop here that&#x27;s a different problem. I personally enjoy doing machine shop-esque metal fabrication in metric and woodshop type things in imperial, but all machine shop instructors I&#x27;ve met through several good stem uni&#x27;s that look even slightly middle aged love to talk in thou of inch, some to the point of getting quite physically frustrated when asked where the metric drill index&#x2F;reamer set are in otherwise highly stocked shops...Also, I&#x27;ve noticed and heard the same from others in surrounding states - Fluid Dynamics professors love to include absolutely unecessary boatloads of strange units and conversions in coursework&#x2F;exams to apparently &quot;prepare us for the shitshow that is industry&quot;

I was trained in Australia, in the past decade, and was taught thoroughly in both metric and imperial. The engineers and machinists I have worked with that insist metric is the only way habe been more prone to mistakes when imperial components pop up, as they do. Accuracy is down to the spec, the person and the machine, ease of use is identical when decimal inches are used, mistakes are a result of poor communication.

I&#x27;m in Europe, and I&#x27;ve had&#x2F;worked on German, Japanese and Swedish cars and boat engines. Metric all the way.Only time I&#x27;ve needed an imperial set of tools was when overhauling a B&amp;S lawnmower engine.

&gt; &quot;I use inches here because in machine work thousandths of inches is the language du jour.&quot;Yeah not in Australia unless your machinist is &gt;50 years old. Metric is more accurate&#x2F;easier&#x2F;less prone to mistakes. Metric is what we use.

&gt; I use inches here because in machine work thousandths of inches is the language du jour.I&#x27;ll make a wild guess: In the USA.EDIT: Heh, sorry... See <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=26991690" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=26991690</a> . This time I really thought I&#x27;d checked, but there was lots of catalyst talk in between.

I just built an engine for my car. One thing I gained an appreciation for was how CHEAP cars and engines are. There&#x27;s probably nothing else with as precise machining that is as inexpensive.Engine cylinders are honed to accuracies that are less than 1 thousandth of an inch. Crank journals as well and rod journals. This is all precise machine work with metal. I use inches here because in machine work thousandths of inches is the language du jour. Transmissions are similar works of very precise and clean machine work.The distance between a crank bearing or rod bearing is less than 2 thousandths on modern engines. A small amount of oil in that tiny space is all that keeps your engine from having metal on metal seizure.So one would think that when EVs reach the same scale they will be significantly cheaper than ICE vehicles.

Don’t forget to talk about rockets! Although there weight is more important than volume.

People have hard time grasping how much energy chemical bonds can hold. 15 gallons of gasoline store 500kWh of energy. That is 5 tesla model s worth of energy.Efficiency plays role for our day to day car tasks, but when you have to deal with external forces or higher requirements of momentum, then you need more energy period. Towing, beating high-speed drag &#x2F; waves, climbing high, cannot be addressed with smarter design. You need to be able to store somehow enough energy to deal with these external forces &#x2F; additional required momentum

This sparked my curiosity...Currently gasoline has about 50x more energy per unit weight than a tesla battery pack.Battery energy densities have tripled in the past 10 years. Keeping on that pace, it would take over 30 years for batteries to be competitive with gas.When you account for the astoundingly bad efficiency of ICE, though, the gap in usable energy decreases. This is why a tesla can go 300+ miles with a battery that can only store the same energy as 2.4 gallons of gas.

ICEVs will outlast BEVs. Just like it did 100 years ago.

Hmm... Hard to beat that energy density when the workload is large.Trucks, tractors, planes, ships. Sure consumer cars will be EV but ICEs are not going anywhere

I wouldn&#x27;t be so sure, I think there&#x27;s a decent chance that e-fuel can be made economically viable.

As soon as governments get serious about CO2 emissions, Hybrid powertrains will end up as a &quot;worst of both worlds&quot; position.Already across most of Europe all subsidies and discounts that applied for &quot;eco friendly cars&quot; no longer apply to Hybrids.That leaves few people wanting to buy a hybrid - it won&#x27;t be cheapest or most eco friendly.

Hybrids are facing real challengers from a combination of PHEV, synfuel, hydrogen combustion and hydrogen fuel cell. While it is the ideal car of today I wouldn&#x27;t be so sure about the next 20-30 years.

&gt; Hybrid powertrains are really where the next 20-30 years are headed for the bulk of vehiclesIt depends what you mean by &#x27;bulk&#x27;. I see a major future here for big trucks-- right now, 99%+ of our long-haul tractor trailer semis are pure ICE. There is no way to fully electrify that fleet quickly, so I believe hybrid tech is being seriously underestimated in this space (especially for retrofitting).I&#x27;ve been expecting to see this emerge for over 5 years, I&#x27;m not sure what&#x27;s taking so long. Likely it&#x27;s a catch-22 of the industry being resistant to change, while large chunks of (reluctant) investor funded R&amp;D are necessary to make it viable. In any case, I think some larger scale tests are finally being run this year, so I&#x27;m looking forward to the results of that.As far as consumer vehicles go, well... we should electrify almost all of it. Simply the best choice for the majority of use cases. But that&#x27;s going to take a while, and will affect battery availability, which is all the more reason why big trucks will need a longer transition phase that hybrids are perfect for.

Pure EVs will reach a fundamental peak percentage similar to any other car class... Hybrid powertrains are really where the next 20-30 years are headed for the bulk of vehicles.  Automotive racing and supercars have demonstrated hybrids are the most effective setup for the past decade, and barring some major breakthrough in battery tech that will all trickle down into consumer cars over the next 0-20 years.

&gt;Hydrogen works fine in ICEs with modest modifications.Just that they get lower efficiency than a fuel cell version, and apparently are sensitive to load, so mostly suited to constant-load applications, which a car typically isn&#x27;t. Otherwise it&#x27;d have been interesting as fuel cells also have some serious drawbacks and seem to develop very slowly.&gt; Hydrogen can be created with nearly any energy source: renewable, natural gas, etc.Yes. Although efficiency is kind of bad, so it doesn&#x27;t make sense to use fossil fuels to make H2 for cars - we&#x27;d just be increasing emissions as opposed to generating electricity for use in BEVs. H2 has its place as intermediate term (before batteries get cheap enough) energy storage of surplus wind and solar power. It makes more sense to use the H2 for other things than cars though - ships, trains, long-haul trucks, possibly planes.&gt;There is a large infrastructure for moving fuels.Which I bet has to be seriously adapted to handle hydrogen. You wouldn&#x27;t be able to move syrup with the existing infrastructure, because it&#x27;s very different to gasoline. H2 is probably a lot more different - it needs much tighter seals, it embrittles materials such as steel, which is used everywhere for e.g. gasoline storage. It is cryogenic and under high pressure. Finally, it&#x27;d be stupid to lock ourselves into an energy storage tech that relies on a physical fuel that has to be transported around, when electricity is right there, partly built out already and requiring no physical trucks, trains, boats etc to get to the consumer. It&#x27;s just stone age and the only reasons people think it sounds like a good idea is that they&#x27;re so used to it working that way.

Hydrogen works fine in ICEs with modest modifications.Hydrogen can be created with nearly any energy source: renewable, natural gas, etc.There is a large infrastructure for moving fuels.

In a few decades the internal combustion engine will be to transportation what the typewriter is to typing today. It’s kind of mind boggling, but there is really no alternative if we want to stop increasing the CO2 concentration in our atmosphere.

If you like these kind of animations, I found this website a while ago: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;jacoboneal.com" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;jacoboneal.com</a>*Graphic designer &amp; 3D artist. Creator of animagraffs.com

If you really want a rabbit hole, I suggest this guy&#x27;s channel. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;channel&#x2F;UCwosUnVH6AINmxtqkNJ3Fbg" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;channel&#x2F;UCwosUnVH6AINmxtqkNJ3Fbg</a>

Wow, this video was fantastic, thanks for sharing. I see how the progression reminded you of this, but the physical demo presents as more of a history-of-mechanisms lesson, which is fascinating.I also appreciated the humor. They seem to have built a working mockup of a car with the driveshaft penetrating the passenger compartment, just to make the joke that it would be inconvenient to rest luggage on the spinning shaft.

The quality of the explanations, and progression of complexity, reminded me of an old video that explains how a car&#x27;s differential (rear end) works:<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=yYAw79386WI" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=yYAw79386WI</a>Skip to 3:30 for the explanatory part.

whoops thought this was an article about basecamp

If the author is reading this: A great addition would be common breakdown reasons, perhaps on another page.Something I didn&#x27;t really think about until recently: solid metal bearings are used on the crank and piston journals as they can handle more force than ball or roller bearings. In other areas, ball and roller bearings are used to minimize energy loss.

Well done. According to the author&#x27;s Patreon, this is his first article that&#x27;s &quot;Paid for by patrons&quot; though no details are given. His Patreon is set up so that donations happen whenever he publishes a new article. I guess the advantage over recurring donations is that it doesn&#x27;t pressure him to crank out content - he can just do it on his own schedule, and donations are always justified.<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.patreon.com&#x2F;ciechanowski" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.patreon.com&#x2F;ciechanowski</a>

It’s a good question, why is only fuel injection and ignition computer controlled? The intake and exhaust valves must also be solenoid controllable.

I don’t think an iris like that would last very long with the immense pressures in the cylinders. It makes way more sense to electronically control the valves themselves, like Koenigsegg is doing with their Freevalve tech, so you get the mechanical seal of the valve with the control of electronics.

What I want to try is replacing valves with electric iris mechanisms. The computer would signal the iris to open or close depending on the situation.No more complicated variable valve stuff. Just hold the iris open longer. Also no more interference engines and timing chain&#x2F;belt changes.Iris: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;commons.m.wikimedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;File:Iris_Diaphragm.gif" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;commons.m.wikimedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;File:Iris_Diaphragm.gif</a>Edit: fixed typo, added link to iris gif

And thus the reason why there&#x27;s such as thing as a runaway diesel engine.

This was excellent, but should perhaps be clarified that this is a gasoline engine - diesels don’t ignite by spark, but by immense pressure in the chamber. This also invalidates the “you cannot add fuel to increase power” of gasoline engines. Diesels can (and should!) run at lower rpm; they don’t stall because the ECU can add fuel to increase power output.

brillant explanation. I always wanted to know how an engine really works.

Another great Bartosz Ciechanowski creation. Also check out his past work [1] about light &amp; shadows, cameras &amp; lenses, color spaces, floating point, etc.[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;ciechanow.ski&#x2F;archives" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;ciechanow.ski&#x2F;archives</a>

Haynes sells an excellent Build Your Own Internal Combustion Engine model, which teaches children about all of these concepts.

great find - i love the one on Cameras and Lenses too, great use of interactivity for pedagogy

I know them (almost poetically, though not necessarily politically correct) as:Suck, Squeeze, Bang, Blow.

Can&#x27;t remember where I first learned this, twas years ago -- unforgettable names for the four engine strokes:<pre><code> Suck, Squeeze, Pop, Phooey</code></pre>

&quot;bad choice of metaphor here! &quot;Or a funny one.

<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;ciechanow.ski&#x2F;cameras-and-lenses&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;ciechanow.ski&#x2F;cameras-and-lenses&#x2F;</a>&gt; [...] We’ve barely scratched the surface of optics and camera lensA real genius certainly, but, I&#x27;m always doing this; bad choice of metaphor here!

Saw a startup recently building something like “PowerPoint for animated documents” - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.unscene.app&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.unscene.app&#x2F;</a>Crazy that no one’s made this before

Yeah, and to think that some people are incredulous when I say that I need animation support in my electronic documents !This is even better, I will bookmark it as an example.

That was a fantastic metaphor, and though I am intimately familiar with engines I had never thought of the crankshaft as four simple hand cranks stuck together before.

Love how it&#x27;s written&gt; While reliable and easy to direct, a cannon ball won’t be very effective at pushing the crank

I like the the interactive visualizations a lot and some of the setup (a camera picture is a thing that changes in certain ways as you fiddle with these 3 parameters, etc). But I always have a hard time telling who the actual audience for this stuff is. If it&#x27;s someone who has very little exposure to how cameras actually operate, is a Bayer filter really the second thing they need to be aware of? I don&#x27;t really follow the pedagogical narrative&#x2F;intent here.

I think it can&#x27;t be understated how important it is to able to rotate, and move the playback forwards and backwards.It&#x27;s almost like being able to hold the part in your hands, examine the reasoning behind its structure and &quot;debug&quot; your mental model of it by playing its operation back and forth.

&gt; Surely he didn&#x27;t write this JS by handIt seems parts of it are auto-generated like all those co-ordinates. But then some parts appear as if they are hand-coded.I also noticed that other program texts are getting assigned to variables (example &quot;line_vert_src&quot;). Could someone please describe what&#x27;s going on?That explosion animation is absolutely mind-blowing. Goes to show what can be achieved if someone focuses their attention to a topic to understand it in depth and explain it at the same depth.

&quot;I did the 3D models in @Shapr3D with small post processing in Blender, animations are just done by hand&quot; <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;BCiechanowski&#x2F;status&#x2F;1387827101294686210?s=20" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;BCiechanowski&#x2F;status&#x2F;1387827101294686210...</a>&quot;Just bare webGL, it’s not that many lines of code to setup and it gives me complete control over what I want to render&quot; <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;BCiechanowski&#x2F;status&#x2F;1388504529646211076?s=20" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;BCiechanowski&#x2F;status&#x2F;1388504529646211076...</a>

I&#x27;m assuming he used something like SolidWorks to CAD up the parts, but then it looks like he custom made all the animation stepping widgets and camera rotation logic and various shaders for the different effects in pure JS[0]? Surely he didn&#x27;t write this JS by hand (i.e. it was generated from blender3d or solidworks files or something?).I would like an article on how he made the interactive animations in the article.[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;ciechanow.ski&#x2F;js&#x2F;ice.js" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;ciechanow.ski&#x2F;js&#x2F;ice.js</a>

&quot;This page summarizes pretty good what web technology is capable of, when in the hands of a real professional.&quot;I was looking at this when I went to bed, and though the subject matter isn&#x27;t completely new to me I was enthralled by the execution and stayed up and read all of it...Absolutely LOVE the way this has been put together, it really speaks to me of beauty in simplicity, at least from the visual perspective!

The award is the bookmark. This is a great reference for cleaniness.

&gt;One of those web pages which deserves an award.Yes. This is what Web Pages should have been. Simple, Clear, with Animation to help with certain demonstration. He could have been add an ad at the bottom if it needs to be. A Web page with added on interactivity.Instead we got Web Apps.

One of those web pages which deserves an award. Some place in some kind of Internet Hall of Fame, an historical archive which shows the only best highlights of what websites were actually capable of presenting. Milestones of web development.This page summarizes pretty good what web technology is capable of, when in the hands of a real professional.---Ok, I just realized this is from Bartosz Ciechanowski, and this reminded me of the Cameras and Lenses [1] article which I&#x27;ve seen recently. It was the same kind of quality.This man is a real genius.[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;ciechanow.ski&#x2F;cameras-and-lenses&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;ciechanow.ski&#x2F;cameras-and-lenses&#x2F;</a>

Who did the 3D graphics for this post?EDIT: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;BCiechanowski&#x2F;status&#x2F;1387827101294686210" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;BCiechanowski&#x2F;status&#x2F;1387827101294686210</a>

Over the years I&#x27;ve learned how most parts of a car work at a basic level. Engines, clutches, gearboxes, differentials etc. I can&#x27;t help but feel a bit sad that it might all go away within my lifetime. Electric cars are essentially just a battery and a motor. They&#x27;re just not very interesting.

Timing belts are toothed, and if installed correctly they will never slip. Modern kevlar timing belts are near-indestructible under normal use. The real problem is the pulleys—once those bearings wear out, they can seize, causing the belt to slip or even break.

If the engine is a non-interference design, losing the belt won’t be catastrophic for the valves

I think another reason belts are common is that chains tend to be a bit noisier.

&gt;Timing belts have teeth.To expand: It is the teeth that make belts timing belts, they keep the &#x27;timing&#x27; (relative rotational orientation) of 2 or more toothed pulleys. In an ICE the camshafts are locked to a 2:1 ratio to the crank shaft, in a 3d printer it keeps an axis fixed relative to the stepper motor shaft.

Timing belts have teeth.Occasionally chains are used instead; more expensive and heavier, but more durable. You do need to maintain the timing either way it it will destroy the valves.

The engine in one of the vehicles I own has timing gears rather than a chain or belt. Another option, different trade-offs.

In addition to what frosted-flakes said, many engines are “non interference” design so that if the belt snaps or jumps a tooth the engine won’t be destroyed, and the belt will just need to be replaced. However, non interference engines are not as compact as interference engines.Many engines also use a timing chain instead of a timing belt, but this carries extra weight and requires lubrication.It’s all about tradeoffs!

It is risky and they do slip or even break from time to time.  They are generally a 100k maintenance item. 
The alternative is a chain, which can also fail (or other related components), but is generally not considered a maintenance item.

When I started driving German cars (may be coincidental) I noticed my mechanics would write the date and miles of the service directly on the parts.My Toyota actually had a small decal on the timing belt cover itself specifically for the purpose of tracking that service.

Yeah it’s one of those things that you just have to replace every X miles just to be safe. I got one replaced a couple of days ago because the service history was missing and I couldn’t tell whether it had ever been done. If your timing belt goes you’re in all sorts of trouble.

My first car would diesel after turning it off. Basically the engine would keep running on fuel in the carburetor and residual heat in the engine. Sometimes it would do this backwards. This was very problematic because the timing belt tensioner only worked in one direction. When it ran backwards the timing belt would jump a tooth then the car would not start. I got in the habit of just killing the motor with my foot on the brake and the car in gear then letting the clutch out.I also had the machine shop at my high school weld up a custom tool to help me reset the timing belt in a parking lot with a couple of hand tools. It could be done in a few minutes.This is a long way of saying yes, if they slip it is bad.

The belts are finely machined to very small tolerances, and things are tightened to specific foot-pound tolerances to make sure they sit exactly where they need to. So no, nothing slips.I just went through a belt change with my brother not long ago. The tolerances you&#x27;re dealing with are measured in thousandths of inches. Something that wasn&#x27;t installed quite straight can cause almost imperceptible wobble that can destroy things under load.Still, every day shop tools will help you get the precision you need.

Rubber with embedded steel wire is less stretchy than the rubber bands we&#x27;re used to. Tires even more so than belts; it adds integrity like rebar in concrete.You&#x27;re correct that once it jumps even 0.5cm (~1 tooth) it could touch piston to valve; it depends on the engine, but I&#x27;d wager most nowadays are interference.

Isn’t it risky for the timing to rely on a rubber belt?  Does it never slip?  Even a mm of slippage seems like it would make the valve timing stop matching the pistons?

How were these animations made? SolidWorks?

This is unbelievably awesome! I wish I had such material and teacher like Bartosz Ciechanowski when I was learning IC engine during my undergrad for mechanical engineering. Thanks a million to Bartosz wherever you are and whoever you are! Simply wonderful! Thank you, thank you, and thank you!

Washing machines and other appliances used to be powered by ICE when the grid was not widespread

Wouldn’t it be loud as hell? Even 4-stroke small engines are inefficient all things considered.

For sure miniature gensets exist! They&#x27;re often used on gas RC &#x2F; autonomous airplanes to generate supplemental electricity. Here&#x27;s one: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=1yB49G756OI" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=1yB49G756OI</a>I think the answer is that the miniaturization reduces efficiency, adds a ton of tiny, expensive parts&#x2F;maintenance, and doesn&#x27;t generate a lot of power compared to what you can store in a battery. So while the idea is cool, it&#x27;s really only applicable in a few specialized use-cases like long-duration drone flight.You&#x27;ve got to also compare it to other available power generation schemes -- A single 250W solar panel is far cheaper, simpler, and eco-friendly.

Yes, first 40% efficient ICE was made almost a century ago, but those were very big engines.

In japan some rural households use propane solid oxide fuel cells in this manner. Instead of combusting the fuel, which is loud, it’s pushed through a piece of exotic ceramic which causes a chemical reaction that splits the fuel into hydrogen gas and water vapor—the resulting free electrons are used for electricity, the hydrogen gas is used as a home&#x2F;water heater and to keep the ceramic fuel cell at its reaction temperature, and the water vapor is simply vented.

&gt;Micro combined heat and power is an extension of the idea of cogeneration to the single&#x2F;multi family home or small office building in the range of up to 50 kW.[1] Usual technologies for the production of heat and power in one common process are e.g. internal combustion engines, micro gas turbines, stirling engines or fuel cells.<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Micro_combined_heat_and_power" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Micro_combined_heat_and_power</a>Unfortunately, looks like the smallest CHP unit Dalkia Aegis will sell you in the United States is the Yanmar CP35, which does 204,040 BTU&#x2F;h. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;aegischp.com&#x2F;products&#x2F;product-comparison&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;aegischp.com&#x2F;products&#x2F;product-comparison&#x2F;</a>

I have always wondered, if it would be possible to make a small enough internal combustion engine so that you could just have it laying around in an apartment, sitting a few feet away from you, powering your appliances or charging a 12V or 24V battery. Dispensing the exhaust through a long tube. If all goes well, complete combustion of propane should yield CO2 instead of CO anyway. An additional enclosure shouldn&#x27;t be an issue given the generator is small enough anyway.The smallest propane powered generator I can find is basically still not much more silent or smaller than Honda EB2200.Imagine a 350W generator that you can connect to a camping style propane tank that you use to charge some batteries.I played around with setting up such a system with a Sterling engine but couldn&#x27;t achieve high efficiency.Surprised to see no YouTuber with the necessary machining skills and CNC equipment attempted to build a mini internal combustion engine &#x2F; inverter generator.

I doubt most of the readers here on HN ever wrote anything in assembly. It is like comical interaction of Marc Andreesen and Mark Zuckerberg and how Zuckerberg had no idea on the Netscape browser (let alone Mosaic or Gophers).<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.businessinsider.com&#x2F;when-mark-zuckerberg-met-marc-andreessen-he-didnt-know-what-netscape-did-2012-4" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.businessinsider.com&#x2F;when-mark-zuckerberg-met-mar...</a><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Gopher_(protocol)" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Gopher_(protocol)</a>

Well, Electrical and Computer Engineering is an extremely precise discipline, and while the line between hardware and software can be fuzzy in many cases, web software is an entirely different world from VLSI design, and even from instruction set design. And of course, some software, at all abstraction levels, is extremely well engineered as well. But it doesn&#x27;t seem to be the norm.Most importantly, I&#x27;m talking about my own ability more than the best in the field.

It&#x27;s easy to dismiss the difficulty of something when all you see is a webpage explaining things very well and simply with some cool graphics. That webpage looks really cool, but this is just a front page of the result. The backend of all the math, equations and thoughts involved wouldn&#x27;t be so visually appealing. This is just the pretty part result. If you would delve into the actual math and physics that was required for this I&#x27;m pretty sure you&#x27;d reconsider that statement. Just the study of vibrations alone is probably as difficulty as whatever you&#x27;re talking about. And that&#x27;s just one of several areas of study that needs to be considered when making a machine like this. Then you need static mechanics, dynamic mechanics, thermodynamics, fluid mechanics, knowledge of manufacturing processes, materials, among others. And each of these topics is HUGE in itself. You probably have no idea because you&#x27;re a software engineer? It&#x27;s easy to defend our own realm and dismiss others, when we know little about others&#x27; or all we know is based on some cool animations we saw on the web once.

The vast majority of people on this site have never written a line of C or Assembly in the past 12 months

Most people who write software do not know&#x2F;care how circuits work, as they shouldn&#x27;t. Car engineers similarly don&#x27;t need to know how bridges are built.

Excuse me, but modern CPUs are way more complicated than this, even if you only look at &quot;arranging events in time&quot;. Like several orders of magnitude more complicated. Anyone who has touched VHDL&#x2F;Verilog knows how delicate signal propagation is, and how crafty you have to be with the clock.And even if you never tinkered with transistors surely you&#x27;ve at least looked at assembly code, and the amount of painstakingly detailed data layout orchestration that is going on there. A simple printf(&quot;hello world&quot;) is magical if you know what happens under the hood.

&gt; Those things can be as complex as an ICU engine.From a complexity perspective an ICU isn’t nearly as complex as even something as simple is a script scraping a webpages for links and queuing them up for further crawling. I’m not sure if “complex” is the word you are going for but even the TCP state machine has significantly more complexity than an ICU and that’s just a fragment of what it takes to transmit some data.The composability and abstractions we have in this industry allows you to quickly dwarf any regular mechanical system. There is a reason this is a whole new era beyond the industrial revolution.

I kinda wish my title was simply “Systems Administrator” which is probably the closest thing to a “software mechanic” that we have. Most of our titles have been inflated however.

That&#x27;s why I often joke that a big part of my work is as a software mechanic! Which is still highly technical and necessary but the engineering part happens less often.

I _am_ a computer scientist, but also had a course &quot;Gasoline and Diesel engines&quot; at university. (Belgium before Bologna)

When I took &quot;Software Engineering&quot; in University, the prof was very careful to explain in great detail, and frequently, that the field was not mature enough to really be called engineering. Then he would talk at length about things like software for airplanes and spacecraft. It is impossible to call yourself an engineer while looking someone in the eye after taking his class. I am a software developer. Maybe an analyst. But mostly a developer.

&gt; makes me a little ashamed to use the word &quot;engineer&quot; in my title of &quot;software engineer&quot;. There is no real comparison of the quality of the result.I think that&#x27;s because the barrier to entry is too low and anybody is being called a &quot;software engineer&quot; these days.But think about a system which makes proper use of synchronization primitives, like an OS kernel or a robotic control, or a CPU design like the other guy commented too, or maybe a 3D game with tricks like that of John Carmack. Those things can be as complex as an ICU engine.To make an analogy: in the physical world there are the engineers, and the mechanics.In the software world everybody is a software engineer.

Achievements in other disciplines can often look like magic (and some are but it usually takes experts to tell which). I think fundamentally engines are engineered like software- by solving one problem at a time. And after having gotten a distributed consensus algorithm to work with a perfect dance of elections and voting etc I feel like there is magic in software too.

I have had the same thought, software can often feel messy and unpolished. But to be fair to ourselves, we simply don&#x27;t require the same tolerances in most software.

A few thoughts while reading this:In addition to a deeper understanding of engine manufacturing considerations than I even knew I cared to learn, this article helps me appreciate why people are into engine work.The perfect tolerances and synchronization of these machines makes me a little ashamed to use the word &quot;engineer&quot; in my title of &quot;software engineer&quot;. There is no real comparison of the quality of the result.And then I skimmed the source, and it makes me think the author deserves that title. It also validates my belief in vanilla javascript.edit: And later it occurs to me that Mr. Ciechanowski is a true craftsman of software; handmade and built to 1) Be beautiful (and informative), 2) last for years. (The open web standards are the ones that seem to stick around the longest, for better or for worse. (I&#x27;m ignorant of the shader world though))

What are the odds 50 years from now, the ICE becomes a hobby of the upper middle and upper classes? Much like analogue audio recording is becoming.

Wonderful page. Here&#x27;s something a bit more poetic on the subject: The man behind the smallest V-12 engine in the world[0][0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=c1pJIVqCC1E" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=c1pJIVqCC1E</a>

What is the best way to archive such a page for offline browsing? I tried ArchiveBox on this, but all the animations are gone in the offline version (no matter which method was used).

That&#x27;s the one nicer thing of motorcycles, is their simplicity.This fellows videos are pleasant. In that he makes &#x27;experimental&#x27; engines with a very modest shop. Often using a hacksaw and a BBQ.
<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=I-Xr1bmbZ_s" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=I-Xr1bmbZ_s</a>

If you want to take the experience further, I would recommend the following Redline engine rebuild time lapses that Hagerty has. They are mesmerizing and incredible. Their engine re-builder David is a master.<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;playlist?list=PLHKCmmH-x9mI1aCu3Xr4_qeaz9lTJn_XE" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;playlist?list=PLHKCmmH-x9mI1aCu3Xr4_...</a>

&gt; &quot;Wiring harnesses have replaced all the vacuum lines&quot;Of course, now days the wiring harnesses themselves have become huge and unwieldy in many vehicles - literal miles of cables! Automakers are looking at technologies like automotive ethernet and even wireless communication in order to reduce the cost, size and complexity of wiring.&gt; &quot;I share your attitude WRT modern EVs, but I bet if we just treat the controller and battery as black boxes we don&#x27;t attempt to disassemble and service&quot;Some EV batteries are quite serviceable (eg: LEAF), with the pack being able to be disassembled right down to the cell level relatively easily. Although admittedly, some modern pack designs are moving away from this level of serviceability (eg: Tesla, whose cells are cemented in place with fire-retardant foam&#x2F;glue. Disassembly is a one-way operation).Things like motor controllers&#x2F;inverters tend to be very reliable so there is rarely any need to disassemble or service them during the lifetime of the vehicle. If they do fail there&#x27;s a ready supply of affordable replacement parts, thanks to salvage from crashed vehicles, so it&#x27;s often easier to just replace a faulty part than attempt to service.

An aspect that appeals to me is interchangeability. If you needed to replace an engine or other major components, even just to similar items in the manufacturers lineup, there&#x27;s definitely a &quot;golden era&quot; of late 80s to early 2000s cars where that is feasible for the...more enthusiast home mechanic. While not impossible for modern cars, it is far far more difficult.

&gt; Although I really appreciate the reliability, efficiency, and durability that modern engine design has brought, a part of me is sad that modern cars are all about chips and software, and the average guy in his garage or under a shadetree can no longer break one down to the bare bones of electromechanical parts and put it back together better than it was.That&#x27;s a totally flawed understanding of modern ICE vehicles.There was an era of vacuum-line misery separating the 70s and 90s, where you&#x27;d almost certainly never get it back together and functioning good as new again with the literal miles of vacuum lines and solenoids.But modern stuff, especially with just 4 cylinders, is relatively simple and entirely DIY servicable. Wiring harnesses have replaced all the vacuum lines, and everything has a physically unique connector pair, and the harness routing is well described in the service manual. So all the guesswork is gone there, honestly the worst part on new stuff is not overlooking any of the grounding lugs.I share your attitude WRT modern EVs, but I bet if we just treat the controller and battery as black boxes we don&#x27;t attempt to disassemble and service, the rest is just more of the same simple machinery except with no hazardous gasoline and motor oil to drain and handle.

Well spoken, Right to Repair, Right to be Healthy, we keep on dreaming

Plus it doesn&#x27;t help when vechicle manufacturers will not share repair information with the customer, or independant repair shops.It doesn&#x27;t help when they refuse to sell scanners to independant shops, or customers.Yes---vechicles are much more complicated, but every vechicle sold in America should be required to tell customers up front about the ease, and accessibility of required repair information.My point is if they didn&#x27;t hide repair information we might not look at modern vechicles as Challenger space ships.I have been casually looking to buy a new vechicle, and every salesperson laughed when I asked about buying a factory manual.Sales guy, &quot;Oh--no one works on their car anymore, they bring it here.&quot; Sign behind him said, Shop rate is $275 hr. People drinking Starbuck&#x27;s coffee for free though.My father told a salesman to throw in a factory service manual on the sale of a &#x27;97 Dodge Dakota. Salesman, &quot;Hell yes!&quot;. He gave him the manual before he received the truck.And yes--after dealing with a failed smog check this week, and seeing the PID only shows up on the dealership scanner, I am more than pissed over propiatiary information. Failed smog--$125 gone. A trip to the dealership $450, for a sensor that one of the better scanners didn&#x27;t have access to.I went to Automotive School, and worked on all my vechicles ever since.I am so hesitant on buying a new car.Today is definitely my Right to Repair Day.I thought about RTR movement while shopping. I was trying to think about being out, people getting vaccinated, friday, but that Right to Repair was stuck in my mind. We need to all get behind the movement.(To tired to edit.)

If you&#x27;re doing minimally invasive wrenching on stuff that is in good condition electronics are fine until you have to do serious work to them.Grafting two engine harnesses together because you can&#x27;t buy the one you need (because nobody sells that stuff for 20+yo vehicles) will make you want a carburetor.

Obviously it&#x27;s nostalgia for me, but timing lights, distributors, points, carburetor ports and butterfly valves, you could really see into the mechanisms. Hell, my dad (who was a master mechanic and worked on cars and railroad diesel engines to put himself through college) took a drill to the fuel injectors on a shitty 80s Chrysler engine that was knocking and stalling when cold (no amount of adjusting the choke could fix it). I drove that POS in my college years and never had a problem with it.

I think the design of a wiring harness is actually a good analogy for a well-created API, in that it provides a handful of endpoints, each of which fulfills a &quot;contract&quot;. On modern wiring harnesses, it&#x27;s pretty hard to connect the wrong thing, because the connectors are physically &quot;typed&quot;, in that the male and female sides are uniquely shaped so only they will mate up, rather than having a generic connector that plugs in to every sensor.On the contrary, twisting a distributor to set timing, or doing _anything_ on a carburator, will make you long for those aspects of ICE to be abstracted to control by software. Weirdly enough, that&#x27;s what&#x27;s happened over time in cars with direct injection controlled by ECUs.

When I was a boy, my dad decided that our &#x27;66 Mustang with a straight 4-cylinder engine needed new piston rings. I helped a bit but mostly watched as he tore down the engine to the barest elements, only the engine mounts keeping the block held up in the compartment. The crankshaft, connecting rods, tappers valves, piston heads, piston rods, all laid out neatly on the garage floor along with all the nuts, bolts, washers, seals, gaskets, belts, and everything else you see in this video.Although I really appreciate the reliability, efficiency, and durability that modern engine design has brought, a part of me is sad that modern cars are all about chips and software, and the average guy in his garage or under a shadetree can no longer break one down to the bare bones of electromechanical parts and put it back together better than it was.

Hat off, deep bow. Haven&#x27;t seen such clarity of exposition in decades, if ever.Pity it&#x27;s about technology on the way out, but hey, &quot;perfection is achieved on the edge of collapse&quot;.P.S. Learned a few things, and I&#x27;m even more amazed that all this actually works and gets things moving at over 100 mph ... looks like a very clever Rube Goldberg joke.

I spent a couple years trying to fully understand automotive systems tip to tail and did pretty well (excluding transmissions, they&#x27;re magic). This is the best illustration of how engines work that I&#x27;ve ever seen.

Open devtools, Sources, ice.js, on line 5193, change 2 to 40. Fixes the speed of the first animation.Disclaimer: I don&#x27;t know what the real speed should be. The whole website is amazing though.

This page is a work of art.And going through the archives[0], looks like all the pages are!It&#x27;s really, really rare to see this level of care, attention and detail put to something we all consider will be seen only for a few seconds. But as a testament to the adage &quot;the cream rises to the top&quot;, I spent around an hour going through the website.Pure craftsmanship. Thank you.[0]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;ciechanow.ski&#x2F;archives&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;ciechanow.ski&#x2F;archives&#x2F;</a>

Anyone who’s interested in learning how the car engine worksThis is worth watching<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;ZQvfHyfgBtA" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;ZQvfHyfgBtA</a>

Agreed. The graphics&#x2F;animation are obviously great but even the actual explanations&#x2F;text are really clear and well written.

This guys writings are consistently some of the best in the world. His web design mixed with the articulate easy to understand vocabulary, and fantastic easy-to-understand motion illustrations are absolutely the finest I&#x27;ve ever seen.

Reminds me of how I got into computing in the first place.During the 1970s, my dad designed an engine, similar in principle to the Wiseman Engine: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;wisemanengine.com" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;wisemanengine.com</a>To better explore and elucidate his ideas, he bought a TRS-80 Model 16 computer (Model II compatible) with high resolution graphics option and wrote a BASIC program that could compare the mechanical advantage graphs of several different engine mechanisms including his own. He had begun to add a visualization of the mechanism itself to the program. He had only completed the slider crank (what is used in most auto engines), but there it was, animated at half a frame a second: a wireframe drawing of a piston that moved up and down, pushing on a crank that turned the crankshaft. And my brain was like what manner of high wizardry is this!!This site is exemplary of what I had glimpsed that day, going on 40 years ago: the power computers have to explain our world and bring alive the principles that drive it.

It’s an aerosol, fine droplets of liquid in a stream of air. It used to be the carburetor that added the fuel to the airstream (by way of the Bernoulli principle); modern cars use a fuel injector, which works on much the same principle as a spray bottle to create the fuel-air mixture directly in the cylinder.

<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.jezzamon.com&#x2F;fourier&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.jezzamon.com&#x2F;fourier&#x2F;</a>

Can you share a link to the Fourier Transform page that you mentionted, please?

This, like the Fourier Transform webpage, is a masterpiece.Silly Question: when I add gasoline to my car it&#x27;s a liquid. When it enters a cylinder of my Engine, mixed with air, is it still a liquid? Is it a gas? Aeresolized? What causes the change in state and when&#x2F;where?

Impressive didactic gem here, this is what the web was created for.

Another great page! I just have one minor complaint: I wish the spaceball rotations always kept the y-axis oriented upwards... That would help me navigate the models much more easily...

It&#x27;s a beautiful touch that the animation demonstrating the spring itself has a spring action on its playback slider.

Animagraffs also has an amazing short on the ICE:<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=ZQvfHyfgBtA" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=ZQvfHyfgBtA</a>

Wow, that was perfectly executed. A testament to what the web can be.

This is awesome. How did you create the animations?

This post has 1199 points and 290 comments, a 4:1 ratio.This always rings me an alarm: Hey, this is something extraordinary even Hacker News can&#x27;t deal with it (via the usual way, like on posts with an inverse points&#x2F;comments ratio, indicating hate and flame inside).Right, this guy is a genius.Together with Amelia Wattenberger they represent a new wave in storytelling: Meaningful content and meaningful interactions.The previous wave was proven to be a bubble. Embraced, supported and pushed by mainstream media (NYTimes, Bloomberg, Spotify) the formula for the first wave was not successful: Meaningless (average) content + Meaningless (flashy, art-pour-art, attention-seeking, etc) interaction.

What tool is being used for the interactive animations? They are really impressive.

I like the detailed explanations and animations. It reminds me of another page, which doesn&#x27;t look as polished, but has a few additional designs:<a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;animatedengines.com" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;animatedengines.com</a>

This is such a great article man. Love for the effort you put into this article.I seriously wish I had teachers and schools like this. I used to imagine the four strokes when I was in school but it is very hard to relate all the moving parts and how everything connects together in that age where I&#x27;ve never used a motorcycle or a car.Thanks for writing this.

What an excellent illustrative write-up. I don&#x27;t even know what a four-stroke engine is all these years! Thanks to the author, I do know now :)

Just goes to show how difficult energy storage is

Seeing the complexity of an ICE in contrast to mechanically simpler and much more efficient electric motors is fascinating. It makes it obvious to me what will persist, and what will become the next steam machine.

Perfect example of &quot;Simplicity is a great virtue but it requires hard work to achieve it and education to appreciate it.&quot; - Edsger W. Dijkstra

This makes me appreciate even more the advantages electrical motors have over ICEs.If you build a naive version of an ICE, it will have lousy performance, at best. It might not even operate without a lit of mechanical tricks and tweaks. An electrical engine, however, can be built simply and still get decent, if not great, performance.The complexity of ICEs really is a huge disadvantage and there is no turning back.

For those interested, the author has a lot of similarly excellent explanations over the years:<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;ciechanow.ski&#x2F;archives&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;ciechanow.ski&#x2F;archives&#x2F;</a>I am curious about the 5 years gap between 2014 and 2019.

It first feels like one of those oversimplified generic how stuff works things. But this is so much better. Really worth reading through.

Lots of very insightful comments already, I only have one thing to contribute, which is a spelling correction:&quot;Since the piston moves down twice and up twice, it does a total of four strokes and the engine we’ve build is known as a four-stroke engine. Notice that it takes two revolutions of the crankshaft for the piston to do one full cycle of the work as it goes through the four phases: intake, compression, power, and exhaust.&quot;It should be: &quot;the engine we&#x27;ve built&quot;, with a &#x27;t&#x27;, not a d.&#x2F;pedantry

This is so incredibly amazing! It must have taken tons of time to make it happen.Looking forward to the same with turbo, intercooler and EGR. :)

I really wish as a kid I had something like this to read&#x2F;watch because the engine (don&#x27;t call it a motor I&#x27;ve learned from engineers) still confounds me with all of the moving parts and precision. I&#x27;ve found Detroit Diesel videos on Youtube rather satisfying.

Beautiful article. If at all, mechanical engineering was this beautiful.

And if want to share wonders of engineering with a kid check out How to Build a Car by Martin Sodomka [1]. Beautiful illustrations (sample on Czech [2]), translated into many languages.Series also includes How to Build a Motorcycle, How to Build a Plane, How to Build a House, How to Build a Railway. I&#x27;ve got all of them.[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.com&#x2F;How-Build-Car-high-speed-friendship&#x2F;dp&#x2F;1633220400" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.com&#x2F;How-Build-Car-high-speed-friendship&#x2F;d...</a>[2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.kosmas.cz&#x2F;knihy&#x2F;173150&#x2F;jak-si-postavit-auto&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.kosmas.cz&#x2F;knihy&#x2F;173150&#x2F;jak-si-postavit-auto&#x2F;</a>

Much appreciated. I’ll be adding to the fluid mechanics notebook this summer.What areas are you interested in?

For the graphics:
- <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;webglfundamentals.org&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;webglfundamentals.org&#x2F;</a>
- <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;threejs.org&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;threejs.org&#x2F;</a>For general JS:
- <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;developer.mozilla.org&#x2F;en-US&#x2F;docs&#x2F;Web&#x2F;javascript#tutorials" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;developer.mozilla.org&#x2F;en-US&#x2F;docs&#x2F;Web&#x2F;javascript#tuto...</a>There&#x27;s other stuff like build tools, cross-browser, and other stuff, but that&#x27;s likely to be confusing and not super necessary to begin with. The above should be enough to get you running with what it sounds like you want to do.I appreciate you sharing those links. I&#x27;m trying to learn mechanical engineering stuff myself, if you have any further useful learning materials I would love to see them.

I’m a lowly mechanical engineering lecturer. I use Jupyter notebooks to teach fluid mechanics[0]. I make videos of fluid flows with Blender and embed them with the notes along with some basic Python code examples so that students are aware of how basic code can make an Engineer’s life easier (even if Matlab is the standard platform).I also embed simple 3D models with pyGEL3D[1]. It’s fine but very limited. I’m always blown away by this gentleman’s work when it comes up here on HN and would like to use JavaScript instead, but I’ve no idea where to start. Can anyone recommend a good book or online course that would put me on the right path?[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;nbviewer.jupyter.org&#x2F;github&#x2F;nolankucd&#x2F;MEEN20010&#x2F;tree&#x2F;master&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;nbviewer.jupyter.org&#x2F;github&#x2F;nolankucd&#x2F;MEEN20010&#x2F;tree...</a>[1] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www2.imm.dtu.dk&#x2F;projects&#x2F;GEL&#x2F;PyGEL&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www2.imm.dtu.dk&#x2F;projects&#x2F;GEL&#x2F;PyGEL&#x2F;</a>