How It Works

Ride comfort and performance. Creating a suspension system that serves both of those masters successfully is a challenging task. All sorts of technology can help, from air suspensions to magnetic dampers and so on. But what is best when it comes to a soft or stiff spring setup? What do you really...

Modifying you car can get expensive very quickly. Still, you want to take it to the track and any method of eeking out a quicker lap time is one at which you're going to look. Where do you get the most bang for your buck? Jason from Engineering Explained is here to break it all down with science...

Chevrolet’s Colorado ZR2 promises to be one heck of an off-roader, and one of the main reasons is the truck’s unique shock absorbers. To achieve the desired performance, Multimatic, the company that builds the Ford Motor Company [NYSE:F] GT and numerous other race cars, had to invent a...

Drag. Friction. Weight distribution and load. These are things you need to consider when you begin to think about how tires work. Yes, those four bits of rubber are your only connection to the ground and they keep your car moving in the direction you desire. Most of us think that a wider tire is...

Road cars and race cars are very different. The cars we buy for every day driving are much heavier, due in part to safety and emissions equipment. Race cars shed every ounce of weight in the pursuit of speed. But those aren't the only differences. In some ways, road cars that are meant to last for...

When you buy a new car, there are certain procedures you should follow in order to properly break it in. Your owners manual will provide you with the proper techniques to make sure you're breaking in your car correctly. If you don't feel like reading that, you can have a baseline level of tips...

A critical component of a successful racing team is its ability to accumulate and understand many points of data. Motorsports engineers thrive on racing data, as it helps them figure out how to make the car and driver a faster symbiotic unit. In the still fairly virgin world of the Formula E...

Jason from Engineering Explained sits in the passenger seat for this ride along. He's accompanied by David Higgins (yes, brother of the also crazy-talented Mark) and the pair are set to explore a lap of the Global Rallycross Los Angeles course. The car here is a Subaru racing machine that's capable...

Pumping fuel is something you've been doing for years now (unless you're one of those people in New Jersey), and it's something you probably don't put a lot of thought into. You pay, you pump, and then you leave. What you should be aware of, however, is the amount of safety technology on hand to...

Engineering Explained and The Humble Mechanic team are two YouTube channels with the goal of teaching us more about the cars we drive. Today, they get together to break down how Volkswagen's dual-clutch gearbox works. Volkswagen calls it the Direct-Shift Gearbox, or DSG for short. With an engineer...

The 2017 Mazda MX-5 RF is the targa-topped Miata that some fans of the car have been hoping would come to light. Not everyone is excited about the cut-up coupe, but there are some enthusiasts that prefer a real roof over their heads and this MX-5 delivers just that. How does that folding hardtop...

Our friend Jason Fenske from Engineering Explained recently attended a Red Bull Global Rallycross race, and, of course, he found a way to explain things using an equation. Jason specifically honed in on the incredible acceleration of these cars. All of the cars are powered by 2.0-liter turbocharged...

Formula E is... not the most thrilling racing out there at the moment. The quality of the teams and the drivers are high, yet there's something to be said about the lack of noise when you're watching these all-electric race cars lap a given circuit. Additionally, the idea that you have to swap into...

You're the king of the road. You think you're the fastest thing on four wheels. You know how to launch a car with a manual gearbox to accelerate the fastest, but do you know when to shift? Jason Fenske from Engineering Explained is here to drop the science about shifting to make sure that you have...

Brake rotors come in a number of flavors. You often see them vented, drilled, or slotted. Sometimes there's a combination of the three, and it's best to know which works most efficiently for the driving you plan to do. We know one of the biggest enemies of brake performance is heat, so the goal for...

Remember that 2002 Honda S2000 that Jason from Engineering Explained recently acquired? Well, he's already set to wrenching on it because, well, that's what he does. In this video, Jason is installing a fresh timing chain tensioner, as it seems this is a potential failure area for the Honda S2000...

Congratulations to Jason on his 500th Engineering Explained video. The series has been wonderful in the way it presents technical concepts and brings them down to a language that most of us can comprehend and understand. For his 500th video, Jason is trying to figure out which automaker makes the...

We've all made the same jokes. You see a front-wheel-drive street car go by and there's a massive rear spoiler hanging off its tail. It's an easy item on a car at which to poke some fun. In some cases, however, that rear spoiler on the right front-wheel-drive car makes a heck of a lot of sense. Our...

The internal-combustion engine is something with which you're no doubt very familiar. Air, spark, and fuel come together over the course of four strokes to create power and move your vehicle forward. That's for a gasoline engine; in a diesel engine, fuel is compressed until it explodes, after it's...

Before you start shaking your head and shouting "No!" at your computer screen and preparing an angry email about how stupid we are, hear us out. Our host Jason Fenske from Engineering Explained is referring to the addition of weight when traction is limited, such as in snowy or icy conditions. In...