How It Works

A lot of new cars and trucks are available with air suspension. A better name for the technology is air springs, as air suspension is essentially an alternative to the more familiar steel springs found on most cars and leaf springs found on older trucks. As the name suggests the technology uses air...

Your wheels, they occupy the corners of your car. Sometimes you might want those corners to be a bit further apart from how the car left the factory. You corner hard and you want to maximize the capability of your machine. It sounds like a set of wheel spacers are on your automotive shopping list...

Launching a car with a manual gearbox can be tricky if you don't have a ton of practice. However, if your car has an automatic you have a much easier task ahead of you—even without a fancy launch-control system. Simply press the brake pedal with your left foot then raise the revs using the...

Your engine is composed of many moving parts and pieces. In order to move through the four stages of internal combustion, all of these bits and bobs are quite necessary. Some engines, however, take advantage of squeezing in a few more parts where they can. One area where this is seen often is in...

You know that when you push the button marked "AC" you should feel a nice cooling breeze upon your body in short order. Those two letters stand for air conditioning, and it's within this system that magic happens. At least, that's as far as you know at this moment. You understand the inner workings...

David Wooderson thought it was all about his muscle under the hood. Clint Bruno, however, knew that what he could really use was a set of tires. You see, tires can make or break a good driving experience. To take that a step further, you also need to be aware of what's going on with your tire...

Horsepower and torque--forever intertwined due to our undying love for all that is internal combustion. Do you really know what the difference between the two is, though, and is one actually "better" than the other? A younger version (no gray hair yet) of Engineering Explained host Jason Fenske...

You have a car with a manual gearbox. It's a fun car, so you want to go actually have fun with it. That means you might want to, on occasion, launch forward aggressively from a stop. You're going to raise your revs, dump your clutch, and enjoy some engaging forward acceleration. Do you know what...

You're a master of all things LS. You completely understand the Ford FE big blocks. Those Honda B16 engines are no match for your knowledge base. At their core, these engines all behave the same way. Air and fuel enter the combustion chamber and the pistons and crankshaft work to turn that into...

For your viewing pleasure, this 1930s instructional video released by Chevrolet tells us all about how suspensions operate in remarkably simple, yet entertaining, terms. The film, dug up by the folks at Road & Track, was intended to be shown to mechanics at Chevrolet dealerships. It appears to...

When you open your fuel filler door, you may miss that bright green letter D staring you in the face. That D stands for diesel, and it's what your engine craves. If you put regular gasoline in there, you're going to have a bad time. What exactly happens when you put gas into a diesel vehicle's fuel...

You see that switch down by your knee. You can see that it has numbers and letters. You don't fully understand what it all means, but you're itching to test it all out. That's the drive selector, and before you slam it into 4Lo you should watch the video above. Engineering Explained is here to walk...

The 2016 Toyota Tacoma is fitted with the standard setup you'd find in any truck that wants to go play in the dirt. There's two-wheel-drive and both four-wheel-high and four-wheel-drive-low. Additionally, Toyota offers the Tacoma with a number of other bits of tech to make your off-tarmac journey a...

If you have an electric vehicle, it's a given that you'll have to find an outlet so you can regain those precious electrons. Your car runs on electricity, after all. How else are you going to charge it? Well, there could be a more simple solution to your charging needs in the future, and...

Your turbocharger. It's the snail of mystery attached to your engine, allowing it to breathe in more deeply. With the wonders of forced induction, a smaller engine can create the horsepower and torque of a larger-displacement engine. There are many parts to a turbocharger, which means you might...

No, this isn't a story diving into the different models in the Volkswagen family. Instead, it's our friend Jason Fenske of Engineering Explained examining the differences between gasoline and diesel engines. It goes a bit deeper than spark plugs and glow plugs. The primary difference between the...

Hey #StanceNation...listen up, because Engineering Explained has a few words of advice for you. Well, not just for you but for everyone out there who's thinking about modifying their suspensions. There's the cheap and easy way. Not surprisingly, this is also the dumb way to modify your car, and...

So you want to shift gears like a race car driver? Well, Engineering Explained is here to to help. There's a reason we keep posting these videos, and that's because you're going to learn something from them. Today's topic? The fine art of rev-matching. ALSO SEE: Here's how you double clutch You...

It's one of the final levels you need to beat to unlock "True Enthusiast Power": the heel-toe downshift. This is a perplexing bit of coordination that, once you perfect it, truly makes you feel like an actual master. Until then, you're stuck hoping that your quick rev-matching blipshift is enough...

Mazda's misunderstood Wankel rotary engine is among the most respected—and maligned—powertrain designs ever, as Engineering Explained's Jason Fenske points out in this especially informative video. With his knack for making even the most complicated subjects approachable, Jason tells us...