Petrol engines and the power of cheap car insurance

Nowadays, motor vehicles and car insurance are taken for granted. Little thought is given to the metal work under the bonnet of, say, a Ford, BMW or Toyota.

Yet while wheels have been around for thousands of years, if we go back just a century or so, no-one knew what a car was. It was 1885 when Karl Benz attached a petrol engine to a cart with three wheels.

Internal combustion engines, as they are also commonly known, act as mini chemical plants, converting liquid fuel into heat and movement in closed containers, turning the fuel into mechanical power that cars use, quite simply, to drive from one place to another.

Motor vehicles - whether Toyota, Ford, BMW, Peugeot, Renault, Audi or Volkswagen - usually have from two to 12 cylinders. At the top of each cylinder sit two valves - the inlet valve permits air and fuel to enter and mix. The mixture is then ignited by an electric spark plug. As the fuel is ignited, the power of the mini-explosion forces the piston to move, providing power to turn an attached axle called a crankshaft. The power or energy that turns the crankshaft can move the car. As the piston moves through its cycle, the second valve, an outlet, opens to ensure exhaust gases can escape.

Petrol engines make power by endlessly repeating these four basic steps:

• Intake - combustible mixtures of fuel and air enter the cylinder via the inlet valve.
  
• Compression - the mixtures are placed under pressure as the inlet valve closes and the piston moves to compress the mixtures.
  
• Combustion/Expansion - the mixture is fired or burnt. As the hot mixture expands, it pushes on and moves the piston that transmits this power to the crankshaft.
  
• Exhaust - cooled combustion products, exhaust gases, are forced out as the piston is forced back up the cylinder for a second time.

Cars tend to have at least four cylinders to ensure there is no loss of power, i.e. by firing out of step with each other, one cylinder is always powering the crankshaft at any moment in time. Engines with more cylinders are used in more powerful, faster cars - several cylinders, instead of just one, can power the crankshaft any time.

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