What does the “cc” value of an engine indicate?

Capacity of an auto-mobile engine is usually expressed in cubic centimetres or cc.
So, what do you exactly mean when you say that a particular car has is powered by a 1000 cc engine?

A complete operation of an internal combustion engine which starts with injecting the fuel into the cylinder, burns the fuel to generate energy and releases exhaust. One complete such cycle is called a combustion cycle and each operation within a combustion cycle is called a stroke.
Now, the capacity of an engine is nothing but the amount of fuel mixture (fuel + air) that an engine can accommodates in one combustion cycle. As it is volume that we are measuring here, the units are in cubic centimetres or cc. It can also be expressed in liters.

As burning of more fuel generates more energy, an engine which can accommodate a higher amount of fuel in a combustion cycle, is believed to generate more power than an engine with lesser cc capacity an also less economical in terms of fuel consumption.

These conventional beliefs are now being challenged. Traditionally an engine with more cc capacity would tend to produce more power but new developments in technology and innovations have changed this linear relationship between cc capacity and power output.

Also, more fuel per cycle logically means a higher fuel consumption which in turn means a worse mileage figure for the engine. This linear relationship is also being challenged now with engines with a higher cubic capacity actually ending up more economical than the smaller engines.

So, currently we have companies producing engines with higher power output than older versions with a higher cubic capacity while being more efficient than the earlier versions with lesser cubic capacity.

Cheers to innovation!

Anti-lock Braking System

How many of us have gone to a showroom to purchase a car, and found yourself in the midst of questions like, what the hell is ABS? I know what ABS stands for, but is it worth the extra mark-up? Does it really add to the safety of the drive? Under what conditions does it work? Is it a must?
Read on...

To begin with, ABS stands for Anti-lock Braking System.
Before I begin talking about what ABS is all about I will need to take you through an understanding of what do you mean by locking.

An ideal scenario is when you are traveling at a moderate speed, decide to brake, apply the pressure on your brake pedal and your car gradually comes to a halt. There are no worries here.

Now assume you are cruising at high speed and need to apply brakes very quickly! You press the brake pedal really hard!

What happens is that when you try to stop your car at a rate faster than that is allowed by the momentum of the vehicle, the wheels stop rotating due to the application of the brakes (the wheels LOCK) but the vehicle still continues to move forward due to the momentum and causes what is known as skidding.
The friction between the wheels and the road is not sufficient to stop the vehicle.
This is when the driver has minimum control over the vehicle.
This may happen when the initial speed is very high or the road is slippery.

What ABS does, is prevent the wheels from locking, thus keeping the vehicle under the control of the driver.

The big question now is, how does ABS manage that?

ABS has a set of speed sensors. What these speed sensors do is monitor the speed of the wheel and thus recognize when the wheel is close to getting locked on the application of the brakes.

The controller of the ABS system uses the information collected by the speed sensors to control the braking.

What the controller does is, when it recognizes that the wheel is about to lock, it releases the pressure on the wheel so as to free it. Once the wheel is free it gains speed. This is when the controller applies the pressure on the wheel so as to slow it down, again on until the point that it does not lock.

It repeats this exercise at a very high frequency (over 10 times a second) and thus provides the most efficient braking without locking!

As the wheels do not lock, you are able to steer while you brake in case required.
This does not mean that ABS guarantee safety against all the speed and braking related accidents. ABS can only assist you in preventing a skid and in case you need to steer your vehicle while braking, it will help you achieve it smoothly.

If you are in an unreasonable speed - braking situation no system can guarantee safety.

In India, ABS is usually an optional feature and that too in the top end models whereas abroad it is almost a standard. That is expected to be the scenario a few years down the line in India too.

So safety equipment does help, but doesn't take any responsibility away from the driver towards the safety of his passengers and other vehicles on the road.

Hope this was an informative read.

Petrol, still a viable option???

Fuel prices are soaring sky high and there seems to be very little respite in store for us in the future.

The quality of diesel engines has improved significantly.

The big question that weighs us down when we look for a car for ourselves is whether we should look for a diesel vehicle or a petrol.

Let me just run you through some very interesting facts that may help you make up your mind and be prepared to be surprised by some revelations we will arrive at.
Fasten your seat belts and read on!

Let us for the time being concentrate only on the financial aspect of things alone.
If you compare the prices of comparable models of petrol and diesel you will notice that you have to pay a high mark-up of about Rs. 100,000 for the diesel variant.

Throughout this article we will require a lot of factual data for which we will use average numbers.

Most of the cars buyers today purchase a car with the help of a car loan with the most popular tenure being that of 60 months or 5 years.

So, for all the calculations here, let us assume the tenure as 5 years.

When you opt for a diesel variant, you end up paying at least Rs. 100,000 more as mentioned earlier. This, amounts to an additional loan amount of Rs 100,000 for the tenure of 5 years.

Interest rates for car loans may vary from provider to provider. Let us assume an interest rate of 11%. So, the interest which you pay on Rs 100,000 for 5 years @ 11% amounts to Rs. 55000.

The value of a car depreciates year after year. Let us assume the rate of depreciation to be equal to 20% per year.
Now our difference amount (Rs 100,000) will also depreciate at 20% over the period of 5 years by Rs 32768.

Assuming we invest this difference amount for the tenure of 5 years, an interest of 6% per year can be earned without too much sweat. The interest that Rs. 100,000 will earn if invested @ 6% will be 33822.56.

Now, with the interest paid, earned and depreciation over the tenure of 5 years as calculated, the value of the additional amount of Rs. 100,000 grows to Rs. 221,590.56!
This is the actual difference that you pay for a car “cheaper” to run.

Now, the only way this additional expense can make sense is if the savings that it results in are substantially greater than this amount.

Let us assume the price of petrol and diesel as Rs. 55 and Rs. 38 respectively and the mileage for the two engines as 11kms per liter and 15kms per liter respectively. (These are average figures, much lesser than the company claims).

Going by these numbers, to run a petrol car for a kilometer you pay Rs. 5 and a diesel costs you Rs. 2.53.

Hence if you run a diesel car, you save Rs. 2.47 per kilometer of running cost.

In order to save as much money as the difference that you pay, which we have earlier seen is equal to Rs. 221,590.56, we have to drive the car for at least 89834.01kms over 5 years.
(Difference/Savings-per-km = = 221,590.56 / 2.47)

To drive 89834.01kms over 5 years, one should drive at least 1497.23kms a month, which amounts to 49.91kms a day!

So, only if you drive a whooping 49.91kms a day on a diesel car will you save as much money as the additional cost.
If your daily mileage is anything less that this, you are in a loss on the balance sheet and have to drive much much more to save substantially.

This is only the balance sheet cost benefit analysis for you. Let us not forget the obvious advantages that a petrol engine has like better refinement, lower cost of maintenance, better life, better re-sale cost and pick up!

As a tendency we tend to notice only those expenses for which we pay by cash regularly. An additional expense like this one, which deceives us into the belief that we are actually saving the money should be re-looked at.

Hope this was an eye opener!

Torque

The first term that I choose to elaborate on is TORQUE. The reason for this is that the understanding of torque is fairly essential to understand other concepts.

In order to get an object to move we need to apply a Force on it. In simple words, we need to push it.
The force will move an object.

You will agree that if you desire to not just move an object, but to get it to roll (like a wheel), you will need to apply a force slightly differently. The force will ideally be along the edges of the object.

To understand this better, observe the way the kids who play on the streets with tyres and a stict keep hitting the tyre along the surface. This type of an action causes it to roll.

In short, the kids supply the torque for the motion of the tyre.

Lets go ahead and get one more observation listed.

You will notice that to get the tyre to more initially from a stationary position requires more torque than what is required by the tyre to continue moving once already set into motion. This is because of the initial inertia that one ahs to overcome.

The similar situation holds true for cars. They require greater torque to get into motion than to continue motion (unless you try to increase the speed of the car at a high rate – hit the accelerator hard!)

Cars are hence tuned in such a way that a higher torque is generated when they need to be set into motion. This is achieved by the use of gears.

With this initial brief on torque, we will now look at gears elaborately.

Welcome aboard...

Cars have been my fascination for as long as I remember.

Since the time I have followed cars, I have always felt the urge to not only enjoy what they have to offer (what a computer science student may call the highest level of abstraction), but, also be able to understand what makes them behave the way they do, understand what happens under the hood and why does it happen the way it does.

Awareness along these lines, I firmly believe makes one a good driver as one becomes aware of what can be the outcome of certain treatment to your set of wheels and more importantly, why.

This blog is my attempt to firstly, understand the various terms that one associates with automobiles.
Most of them are generic mechanical terms and I have tried to stress on their role in automobiles.

As I continue to gather presentable understanding of the terms, I wish to list them here with descriptions and illustrations.

The focus of this blog will be to present the information with simplicity and minimal use of jargons.

Remember to fasten your seatbelts and drive safely.