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Planetary Gears

As your vehicle reaches higher speeds, it needs less torque to keep the car going. Transmissions can increase or decrease the amount of torque sent to the car’s wheels thanks to gear ratios. The lower a gear ratio is, the more torque is delivered. The higher a gear ratio is, the less torque is delivered. On a manual transmission, you have to move your gear shift to change the gear ratios. On an automatic transmission, gear ratios increase and decrease automatically. And this is able to happen thanks to the ingenious design of a planetary gear. A planetary gear consists of three components: A sun gear.  Sits at the center of the planetary gear set. The planet gears/pinions and their carrier.  Three or four smaller gears that surround the sun gear and are in constant mesh with the sun gear. The planet gears (or pinions) are mounted and supported by the carrier. Each one of the planet gears spins on their own separate shafts that are connected to the carrier. Planet g...

Automatic Transmission

Purpose of a Transmission Before we get into the ins and outs of how an automatic transmission works, let’s do a quick review of why vehicles need a transmission  of any kind  in the first place. As discussed in our primer on how a car engine works, the engine of your vehicle creates rotational power. To move the car, we need to transfer that rotational power to the wheels. That’s what the car’s drive train which the transmission is a part of  does. But here’s the problem: an engine can only spin within a certain speed in order to operate efficiently. If it spins too low, you wouldn’t be able to get the car moving from a standstill; if it spins too fast, the engine can self-destruct. What we need is some way to multiply the power produced by the engine when it’s needed (starting from a standstill, going up a hill, etc.), but also decrease the amount of power sent from the engine when it isn’t needed (going downhill, going really fast, slamming on the brakes). ...

Anatomy of a Engine

The Anatomy of a Car Engine A V-6 Engine I’ll show you how the four-stroke engine works here in a bit, but before I do, I thought it would be helpful to go through the various parts of an engine so you’ll have an idea of what’s doing what in the four-stroke process. There is terminology throughout these explanations that relies on other terms in the list, so don’t worry if you get confused at first. Read through the whole thing to get an overall grasp, and then read it again so you have a basic understanding of each piece as it’s being talked about. Engine Block (Cylinder Block) The engine block is the foundation of an engine. Most engine blocks are cast from an aluminum alloy, but iron is still used by some manufacturers. The engine block is also referred to as the cylinder block because of the big hole or tubes called cylinders that are cast into the integrated structure. The cylinder is where the engine’s pistons slide up and down. The more cylinders an engine has the...