How many pistons does a cars engine have?
A. A car’s engine has as many pistons as cylinders. Most cars’ engines have four or six cylinders. Bigger cars may have engines with eight cylinders. Q. So, the more cylinders an engine has the more powerful it is? A. Generally, yes. Power depends on both the number of cylinders and how big the cylinders are. Engines are often described as “fours” (four-cylinder) or “sixes” (six-cylinder), with, say, 2.2 liters of displacement. (Cubic inches were once used to describe the size of cylinders, but now metric measurements are standard.) The bigger the displacement, the more power — just like a canon. Q. What’s all that extra garbage under the hood of my car? The engine on my lawnmower is a lot simpler. A. That “garbage” is actually the engine’s electrical system, fuel system, cooling system, lubrication system, and exhaust and emissions system. If your car’s engine were like the engine on your lawnmower, it would be loud, inefficient, hot, dirty, shaky, and not very powerful. It’d be like
