Power Tech

Power Tech

DETERMINED TO LEARN THE BASIC THEORY OF THE internal-combustion engine, you sit down with one of the standard textbooks. Twenty minutes later, you’ve gotten nowhere and are thinking about cleaning up the shop instead. You know you’re not stupid. So why can’t you make sense of a classic text?

It wasn’t until I tried writing on technical subjects myself that I had an answer: Textbooks are written for people who already understand. They are written by insiders, for other

insiders. In the Power Tech video, however, graphs come to life and make visual sense of physical phenomena. For every engine process, there is an effective words-and-graphics presentation that gives the viewer a solid understanding of what is going on. See pressure represented visually as the sum of trillions of billiard-ball collisions of gas molecules against container walls. Yes, there is some math, but only as a way to make things clear.

If math isn’t your game, you won’t miss too much by ignoring it. There isn’t going to be a quiz on Friday, so there’s no pressure. Curiosity is the only motivation here. The video invites you to take a break, rewind and review-as many times as it takes to understand the process being described.

Why bother with these fundamentals if only the nuts and bolts interest you? Because the fundamentals reveal the “why” behind the techniques engine designers and tuners use. Knowing the nuts and bolts may allow you to build last year’s engine, but knowing more is the key to next year’s design.

-Kevin Cameron

Power Tech, Engine Science at the Track and on the Road, Part I: Fundamentals of Power Production, $40; Bridgeman Auto-Graphics, P.O. Box 852, Columbus, IN 47202; 877/732-5769