Engines 101: the engine block.

All right, guys, welcome to episode one of Engines 101, where we're gonna talk about basic engine components while we build this model of an engine. So this is my fun way of building an engine with a model that I've always wanted to do, but at the same time, give you guys information about the different parts of an engine. So I invited a lot of people on TikTok over to watch these, so if you're one of those, welcome. So unfortunately, the model itself, when we look at it, it comes with lots of very small pieces. So this is not an easy model that you're gonna put together in an hour and then be bored. So this is a really cool model, and I'll leave a link to it in the description in the comments in case you guys wanna eventually get one and follow along with what we're doing in this series of videos. But the reason I say unfortunately is because the first component that I wanna talk about with the engine is the engine block, which is somewhere in one of these sacks in about 50 to 100 different pieces right now. So I don't have one that I can actually hold up and explain to you. So what I'm gonna probably end up doing is splicing this video with some pictures where I can show you what I'm talking about, all right? So what is an engine block? That's the topic of this first video. Your engine block is the housing assembly for all of your moving components, the mounting spot. It's the big component that houses the components that we're gonna talk about in future videos like the crankshaft, the pistons, it's a mounting spot for the cylinder head. It includes the cylinders where the combustion chamber is formed, right? So it's really the foundation of the engine. So when you look at a cylinder block, it also has a big role in defining the engine overall, right? So you may have heard the terms V6, V8, inline six. Those are all that are based off of the block itself and what the cylinder configuration is. So that cylinder could be an inline six. So you got six cylinders all in a line. It's a fairly long engine, but it can generate a little bit more torque, which is why you see those in a lot of diesel applications. Then you want to be able to put more displacement and more cylinders inside of a smaller area, you go to V configuration. So if you had a V6, you would have three cylinders on one side of the engine, three cylinders on the other side of the engine, but the engine's gonna be a lot shorter and fit into a smaller space. But then you also can have V6s, V8s. You could have inline four cylinders, inline six cylinders. There was some engines I really didn't like, which were inline five cylinders back in the day. I don't even know if they still make those. If they do, let me know. But then you also have the block configurations where we talk about where the camshaft is located on the engine. And don't worry about what a camshaft is right now. We'll talk about that later. But your camshaft could be up on top of your cylinder head in an overhead cam engine, or if there's a bore in your block for the cam to slide into, you have an in-block cam engine, all right? So I'm gonna probably, like I said, I'm recording this. I'm just talking straight through, but I'm probably gonna splice this up so I can put some pictures in there to show you what the things I'm talking about. So hopefully I'll be able to find some good pictures of an inline versus a V6 and overhead versus in-block and stuff like that. So what are engine blocks made out of? All right, so you have aluminum blocks now that are lightweight. So they really help with the weight of the car, the vehicle, keep it from weighing more, which means better fuel efficiency. Aluminum is really good at radiating heat to the atmosphere and away from the engine. So there's some positives about aluminum blocks. The negatives about aluminum blocks, I don't know if we really call them negatives, but maybe things you have to have if you're gonna have an aluminum block would be removable sleeves, because aluminum itself would be too soft to have a piston going up and down inside the bore. So your cylinder bores in that block would be removable sleeves. And then you would also have different parts of that block that would have to be hardened in steel or a cast iron or something to support things like main caps and things like that. So the entire block can't be aluminum if it has moving components in that part of the block, so you've gotta toughen that stuff up a little bit. But they're lightweight, they transfer heat well. Then you got cast iron blocks, or blocks made out of material other than aluminum. There's a lot of composite materials out there that go into making these, but we usually just call them cast iron blocks, but they're not always necessarily pure cast iron. There are different variations of alloys and stuff, but they're a little tougher, right? So if you have one of those, it's gonna weigh more, but it's gonna be capable of withstanding a little bit more power, a little bit more oomph. You're gonna be able to have what we call parent bores, where the cylinder is just a bored part of the block and you don't have sleeves. But then on diesels, you can have those kind of blocks, but still have the sleeves. But ultimately, what do we want to make sure of is the next part, when you have an engine block, what do you wanna make sure of, all right? So if you're building an engine, you got it torn down and you're looking at your block, few things that you're gonna want to check for absolute sure to make sure that this block is usable. First thing is your cylinders. If you don't have sleeves and you got parent bores, you gotta check your cylinders. And the two main things we're checking cylinders for are out of round and taper, right? So out of round, we would measure by checking it with a T gauge and a micrometer in multiple places, turning it and making sure that the engine, as it was being used before, didn't start to make that circle out of round. If it is out of round, it's not gonna seal well. And you're gonna have compression loss and things like that. Taper is another thing that happens because the force of the rings of the piston pushing against the cylinder wall is not the same all the way down the stroke. So cylinders kinda tend to wanna taper where when they start out, they might be perfectly round and straight, but as the engine wears, it wears at a taper. So we would measure it the same way we did out of round by putting a T gauge in and rotating it and pulling it out and measuring it with a mic. But instead of rotating it to check for out of round, we're gonna drop that T gauge down into the bore a little further, two or three times, and measure and see how much taper there is. Most engines are gonna have an OEM spec that will tell you where to go with that, if it's within reason or if it needs to be addressed. If your bores are out of spec, you can get a block machined, in which case what you do is you take it to a machine shop or if you have the capability yourself, you would machine those blocks out and make those bores round and not tapered again, but now they're gonna be a little bit wider diameter. So if you did like a 30 thousandths on it, that means you're taking 15,000 surface material off of that block and because it's a circle, it means it's gonna be a total of 30 thousandths, but you're gonna have to buy bigger piston rings, you're gonna have to make adjustments for your build for that extra space that you built into it. The other thing we wanna check is for warpage, right? Block decks can warp, blocks themselves can warp. Key tip here, don't leave a long engine on an engine stand for like a super long period of time, they will tend to droop. But you wanna check the block deck, straight edge, feeler gauge, see if there's any kind of unevenness in there. Some engine manufacturers will allow you to shave some of that material and you correct it with the head gasket. Some of them don't want you doing that at all and they'll tell you if the block deck or the cylinder heads are warped to replace them. But you wanna check that, you wanna check for warpage. And then the other thing you have is the bores, right? So you'll have where the crankshaft mounts to the bottom of the engine, you'll have these bores and those bores have to be round, they have to be not be tapered. So you're gonna be measuring those just like you did the cylinder bores. You're gonna be measuring those for out of round, out of taper, things like that. And they make line bore gauges that you could use that run through the length of the block to see if it's still straight. But those are all different things we would wanna do with the block. So now I got some work ahead of me. I got to one, read through the book on the engine thing here and find out which components make up that block and start building it. But I really like this model because it's really detailed booklet telling you how to put everything together that comes with it. And it looks like it's gonna be a lot of fun. I'm not gonna do every little detail of the build on camera but I do wanna, as I build it, make these videos and explain the different components. So this was the episode one about the block. Now I'm gonna go try to find some pictures to splice into this so that it's not just me yapping at you. You can see some visuals, but I got my work cut out for me. I gotta find some stuff now. Hope you liked this episode. I'm gonna put this in a playlist called Engines 101. So if you go to the channel, subscribe to it, look for that playlist and you'll see as I add videos to it, right? And also, like I said, I will link the model just in case you're interested in it. I'm not really making this to sell models. I'm making it just to educate people about engines. So if you have any questions though, please let me know in the comments. Consider a thank you, a sticker, or even becoming a channel member that helps me pay for this stuff that I... And I'll tell you what my main goal is real quick, secret between us, is that I'm making enough money off of these videos that I can buy me a space, like a small little warehouse space where I can set up actual engines and teach you guys. Those of you that don't know, I work at Universal Technical Institute. And once my YouTube channel here got monetized, UTI decided that it was a conflict of interest for me to record on the engines and the trucks and the stuff that I have at the school. So I've been struggling to find ways to bring you guys information and new relevant content. So watching these videos, doing the memberships, doing the donations, all that is gonna help me build a... Get a place, a space to where I could actually do some hands-on stuff with you guys. So I appreciate all the support and I'll see you guys in episode two.