The Ford Flathead V8 wasn’t the first V8, but when it debuted in the 1932 Model 18, it brought this brilliant engine configuration to the American masses. With a simple design featuring a flat cylinder head (hence the name) that placed intake and exhaust valves next to the cylinder, this V8 was incredibly cheap to mass produce. And it was this same cylinder head design that forced it out of production in 1953. Using a 3D-printed model of a Flathead V8, Engineering Explained’s Jason Fenske goes through why this engine was perfect for its…

Pushrod engines are great for a lot of reasons. They’re compact, they’re simple, and if done right, they sound good. But one drawback of the pushrod design is that it can’t rev as high as a comparable overhead-cam engine. Pushrod engines are unique in that the camshaft is inside the cylinder block—not on top in the cylinder head. This makes engine height shorter, allowing for a more compact design. The downside is that the camshaft rotation has to travel through a pushrod and a rocker arm, which pushes a spring down…

The V8 engine has long ruled the world of luxury cars, thanks to glass-smooth grunt and a delicious howl under duress. But tightening fuel-economy regulations are encouraging the use of smaller piston counts, and on the standardized tests that automakers use for fuel-efficiency ratings, the average downsized, turbocharged V6 uses less fuel than an equally powerful V8. That may seem win-win, but don’t be won over. Engineers don’t fantasize about V6s—accountants do. The V6 layout has proliferated because it “packages well,” a sexless industry term that’s code for “easy to…

An educational YouTube engineering channel has released a new video that strips back the workings of a clutch, and it answers all the questions you were too afraid to ask Asking exactly how a clutch works is one of those questions a lot of young petrolheads are afraid to ask. They think they’ll look stupid if they admit they don’t know. To them we say this: the uninformed person is far wiser than the wrongly informed one. We found this video that takes the workings of a conventional clutch right…

For one reason or another, there are times were you think it might be beneficial to start off from a stop in second gear rather than first in your manual transmission car. In most cases, though, doing that will cause more wear on your clutch. Why? Jason Fenske of Engineering Explained is here to, well, explain. It all comes down to how much you have to slip the clutch to keep the engine from stalling. In first gear, you have to slip the clutch up to a certain speed (5 mph, for…