Eli5: why are car engines never an even number? E.g a 3L engine is always 2967, a 2L is 1984 etc.. why???
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The engine capacity is basically a measure of a cylindrical volume. This is the area of a circle multiplied by height. The problem is that to manufacture something, we tend to focus on linear dimensions like the bore and the stroke. This makes it easier to design the equipment to make the components.
Unfortunately an area of a circle is pi * radius^2. Since pi is irrational, it is not really feasible to form a circle with a rational linear dimension (like a radius of 88mm) and come up with a “nice” number for the area.
Thus, the volume is not going to be a “nice” number either.
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