I’m a noob car guy, learning more every day.
I’ve had I think 14 cars in my 7 years of being licensed, and in that time I’ve heard a lot of people mention something like “oh the 12v is better than the 16v” when talking about two models of the same car.
What’s the significance, what does it do?
I have a basic understanding of how a combustion engine works, if that helps.
In: 1
Your basic engine needs 2 valves per cylinder, one to let the air/fuel in and one to let the exhaust out.
Adding additional valves can increase the total area of the valves so you can move the air/exhaust through faster/easier and generate more power.
Changing from 1 intake valve to 2 can also result in smaller valves which instead of being a hefty piece of metal with a strong spring to pull it back, you instead have to much smaller lighter pieces which you can move faster meaning the engine can reliably rev up much higher.
You don’t really care about the valve count on the engine, you care about the horsepower and torque figures and the valves help influence that. The 16V version of an engine is likely more powerful than the 12V version even though they have the same displacement (volume inside the cylinders) which means its a bit more efficient.
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