What does CC and horsepower actually mean in cars?

Question

What does CC and horsepower actually mean in cars?

In: Engineering

Answer 1

To expand on CCs, when an engine is, say, 2000 cubic centimeters, that means that each piston “displaces” 2000 divided by the number of cylinders it has.

So for a 4 cylinder engine, each cylinder would displace 500cc.

What displacement means is the volume of the space within the cylinder that the piston moves through. To get that number, you take the bore of the cylinder (the diameter), then use good old pi to figure out the area, then multiply by the stroke of the piston (how far it moves up and down in the cylinder).

So each time a piston cycles in our 2000cc four cylinder engine, it displaces 500cc of air, and does this four times a complete engine cycle, for 2000cc of total displacement.