Common Auto Terms

This post of mine will let you know about the common auto terms which you may or will come across..Have a look and learn..

Torque: 

Twisting force--the distance a one-foot crank can push one pound in a circular motion. In practical terms, it's the force that pushes you back against the seat when a car accelerates. Measured in foot-pounds. It gives the car power for accelerating and towing things. If horsepower is speed, torque is the force that gets the car up to said speed.

Transmission Types:

Manual: The most basic type of transmission, driver shifts the gear manually with the use of clutch. These type of gearboxes are more fuel economic and also cheaper than any other.

Automatic: This type of gearbox changes the gears automatically without the use of a clutch. The gear stick has four positions: neutral, reverse, park and drive. All are easy to understand by name. This type of gearbox is less fuel efficient and is more costly than the manual ones.

Tiptronic: This gearbox gives the driver the option to override the automatic gears by adapting the advantages of manual gearbox. So a driver can drive the car as automatic as well as manual also.

Sequential Manual: This transmission can be called as a semi-automatic transmission as the use of clutch omits here but the gears are still present. The gears are here placed in a sequence from bottom to top one after other, so the driver doesn’t misses any gear on drive ad does has to keep his mind on clutch. These gearboxes are generally used in racing cars.

Engine displacement:

The space available inside the engine's cylinders for the fuel-air mix. The greater the space, the greater the amount of fuel-air mix, which allows for more power. A V8 engine where each cylinder has a space of 0.5 liters translates to an engine size of 4 liters.

Quattro: 

The name of an Audi car shown at the Geneva Motor Show in 1980--and the name for the company's patented all-wheel drive technology that it held and that exists to this day. The technology sends power to all four wheels at once, which makes the car perform much better on corners and slippery roads. (Four-wheel drive systems send power to the axels only when the system is engaged; this is considered all-wheel drive.)

Regenerative Braking: 

A braking system found in most hybrid vehicles. It captures heat that would normally be lost during braking and uses the energy to recharge an electric battery--thus saving power and prolonging battery-only range. It can sometimes make braking feel abrupt.

BHP (or brake horsepower):

The measurement of a car's horsepower when it comes straight out of the crankshaft. It's measured using a friction brake (dynamometer) attached to the drive shaft. Different from straight horsepower (hp) because power is lost as it moves from the crankshaft through the gears, so horsepower delivered to the wheels is
typically less than that produced by the engine.

EBD:

Electronic Brake force Distribution (EBD). It actually senses the weight in the rear of the car (trunk, rear seat, or even how much fuel is in the tank) and sends more force to the rear brakes accordingly. So you experience more effective, better balanced braking.

ABS:

Originally developed for aircraft braking systems in the first half of the twentieth century, the Antilock Braking System (ABS) is essentially used to improve stability during braking and in some cases it can even shorten braking distances altogether. Appearing in various mechanical forms before, the first modern electronic four-wheel ABS system was co-developed by Mercedes-Benz and Bosch.
In cars without ABS, during hard braking the wheels lock, thus making impossible for the car to be steered and the vehicle most likely skids into the obstacle the driver is trying to avoid. The ABS prevents wheel lock-up during braking maneuvers by using sensors which can determine if any wheel is slowing down more than the others and computer-controlled valves which can limit the pressure delivered to each brake cylinder on demand. The whole system is controlled via a master ECU (Electronic Control Unit).
Since the ABS constantly pumps the brakes during a braking maneuver the driver can concentrate on steering the car while applying constant pressure on the brake pedal, without fear of losing control of the car's direction. Also, while braking on uneven surfaces (left tires on gravel and right ones on tarmac, for example) the ABS can keep the car's stability under control.

4WD:

Four Wheel Drive is a system which transfers engine power to four wheels independently and is mostly found on SUVs and all-terain vehicles. By using differentials it can transfer almost any amount of power percentage to any of the four driving wheels.

AWD:

Sending power to every one of the vehicle's wheels all the time, or only when needed, through active or non-active differentials or a transfer case. 

 

POWER STEERING:

Power steering was developed in order to reduce the effort needed to steer the vehicle. In other words, the driver can change the vehicle's direction with the help of an external power source that can assist this operation.
Most power steering systems employ hydraulic pressure and are operated using power from the engine, but in recent years, electro-hydraulic and even 100% electric systems have been introduced.
Some modern steering systems can provide a variable amount of assist, depending on the speeds at which the vehicle is moving, while others are even using the "drive-by-wire" technology, with no direct linkage between the steering wheel and the the wheels.

Brake Assist: 

A generic term used for any system that makes brakes react in addition to or without the driver's input. Some systems can automatically brake in traffic (Volvo City Safety System), regulate cruise control speed (Mercedes-Benz radar systems), target rear wheels to brake around corners (Mercedes-Benz Torque Vectoring Brake) and monitor position of the driver's face while the vehicle is in motion, and apply the brakes if they detect an object ahead when the driver isn't facing forward (Lexus Advanced Pre-Collision System).

Carbon Fiber:

A super lightweight and expensive material used by the likes of high-end manufacturers for efficiency, speed and aesthetic purposes. It's easily molded into most any shape, but not easy to reconstitute once it's been torn or smashed.

CDI:

CDI (Common rail Diesel Injection) is the marketing name given by Mercedes to their modern diesel engines, which are using common rail injection technology. In essence, common rail is a development of the direct injection system. Conventional direct injection diesel engines must build up fuel pressure for each cylinder injection, whereas in CDI (and other common rail systems) the pressure is generated independently of the injection sequence and remains constantly available in the fuel line (on a common rail).
Acting as an accumulator or a separate reservoir, the common rail is usually situated above the cylinders and is distributing the fuel to the injectors and a high and constant pressure. Regulated by the engine ECU, special solenoid valves control the amount of fuel being injected in each cylinder. The biggest advantage of this system is the power and fuel economy induced by the efficiency of common rail over conventional injection systems.

COUPE:

A coupe (or coupé) is a two or four-seater vehicle with a fixed roof and only two doors. There is no globally accepted official definition for the term though. According to SAE (Society of Automotive Engineers) standards, a coupe is a fixed-roof automobile which has less than 33 CuFt (approximately 934 liters) of interior volume. Any car with a greater interior volume is technically called a two-door sedan, not a coupe, even if it has only two doors.

DISTRONIC:

Derived from the words "distance" and "electronic", Distronic is an advanced cruise control system found in some high-end Mercedes-Benz models. The main difference between a conventional cruise control system and Distronic is that - apart from keeping the vehicle on a steady speed - the technology is also using radar sensors to automatically detect and adapt to the speed of the car traveling in front. In its latest version, Distronic can use the data from the radar sensors to automatically accelerate or even bring the vehicle to a complete halt in case it detects changes in the speed of the vehicle ahead.


This is it about the Common Auto Terms...

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