Subtitles section Play video
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Hey, it's me Destin. Welcome back to Smarter Every Day.
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You've probably cranked a car engine thousands of times in your life, right?
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You're familiar with that roar as the engine comes to life?
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Have you ever thought about what's going on inside the engine?
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Think about it. You've got thousands of explosions happening
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every minute and they all come together
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to make one unified sound.
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Well today on Smarter Every Day, I wanted to learn what's
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going on in an individual cylinder.
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We kind of get a feel for how an explosion
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propagates inside of a combustion chamber with the transparent potato gun video,
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but for years, I've wanted to see inside of a working engine.
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Today on Smarter Every Day, we're going to get to see this.
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Someone posted on the Smarter Every Day
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subreddit that there's a channel called
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805roadking that have created just this:
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a transparent engine. So I loaded up the
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high-speed camera and went to Cinnaminson New Jersey to meet Everett.
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This looks like the right place.
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(Destin): You Everett? (Everett): Destin! Hey, what's up I'm
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D: how's it going? E: C'mon in.
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E: we were just getting your phone because my phones are out
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D: Hey, what's up? I'm Destin, nice to meet you.
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D: How's it going? E: Pretty good. D: It's a pleasure to meet you guys.
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Oh dude, you have a jukebox!
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E: You like it? A 1953.
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D: That's awesome! That's awesome!
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E: I'll let you take a picture of it later.
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D: (Laughing) How are you guys doing? Is this the shop?
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E: This is it man.
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D: Oh, it smells like freedom!
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(Destin, voiceover): This is Everett. He works with his buddy Mike
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to create all kinds of little mechanical marvels.
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Their specialty is taking apart a single cylinder Briggs & Stratton engine from the 50s
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and converting them into all different types of things.
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For example, this one is turned into a hit and miss engine; which is really hard to do.
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This one is an absolute frankenstein. They took four single cylinder engines,
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chopped them up, and put them together to make one four cylinder engine that runs like a kitten.
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It's amazing!
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(Mike): The seam is actually right here. (D): And you welded that!? (M): Yeah
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(D): How did you weld four engines together and then have it aligned so a crankshaft could go in there?
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(M): It took a long time to do.
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D: If you don't really appreciate what I'm saying here,
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just understand these guys are doing very difficult things with very crude tools.
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They're basically performing mechanical magic.
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Which is why I wanted to see...this.
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D: This is it, huh?
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I love it.
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(Voiceover): On a normal Briggs and Stratton engine,
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the spark plug is right in the middle on the top of the cylinder,
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and is fired by a magnet that moves past a coil.
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These guys moved the spark plug so you can see down into the engine
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and came up with a clever way to fire it with a buzz coil from the 1920's.
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They're also running the cylinder on propane instead of gasoline
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Because it's cleaner and it makes the engine last longer.
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Now that we understand that this is basically a normal engine
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that they've taken the metal head off of and replaced it with an acrylic head,
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its time to get the high-speed camera set up
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and see the one thing I've been wanting to see for several years
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- an explosion inside the engine.
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(D): I can't tell you how excited I am about this camera mount you built
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(laughing) with its engine hoist.
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It's like, it's the most acoustically-pleasing thing I've seen in a while.
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M: I just triggered it.
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(engine roaring in slow motion) (long roar followed by short sparks and more roaring)
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(D, voiceover): Okay this is pretty and all,
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but I want to understand exactly what's happening.
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We have the piston on the left, moving up and down inside the cylinder,
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and two valves on the right.
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Let's take a look at how a 4-Stroke Engine works,
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and count off each of the four strokes along with me.
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The first thing that happens is one of the valves on the right opens,
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allowing a fuel-air mixture to be drawn into the cylinder.
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This stroke is called the intake.
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When the piston gets near the bottom of the cylinder,
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the intake valve closes, and then piston starts to compress the gas.
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This is called the compression stroke.
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The third stroke is the pretty one.
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This is called the power stroke
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the explosion happens and increases the pressure inside the cylinder
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which applies force to the face of the piston pushing it down.
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When all those gases have burned after that third stroke, the exhaust valve then opens
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and the fourth- stroke called the exhaust stroke clears the cylinder of all those exhaust gasses.
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The intake valve then opens back up, and the process starts over and over again.
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Timing is everything in an engine to make sure it works properly. For example you want to make sure
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the spark happens just before the piston is at top dead-center because
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you want the pressure to be building up at the same time as that piston is ready to start moving back down.
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When you hear a person talk about the advancing or retarding of the timing of an engine
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that spark timing is what they're talking about.
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If you look really closely you can see this part happens just before the piston reaches the top of the stroke.
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I asked Everett and Mike if they would dare to run the engine on gasoline for me
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because I wanted to see a brighter flame. I was really excited when they said yes.
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And I was even more impressed when they said that they could change that engine over in just a matter of seconds
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(D): so we're already converted, like, you're done? (M): that's it
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(D): that was fast
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(Slow motion engine. Burst of sound every time it lights up)
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(Regular speed engine sounds)
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(D): man that's good right there.
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(Loud, rapid bursts)
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(Electric spark sounds)
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(Slow motion flame roar sound)
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(D, voiceover): Ok now that you know how an engine works watch each of the four strokes and see if you can identify each one.
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intake
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compression (sparks sound)
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power
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exhaust
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intake, compression, power, exhaust.
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Now think about the engine in your car all the explosions are synchronized together to make that
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one constant engine roaring sound.
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I think what I found really refreshing about making this video is you've got Everett who is retired
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and you got Mike and Bill who later came in the
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shop and help us out these guys are
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totally different generations but
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they're all working together because
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they absolutely love engines in, like, a
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completely unapologetic way. It's
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beautiful
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anyway I'll leave links in the video
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description to all of their YouTube
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channels and I would enjoy it if you
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would consider subscribing. They're small
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channels that kind of thing would really help them out
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(D): Big thanks to 805roadking for
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helping me visualize an engine so, thank you very much
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Bill, Everett, Mike, it was a blast
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(Everett): This is dirtbike5100 and SmallEngineMechanic (D): oh yeah, there you go
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these guys all have youtube channels
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I'll leave links in the video description
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I hope you enjoyed this episode of
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smarter every day it was sponsored by
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audible and the book I'm about to
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recommend means a great deal to me.
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You know, Everett and Mike they have this, you know
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relationship even though their ages are
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quite different.
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My dad recommended that I read this book
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a long time ago and it was fantastic.
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It's about a young man trying to figure
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out his way in the world in 12th
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century Europe after his dad is taken.
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We'll just say that. I don't want to give
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anything away but it's called (Audiobook narrator): The Walking Drum by Louis L'Amour
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(D): That is John Curless
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and he does a dang good job reading this
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book I enjoyed it. It's a thick book so I can't
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really sit down and read this like I
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used to be able to, but with audio books
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I can listen to it back and forth on my
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drive I've even listened to it while like bush
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hogging the field I really enjoyed this
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book it's full of fantastic quotes that
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is just wisdom. I really enjoy it so
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please get this book at audible.com slash
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smarter (Cut) Psst, there's a behind-the-scenes
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video on the second channel goes into
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the timing of that engine, how they
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adjusted to have a shape the acrylic all
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that cool stuff (whispers) go check it out
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Did we just figure out how to.. (E) I think we fixed it (D)... fix it with
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back pressure? We fixed it with back pressure? (M): Look at that! (D): Oh! Look at that! (Indistinct speech)
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It just needed back pressure?