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Engine Lubrication System

A portion of power is called friction power is lost to overcome the resistance to

relative motion of all the moving parts of the engine. This includes the friction
between the piston rings, piston skirt, and cylinder wall; friction in the big end,
crankshaft, and camshaft bearings. Friction in the valve mechanism, friction in the
gears, or pulleys and belts, which drive the camshaft and engine accessories.

The Importance of Lubrication

The lubricant and lubricating system perform the following functions:

1. Reduce the friction resistance of the engine to a minimum to ensure
maximum mechanical efficiency.
2. Protect the engine against wear.
3. Contribute to cooling the piston and regions of the engine where
friction work is dissipated.
4. Remove all impurities from lubricated regions.
5. Hold gas and oil leakage at an acceptable minimum level.

Lubricating System

In that system, oil is circulated through the system using an oil-pump, which may be
driven directly from the crankshaft or indirectly from the camshaft or any auxiliary
shaft. When the camshaft rotates, oil from the sump is drawn through the submerged
strainer and pick-up pipe to the pump. The oil is then compressed and discharged
through a drilling to the lubrication system. Control of the oil pressure is achieved by
a pressure-relief valve situated on the output side of the pump. If the oil pressure
becomes too high, the relief valve will open, bleeding any surplus oil back to the
sump. From the oil-pump, all the oil flows through drillings in the crankcase to a
cylindrical filter unit. The oil circulate around the filter bowl, forces its way through
the center and flows out to the main oil gallery (the main oil passage). By various
branch cross-drillings in the crankcase, oil is distributed to the crankshaft main-
journal bearings and to the camshaft bearing.

Main-and big-end bearing lubrication:

Continuous oil feed to the big-end bearings from the oil grooves is provided by
diagonal drillings in the crankshaft.

Cylinder and Piston Lubrication

One of the common methods for cylinder and piston lubrication is connecting-rod big-
end radial-hole oil spray. In this method, through a small radial drilling in each
connecting rod, a spray of oil is directed to the thrust side of the cylinder bore once
every revolution.
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Valve rocker-arm-mechanism lubrication

An oil drilling from one of the camshaft bearings supplies oil to the tappet-follower
gallery drillings. Oil from this gallery flows through the hollow push-rod and to the
rocker-arm.

Petrol-engine Carburetion Fuel System

Layout of a Petrol-engine Fuel System:

A fuel system fro a carburetted engine includes:

a) A fuel tank, which stores the petrol and has a fuel-gauge sensor unit
incorporated to indicate the amount of petrol in the tank.
b) A feed pump, which transfers the petrol from the tank to the carburettor.
c) A feed filter, which prevents any contaminating particles from passing into the
carburettor.
d) An air-silencer and filter unit, which quietens the fast-moving air intake and
prevents dirt from entering the engine.
e) A carburettor, which merges air and petrol together so that they mixed in the
correct proportions and the petrol is finely atomised.
f) An induction manifold, which collects the prepared air-fuel mixture and
distributes it to the various inlet ports in the cylinder head.
g) Supply and return pipelines.

Carburetion

Air and petrol mixture strengths: According to chemical combination requirements,

the air-fuel ratio, which gives complete combustion is 15. Rich mixtures, which
contain more than the optimum amount of petrol, produce more power than optimum.
The maximum power of the engine can be obtained when the mixture is about 15-
20% rich (air-fuel ratio between 12 and 13). Prolonged running with very rich mixture
will result in forming a black powder on the cylinder walls and on the spark-plugs.
Weak mixture, which contain less than the optimum amount of petrol produce less
power than optimum, but fuel economy is much better than for other conditions. For
minimum fuel consumption, the mixture can be 15 to 20% weak (air fuel ratio is 17 to
18). Burning is generally slow and requires sufficient ignition timing advance to
compensate for this prolonged combustion period.

Single-jet Fixed-choke Carburettor

It is a vertical tube that is connected to a petrol reservoir that has a float and a valve
assembly as shown in the figure. Dividing the two sides of the U-tube carburettor at
the base of the bent is a restriction orifice known as the petrol jet, its function being to
meter the amount of petrol flowing into the venturi. As the air flow through the
restriction its velocity increases and its pressure decreases so that the atmospheric
pressure acts on the petrol in the float chamber, pushing the petrol into the venture. As
the petrol enters the venturi it will immediately torn apart into various sizes of
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droplets so that the petrol will be finely distributed throughout the air stream as it is
drawn into the engine cylinders.
To control the speed and load output of the engine, a butterfly throttle valve is placed
on the downstream side of the venturi. The spindle of the valve is connected to the
accelerator pedal by a cable or levers. The quantity of charge entering the engine can
be varied by the degree of depression acting at the discharge nozzle, which depends
on the angular position of the throttle spindle opening the butterfly valve. The
function of the float chamber is to provide a reservoir of petrol of constant depth
under steady-running conditions.

Limitation of the Single-Jet Carburettor

The quantity of air consumed by an engine in unit time is directly proportional to the
engine speed, but due to the inertia of liquid flow, the rate at which petrol is drawn out
of the discharge nozzle into the air stream increases almost with the square of the
engine speed. Therefore, if the engine is designed to have the correct air-fuel ratio at
the design speed (2000 rpm in the figure), the engine will have weak mixtures at
speeds lower than the design speed so that the limitation of the single-jet carburettor is
that it does not meet the engine requirement for the correct air-fuel ratio at speeds that
are lower or higher than the design speed.

Capacity-well Compensation

During initial acceleration when the throttle is open, the pressure drop created at the
venturi will draw fuel from the discharge nozzle at a far greater rate than can be
supplied by the petrol jet alone, but the capacity well will provide the extra fuel
demanded for rich acceleration mixture. The level of fuel in the capacity well will
drop quickly until the well is emptied. Petrol droplets suspended in air will be formed
at the base of the well and will prevent any more enriching of the mixture. Any further
increase in speed will only result in a constant amount of fuel flow from the
compensation petrol jet since the air passage bleed reduces some of the depression
created across the petrol jet. The limitation of the capacity-well compensation is that it
is not flexible enough under varying operating condition.

Air-bleed and capacity-well compensation

This system uses one fuel jet and suspension tube situated in the center of the capacity
well. Under no-load conditions, the fuel level in the well will be the same as in the
float chamber. With initial throttle opening, the fuel in the well will be consumed;
thus, providing an enriched mixture. As the level of fuel in the well drops, it exposes
the uppermost of the suspension tube holes. This allows more air to enter the well and
mix with the fuel, thus preventing any tendency towards undue richness. As the petrol
level in the well drops further it allow more air bleed correcting the composition of
the mixture.
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Coil Ignition System

The combustible mixture of air and petrol is ignited by a spark occurring between two
electrodes in the combustion chamber at the end of the compression stroke just before
TDC. It is the function of the ignition system to periodically provide a spark of
sufficient heat intensity to ignite the mixture at the predetermined position in the
engine’s cycle under all speed and load conditions.
The voltage necessary to ionise the air between the electrodes so that the spark will
bridge the air gap can vary from as little as 500 volts when the gap is small and the
engine is hot, to a value of 20,000 volts when the spark-plug electrodes are badly
eroded, the air gap is large and the engine is cold.

Ignition-system equipment

Battery: This is usually a 6 or 12-volt battery. It stores chemical energy, which can be
converted into electrical energy to supply the flow of current through the ignition
system when required.
Ignition switch: This switch is connected in series in the coil primary-winding circuit.
It enables the driver to switch on or off the electrical supply of the battery as required
to operate the ignition system.
Ignition coil: It is an electrical step-up transformer, which converts the relatively low
battery voltage to a high-intensity voltage.
If the ignition switch is closed and the contact-breaker points are together, current will
flow from the battery through the primary winding and the earth-return path back to
the battery so that a magnetic field is produced, which interlinks both the primary and
secondary winding. When the rotating distributor cam opens the contact points, the
primary current falls very rapidly to zero and the magnetic field also decays rapidly.
Self-induction acts so as to oppose these changes and a very large back e.m.f. is
induced in the primary winding. By transformer step-up action, an even larger e.m.f.
(200 times larger) is thus induced in the secondary winding and is fed to the spark-
plug gap to produce a spark.
Capacitor: The capacitor is connected in parallel with the contact-breaker points, the
surge current in the primary winding when the contacts open finds an easier path
through the capacitor so that the primary-current flow stops instantly and the back
e.m.f. that is induced in the primary winding will be much greater. When the contacts
close again, the charge stored in the capacitor charges into the primary winding and so
helps to accelerate the build-up of a new magnetic field in the primary winding.
Spark-plug: It periodically provides a spark of sufficient heat intensity to ignite the
charge mixture.