As hard-chrome plating has fallen out of favor, hydraulic-cylinder manufacturers have developed alternative coatings and platings. Here is how they affect seal performance and life. • Hard-chrome ...

A piston is anything but a slug. It's asked to withstand the cylinder pressures generated by 200,000,000 power strokes (in its 100,000-mile lifetime), slide in bores with a minimal amount of ...

A close look inside the crankcase to inspect the piston, connecting rod, and main bearing. This step reveals wear patterns and helps determine what can be reused, repaired, or replaced. #MechanicalRes ...

When Westech Automotive's Norm Brandes inspected J.B. Bracken's 1935 Ford Rat Rod truck (July 2017 print edition), it couldn't do a burnout and ran poorly at idle and under cruise—despite an ...

In case you’ve disassembled your Toyota VVTi engine to replace the piston rings or perform other repairing jobs, you’ll need to put all the parts back together correctly. We’ll see here how to ...

Alina has been enthusiastic about vehicles her entire life, and even from an early age found herself itching to get behind the wheel. Through high school and college, she could be found reading ...

When you consider the crazy monkey motion of reciprocating internal combustion engines it is remarkable they work as well as they do. You have eight pistons and connecting rods doing a “do-si-do” ...

Utah's Transcend Energy Group claims it has a relatively simple and cheap way to dramatically increase the torque output of combustion engines, simply by replacing the standard connecting rods with ...