That is the opening line to the 1973 film What’s Under Your Hood?. For some, the space under the hood of a car is a mystery zone where all you know is that air and fuel turn into fire and then your wheels turn. Actually, if you know that little bit there, you’re probably in better shape than a fair amount of the driving public. Want to know a bit more? Then this is a great video to watch.
Yes, it’s a bit old but it’s presenting the very basic parts of an engine in an easy to understand format. It’s all explained in that great way from all videos of the era. There’s no fluff, just information.
You’re going to learn about the engine, transmission, driveshaft, and rear axle. And you’re going to learn about all of that in just ten minutes. Hit play and let your brain soak it all in.
What makes it go… and don't say ask a mechanic
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6 responses to “What makes it go… and don't say ask a mechanic”
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Wonderful! But I’m surprised that the video’s style, choice of music, and voiceover weren’t antiquated by 1973. Could as well have been made about 20 years earlier, too.
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We watched this very movie in my high-school auto shop class in the mid-’80s. As I recall it seemed at the time to be a bit dated but not antiquated, but that may simply be because of the preponderance of even older movies and filmstrips in my school district.
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I watched it twice and I still still missed the part about how the ECU does all that math to figure out how to adjust the variable valve timing and the air fuel mixture to the injectors and still manage to light up the ‘Check Engine’ light.
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It’s easy to miss, since they kind of skip over it in this video. ECU stands for the Engineer’s Carburetor Unit. It’s actually a tiny Engineer who sits inside your carburetor and uses an eye dropper to dispense tiny droplets into the air stream at just the right amount for the optimum fuel/air mixture. And sometimes he reaches out of the venturi of the carburetor to adjust the valve timing or turn on the Check Engine light.
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Carburetor, I get. Distributor, I get. Even drum brakes, I get. Generator? In 1973?
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