Hey im a new member to bigger engines. i know alot about small engines and some stuff about car/truck engines. i was wondering wht the liters r meant for. like whts the difference between a 5.0 liter and a 3.6 liter.

 

5.0 liter is a 302

 

Liters and cubic inches are both a measurement of volume of the combination of cylinders with the pistons at the bottom of the bore or BDC (bottom dead center).

Its just a matter of conversion. 3.6 liters = 3600 cc ~ 219 cubic inches. You can go to google and it will convert for you. Type in 3.6 liters to cubic inches and it will do the conversion. You can only converter volume to volume, not to a linear measure.

302 does not equal 5.0 ford rounded up 2 places which is not correct. 302=4.948 liters. If you round to two places, it goes to 4.95 if you round to one place it is 4.9. Since there 300 six is already called a 4.9 liter, you can see why they didnt want the confusion. A 305 is very very nearly 5.0 liters.

Displacment (volume) also doesnt tell you the whole story about the engine. For instance ford's V10 is 6.8 liters. Where the 460 V8 is well over 7 liters. The diameter of the piston is smaller on the V10 and the stroke (travel of the piston in the cylinder due to the crankshaft) is longer in the V10. The v10 is designed for emissions and low end torque. The indy style V10's are under 5 liters and very short stroke for high rpm operation (around 15000 rpm).

I am no engine builder, but I have been interested in cars and racing for a long time.

 

Both of you guys welcome to the best Ford truck site on the internet. You will find there is alot of info in these forums and nice people that will go out of there way to help as much as possable.

 

Thread moved to General Automotive Discussion.

-Matt

 

hllon4whls, you are mostly correct, except you oversimplified the description of displacement. Yours is correct if the piston is exactly level with the block at TDC. However, many engines have the piston lower in the block and some engines actually have the piston protrude from the block.

The true definition of displacement is that it is the swept volume of the engine. The area of the cylinder described by the size of the bore by the stroke of the piston times the number of cylinders in the enine.

 

Liters is metric, cubic inches is English or American measurements. Most manufacturers round the number to something sexy sounding. The official displacement of the block usually remains the same even with different compression ratios. After all who wants a Ford 302, 301, 299, 310 name when the block is pretty much the same, so they just call it a 302.

1 Cubic inch equals 16.387yadda yadda cubic centimeters.
1 liter equals about 61 cubic inches

so a 5.7 liter SmallBlockChebby is about 348 cubic inches which rounds to the classic 350. And so on.

Liters, or better Litres sounds cooler and more European/Cosmopolitan, so marketing guys like to use that word. Us gringos like manly man words like cubic inches. I love my manly 460 cubic inches of pavement ripping power. My 7.5 litre engine, what's that?

Just different ways of saying the same thing.

Jim Henderson

 

I think all that you have to do is change your perspective a little. 350 works out to be 5.73 liters or 5.7 when rounded to one decimal point.