Automotive Trivia
These are the popular Korean auto manufacturers in America right now.
What are Kia or Hyundai?
This is the part of a piston engine that translates reciprocal motion into rotating motion.
This is the name of the joint that allows a shaft to flex during movement of an axle or wheel.
What is a universal joint?
This type of joint, that looks much like a shoulder or hip joint, can be found in several different places on a car's suspension, including the tie rod ends.
What is a ball joint?
This is the part of a vehicle that generates electrical current when the engine is turning.
What is an alternator?
Geo, Oldsmobile, Pontiac, and Saturn.
What are the four General Motors brands that are no longer active?
This is the device commonly found on vehicles made prior to the 1980s that mixed fuel and air and delivered it to the engine.
What is a carburetor?
This is the device that transmits power to both the front and rear axles of a four-wheel or all-wheel drive vehicle.
What is a transfer case?
This is the term for how far a car's wheels "lean" *vertically* toward or away from the vehicle.
This "current limiting" device sacrifices itself to open a circuit when the current passing through it goes beyond a certain number of amps (as in a short circuit).
What is a fuse?
This manufacturer rose to popularity in the United States during the oil crisis of the mid-1970s with its economical "CVCC" engine.
What is Honda?
This is the term for the ratio of compressed fuel and air in the cylinder to atmospheric pressure.
What is compression ratio?
These are the components of a manual transmission that match the speed of the input and output shafts to allow smooth shifting without grinding.
What are synchronizers?
These are the units in which most tires' tread widths are measured.
What are millimeters?
Automotive power systems typically use this instead of the alternating current used in household power systems.
What is direct current?
After leaving General Motors to start his own car company in the 1970s, his car was the famous co-star of the Back to the Future movie franchise.
John DeLorean
This is the term for the distance that a camshaft will open an intake or exhaust valve.
What is valve lift?
This is a differential that uses clutches to transmit power equally to both drive wheels rather than transmit power to the wheel with least traction (as in an open differential).
What is a limited slip differential?
This form of steering gear largely replaced recirculating ball steering gears in passenger cars by the 1990s.
What is rack and pinion?
This device acts as a magnetically-operated switch, typically used to control a large amount of current from a small switch.
What is a relay?
This non-Maserati supercar brand was owned by Chrysler from 1987 to 1994.
What is Lamborghini?
This is the term for the relationship between a spark plug firing and a piston reaching top dead center.
What is ignition timing?
This type of gearset, typically found in automatic transmissions, can create several different gear ratios depending on which components are held and which are allowed to spin freely.
What is a planetary gear set?
This is the acronym used to describe a rear suspension system where each wheel is allowed to travel without being affected by the motion of the opposite wheel.
What is IRS?
The amount of this required to turn an electric motor drops by half when the circuit voltage doubles.
What is amperage?