The primary difference between internal and external combustion engines lies in where the power is developed. In an internal combustion engine fuel is ignited and burned inside the same container where the power is developed while in an external combustion engine the fuel is ignited outside the engine and the resulting power sent to it.

An inline cylinder configuration places the cylinders in a single row either completely vertical or slanted. Due to this arrangement, an inline cylinder configuration makes the engine longer and, although it works well in four cylinder engines, performace suffers in larger engines due to the difficulty in evenly distributing the air-fuel mixture over the length of the engine.

A head gasket is a gasket that sits between the engine block and cylinder heads to seal the cylinders to ensure maximum compression and avoid leakage of coolant or engine oil into the cylinders.

Modern car engines are cooled by liquid which circulates through the engine block and cylinder heads absorbing excess heat. This liquid is made up of half water and half antifreeze (commonly, ethylene glycol) which both keeps the water from freezing at low temperatures and raises its boiling point making heat transfer more efficient.

The distributor is driven by the engine's camshaft and is responsible for timing the spark and distributing it to the correct cylinder. The distributor cap contains a rotor that connects the ignition coil (and its high voltage) to the proper cylinder at the proper point in the stroke cycle.