A water jacket is a coolant-filled casing that allows heat transfer from the engine block and cylinder heads to the liquid coolant.

Fuel injection has replaced the carburetor as the primary automobile fuel delivery system. The main difference between the fuel injector and the carburetor is that fuel injection atomizes the fuel by forcibly pumping it through a small nozzle under high pressure while a carburetor relies on suction to draw fuel into an accelerated intake air stream.

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.

In engine lubrication, oil remains in the oil pan until the engine is turned on. It then gets sucked up the pickup tube by the oil pump and pressurized. This pressure is moderated by the pressure relief valve and the oil is fed through the oil filter into the engine to lubricate it.