Ok guys and gals, I have been thinking about it for sometime now, and I can't seem to figure it out. When your talking about an engine, a lot of people are impressed by the amount of liters....like the new Corvette Z06 is 7.0 Litre, the Cavalier is 2.2 Litre, the LS1 is 5.7 Litre. What does this number mean, how does it affect the engine?

These refers to the volume of space inside the cylinders which obviously determines how much air/fuel can be sucked in and burned.

Basically, when the piston is at it's bottom point, you take the amount of space inside the cylinder. Then you multiply that by the number of cylinders and you've got your displacement.

The more fuel you can burn efficiently, the more power you'll make. Now there are plenty of variables to consider on top of just displacement, but having more displacement obviously gives you a head start in the game.

so my engine is a 2.2, that means when a piston is at it's lowest point, what amount the amount of volume in that cylinder at that time is, multiplied by 4, is 2.2?

yes its 2.2L or 2200CC. however you want to look at it

New sig in the works

The total volume is 2.2L, or 2200 cubic cm (or something somewhat close to that).

That means each cylinder, when the piston is at the bottom, has 550 cubic cm of volume.

As I said... there's a lot more to making power than just volume, which explains why newer engines can make more and more power with less and less volume.

i get it now, thanks u were a big help

Again... the numbers aren't exact but you get the idea. They round it to the nearest hundred cc's or so to make the numbers look good.