How to Determine How Many Cylinders Your Car Has

Generally, each cylinder has a spark plug. Although you can't see the spark plugs, you can see the spark plug wires that are attached to each of them. Count the plug wires and you've usually counted the cylinders.

Difficulty: Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Automotive Repair Manual

1. 
    

   Open the hood.

2. 
    

   Find the spark plug wires. The plug wires are located on the top or side of the engine, and are usually blue, black or red. They are attached on the other end to the distributor cap. Sometimes the spark plug wires are numbered.

3. Note that V-shaped engines have plug wires on both sides of the engine. These types of engines have six or eight cylinders. The exceptions are old VW bugs and buses, Suburus and some Alfa Romeos, which have V-shaped engines (or sometimes "boxer" engines with two-and-two cylinders horizontal) and four cylinders.

4. 
    

   Count the number of spark plug wires.

5. Understand that the number of spark plug wires will equal the number of cylinders for most cars.

Tips & Warnings

• Cars with dual-ignition systems, such as some Nissans built after 1980, have two spark plugs for each cylinder.
• The above guidelines won't work for rotary engines. A rotary engine has four spark plug wires but only two cylinders.
• Most cars have four, six or eight cylinders, although some have three, five or ten. Generally, the more cylinders a car has, the bigger the engine and the more power the car has.

Who Can Help Sponsored

[spartanic]

on 4/30/2009 Wow, do you really need to read this article to determine how many cylinders your engine has? lol. Anyway if you guys every run into engine troubles then check out this link: http://www.garage411.com/EngineTroubleShooting

[kuai43]

on 4/28/2008 The easy way to determine how many fingers you have on each hand is to count your fingernails and divide by two. This is not the number of fingers - this is your IQ. Now, just simply pay attention when you buy your car, not go "oooohh, I'll take the cute RED one!"
Now, as regards a rotary engine, even though the overall shape of the combustion chambers are large, flat cylinders, they don't function in any fashion as standard piston engines and to say it has one or "two" cylinders is not pertinent to the question.

[kuai43]

on 4/28/2008 The easy way to determine how many fingers you have on each hand is to count your fingernails and divide by two. This is not the number of fingers - this is your IQ. Now, just simply pay attention when you buy your car, not go "oooohh, I'll take the cute RED one!"
Now, as regards a rotary engine, even though the overall shape of the combustion chambers are large, flat cylinders, they don't function in any fashion as standard piston engines and to say it has one or "two" cylinders is not pertinent to the question.

[kuai43]

on 4/28/2008 The easy way to determine how many fingers you have on each hand is to count your fingernails and divide by two. This is not the number of fingers - this is your IQ. Now, just simply pay attention when you buy your car, not go "oooohh, I'll take the cute RED one!"
Now, as regards a rotary engine, even though the overall shape of the combustion chambers are large, flat cylinders, they don't function in any fashion as standard piston engines and to say it has one or "two" cylinders is not pertinent to the question.

[kuai43]

on 4/28/2008 The easy way to determine how many fingers you have on each hand is to count your fingernails and divide by two. This is not the number of fingers - this is your IQ. Now, just simply pay attention when you buy your car, not go "oooohh, I'll take the cute RED one!"
Now, as regards a rotary engine, even though the overall shape of the combustion chambers are large, flat cylinders, they don't function in any fashion as standard piston engines and to say it has one or "two" cylinders is not pertinent to the question.