Engine Displacement Calculator

Combustion engines that we know and love are complex systems that utilize air to essentially fuel the entire process. Use this tool to calculate the amount of air displaced by the engine.

Required Information

Engine Displacement:

What it is

What is Engine Displacement?

Create Date: September 30, 2024

Last Modified Date: November 16, 2024

Engine displacement refers to the total amount of volume that a combustion engine's cylinders can hold. When talking about engine displacement, air is often the main subject, the amount of air that is pushed through the cylinders based on their size specifically.

How do you Calculate Engine Displacement?

Engine displacement is calculated using many variables. The variables that you will need to gather include:

  • Number of cylinders

  • Bore diameter

  • Stroke length

With these values, you now need to find the radius which can be done by dividing the bore's diameter by 2. Then you can use the following formula to find a single cylinder's total volume:
An image showing the formula for finding an engine's displacement value.
CV is equal to the cylinder volume and SL is equal to stroke length (in meters). After this is done you now will simply multiply your result by the total number of cylinders in the vehicle, and you will have your total engine displacement!

Understanding Your Results

Your result is automatically displayed as cubic inches as it is one of the more popular units of measurement for this type of metric, but another commonly used unit is liters. So once you hit calculate and get your engine displacement value, that is how much volume and space your engine's cylinders have in total.

How to Use the Engine Displacement Tool

If you are trying to calculate an engine's displacement, you are in luck. It can easily be done with a tool like this. The steps include:

  1. Enter the total number of cylinders the engine has.

  2. Enter the diameter of the bore (the opening at the end of the cylinders).

  3. Enter the stroke length (the total length the pistons are able to move within the cylinder).

  4. Hit calculate and get your engine displacement value in seconds!

Example Calculation

Let's say you have a vehicle that has the VQ35DE engine in it, let's find the engine displacement. First, we need to identify our variable values. It is a six-cylinder, it has a bore diameter of 95.5 mm, and a stroke length of 81.4 mm. After we insert these numbers into the tool and select the correct unit of measurement, we can calculate it and get an engine displacement value of 213.49 cubic inches or 3.5 liters.

Engine Displacement - Frequently Asked Questions

The higher the number the better. The reason is that the more room the engine has to utilize air in its function, the more power the vehicle should be able to get, enabling it to be faster or more powerful.

A large majority of vehicles will have either 4 or 6 cylinders. Some have 8, and an even smaller fraction of vehicles have 10 or 12 cylinders.

Bore diameter is the diameter of the opening in the cylinder. Cylinders are often made to be thick on the exterior and have a hole in the middle of them; the bore is the opening within the cylinder.

Yes, engine displacement can be modified if the bore or stroke of an engine is altered. This would typically be done in an aftermarket manner and would require a mechanic as this is a job that would require precision and experience to ensure the job is done correctly.

Engine displacement measures the engine's size as it focuses on the volume of air that can fill the engine's components. On the other hand, horsepower is the measure of power that the engine can output. These two are related; the higher the engine displacement, the higher the horsepower can be, and vice versa.

The number of cylinders will directly affect the engine displacement value because each cylinder allows for a lot more volume of air to be in the engine system. If you have a 4-cylinder and a 6-cylinder, the engine displacement of the latter will always be greater than the former since it has more cylinders.

Engine displacement can play a role in a vehicle's fuel consumption. It is not the sole factor but can be part of the overall equation.

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