so I'm going to start doing definitions on this channel relevant to the things that I talk about so I talk a lot about cars and bikes so guess what I'll be doing lot of Car and Bike definitions and the word of this week is Cam Shaft what is a cam shaft why do you need it what does it do let's find out first of all very simply a cam shaft is all about opening and closing of the valves in a piston engine so in the combustion chamber of a piston engine you have an intake stroke a compression stroke an expansion stroke and an exhaust stroke on the intake stroke and the exhaust stroke you have the valves that let the air in on the intake and out on the exhaust stroke the thing that's lifting the valves to make that happen is going to be your cam shaft now this right here you're looking at this is actually a cam shaft so you've got this rod and on the rod you have this kind of a egg profiled uh pieces with a will pointy side that actually is going to be doing the lifting and the shape of that is going to determine how much lift you get from the valves and how long the valves stay open now the other pieces on there that are more more cylindrical round those are going to be your journals so you've got the cam bearing journals and the cam bearings a popular engine design features a dual overhead cam or doc now that's going to have two cam shafts an intake cam shaft and an exhaust cam shaft a unique engine Arrangement is in the Bugatti Veyron which is a 16 cylinder engine it's a w engine you've got four cam shafts which are pushing six 4 valves a lot of power in that Beast so an engine with four cam shafts would be called a quad cam as opposed to a dual cam now there are potentially other components involved like a rocker arm valve spring and other mumbo jumbo but I just want to get you guys to understand the basic principles of what a cam shaft is just in case you didn't know now you know what a cam shaft is thanks to carlile's pix thanks for watching guys tune in next week for the next word I'm going to show you how a clutch Works Roo Lamborghini was born in the Lamborghini if you love cars the way I love cars then you're probably going to want to click on that subscribe button