There are parts in the engine that run much more than the tyres of a vehicle, causing immense heat. An Internal Combustion Engine (ICE) performs controlled explosions a million times, over and over again. When there is so much friction, a lot of heat is produced and there needs to be a form of cooling to keep the engine temperature in check.

To control heat, vehicle manufacturers have experimented with many methods, however, only three of them have stuck on to become the most popular — air-cooled, oil-cooled, and liquid-cooled. Let us explain how each of the systems works and how efficient they are.

As the name suggests, air-cooled engines use flowing air to cool the motor. Air-cooled engines have fins that help channel the airflow around the engine helping disperse heat. Amongst the three types of engine cooling methods, the air-cooled engine is the lightest, as it does not have additional parts such as a radiator and is also the most cost-effective amongst the three.

Most motorcycles sold in India use air-cooled engines and in the past, cars also used such a setup, the most famous among them being Porsche. Due to the simplicity of this setup, maintenance is easy.

Oil-cooled engines are similar to air-cooled engines, as they still retain the cooling fins to channel air, however, they do get a small oil-cooler mounted externally that helps passing air cool the engine oil. The hot engine oil is passed through this radiator, which uses air to cool the oil and is pumped back into the engine.

Oil-cooled engines have an advantage over air-cooled motors primarily because cooler oil is passed through the engine, effectively cooling running components inside.

Liquid-cooled engines are used widely, by almost all vehicle manufacturers globally on cars, trucks, motorcycles, ATVs, and every other form of motor vehicle. The system uses a liquid coolant that is cooled by an external radiator and passed through the engine via special chambers or passages to effectively absorb the heat away from the engine.

The setup consists of a radiator, a fan (not at all times), and a reservoir for the coolant that is constantly circulated with a pump. This setup helps vehicle manufacturers extract better power while still keeping the engine at optimum running temperature, allowing the motor to run for a much longer duration.

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