Oh. Sorry. I dozed off there.
Maybe that should be Boring Engine instead of Engine Boring? Research takes you down some interesting rabbit holes (like this little tidbit about housework and good posture) and some not so exciting ones. Engine boring displacement, in case you weren’t sure, falls into the latter. (Unless you’re into NASCAR.)
But, when writing about bootlegging, and your main character is a crack mechanic, it just makes sense that somehow he’s involved in making sure the hooch-mobiles are better equipped than the feds. And that means going faster than the cops.
It also means writing some convincing dialogue about mechanic-y stuff that I don’t really understand. So I’m boning up on displacement, and bore diameters, and stroke. Not to mention turbochargers or intake manifolds. And leaf springs (they’re to help the suspension hold up under the weight of all that giggle-water).
Hey! Maybe check on me every now and again. I feel my eyes getting heavy…
Sources & Notes
For a little light reading, try The Story of How Moonshiners Created the Performance Car. Make sure you’ve had coffee first.
Wikipedia has a nice animated diagram of a 4-cylinder 4-stroke engine.
Taylor MacDowell 
I always seem to get stuck writing about things about which I know nothing, and while most research is fun, I really am clueless when it comes to cars! I can’t even decide which car Rory owns, and he’s a mechanic who owns his own garage — good thing he never actually tinkers with any cars “on screen” — except after their car crash. Maybe I’ll need to ask you about engine borings then…
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Okay, but be warned, it’s really boring!!
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