Almost all vehicles on the road today have combustion engines in them. In every cylinder in the engine, there are mini explosions of fuel being ignited. These explosions push down on the pistons in the cylinders, which rotates a giant shaft, which in turn rotates the vehicles in your car.
For these mini explosions to be efficient, there is an exact mixture of air and fuel. For every gallon of fuel that you car uses, it uses at least 12,000 gallons of air. It's a very very small mist of fuel being used. (Engines are much more fuel efficient that you think)
Your vehicle is controlled by a computer. This computer uses various sensors all over the car to tell it what it going on. When air comes into your car through the air filter, it passes through the Mass Air Flow Sensor. This sensor tells your computer how much air is coming in, and the computer then tells the fuel injection system how much fuel to give, and vice versa. If you stomp on the gas pedal, it injects more fuel, so it sucks in more air. When you let off the gas pedal, you are giving less fuel, and it will then bring in less air.
Pretty smart huh?
So next time your check engine light comes on, pay attention. Quite often, this will be an indication that the car is running too lean (too much air, not enough fuel) or it is running too rich (too much fuel, not enough air). I could go into so much detail about the different things that can cause those problems. Vacuum leaks, plugged filters, etc. But I wont =]
Betcha didn't care to know any of that did you? Well you already read it, so now you know ;-)
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