Honda Jazz engine preview

Honda has mainly used the in house developed L series engine in the all new Honda Jazz that is a four cylinder engine and comes in 1.2L, 1.3L and 1.5L variants.  These engines come with two different types of valve trains. One of them used in the L12A, L13A and one of the variants of L15A (these are the names given to the engine variants) is the i-DSI technology that is Intelligent Dual & Sequential Ignition. This technology uses two spark plugs/cylinder and these spark plugs are designed to fire at different timing and intervals so as to achieve the complete combustion of the fuel which gives the engine greater power with lesser amount of fuel being used in the combustion. This also decreases the amount of fuel getting wasted with the flue gases and hence has helped increasing the economy of the engine. This technology has lead to the optimum utilisation of the fuel which has made the cars owing these engines more pockets friendly.

The i-DSI technology uses the decent design of two valves per cylinder and modest redline of 6000 RPM but has the capability to reach the maximum torque at the mid rpm, so the engine has not to be rev at high speeds for getting the better performance out of the car. The second variant of the L15A engine uses the VTEC technology that has been patented by Honda. Variable Valve Timing & Lift Electronic Control has made the cars of Honda powerful and at the same time fuel efficient by controlling the amount of gasoline being discharged in the engine at the different speeds.

This technology works on the basis of the amount of fuel going in to the combustion chamber of the engine. When the vehicle travels at low rpm the valves open for a short period of time and hence allowing optimum amount of fuel being injected in to the combustion chamber, but when the vehicle is going at a faster rate the amount of gasoline going in to the chamber has to be increased which helps producing more power for greater rpm. VTEC uses two cam shafts, one for the inlet and the other for the exhaust electronically selecting between two of them and also controls the lifts of the valves electronically so that there is no lag between the opening of the inlet and the exhaust valve and hence better combustion takes place.

The VTEC technology was not developed by Honda keeping in mind better efficiency but better performance but it gives a very good combination of both performance of efficiency at the same time. Initially with this engine the types of transmissions that Honda was providing were only 5 speed manual transmission and CVT (Continuous Variable Transmission) that allows infinite set of gear ratios but after some time the L series engine also started coming with automatic transmission and a torque converter. The power that this engine produces is 88.7bhp with a redline of 6200rpm and a torque of 110Nm at 4200rpm.