Car Knowledge Map

You can find the car diagram here or copy and paste this URL:
https://www.figma.com/board/8Z8JU7VuQZICMgmHduujO4/1992-Honda-Accord?node-id=0-1&t=MADBMpcbGqjEycfk-1
Note that the webpage may take a while to load.

In April 2026, I created a detailed Figma diagram explaining how gasoline cars work. I had 3 main goals for making this:

1. Provide background knowledge for anyone who wants to start working on cars
2. Satisfy the curiosity of engineers and anyone else who wants to learn how cars work
3. Provide a quick reference guide to go back to in case I forget car knowledge in the future

To achieve these goals, I organized the information in the diagram by the car system they belonged to. I wanted it to be easy to see how car concepts like “unsprung weight” or “misfire” fit into a broader system, almost like a map but for car knowledge. I also included key terms and videos for anybody who wants to dive deeper into specific topics.

For some context, in Dec 2025 my friend invited me to come to his 24 Hours of Lemons race. This is a car race where teams spend under $500 to buy a beater car and make performance modifications to it before racing it around a racetrack. Unfortunately, his team crashed their car during that race. Nobody was hurt, but the car was in rough shape. As the team scrambled to get the car back to a race-ready condition, I was struck by how little I knew about cars. I had spent years designing mechanical hardware and I even knew the core mechanisms inside of engines and transmissions, but very little of that knowledge translated into knowing what the crushed box-shaped component at the front of the engine bay was or knowing whether the bent steel beam under the car was severe enough to compromise the car’s structural integrity. Ultimately, the judges decided the car was not safe to race because the car’s buckled subframe meant the car no longer had a safe crumple zone.

Right after the race, I decided to learn as much as I could about cars. I asked my roommate if I could study his Subaru WRX while he was out of town, and I proceeded to spend the entirety of the next two days Googling up every single component I could see in his engine bay and learning about every car-related topic I encountered. It was as if a switch had been flipped in my head—before this moment I felt like cars were just another everyday object but now I felt an intense urge to learn as much as I could about them. The topics I covered included: how engine cooling systems worked, what were the most common types of suspensions, how to change a car’s fuel pump, what made deep impact sockets tougher than normal sockets, how F1 races worked, and so on. Those first two days taught me a significant fraction of what I would later put into my Figma diagram.

A few weeks later in January 2026, my friend invited me to join his 24 Hours of Lemons team. They had just bought a 1992 Honda Accord to replace the car they lost at the last race, and they wanted more mechanical team members. For me, it was a no-brainer to join. I was eager to get some hands-on experience working on cars, and I knew this would be a great way to meet new friends. I’ve also always wanted to learn how to drive a manual car, so I signed up to be one of the drivers. Over the next few months, I worked on various car jobs including: unclogging the EGR system, replacing engine mounts, replacing spark plugs, draining and refilling the cooling system, replacing the timing belt, replacing brake pads, bleeding brakes, and, of course, performing an oil change. Learning how to work on cars had always been on my bucket list, but I think working on cars as part of a team was the best way I could have learned. Our team had an informal policy to never work on the car alone, so the jobs that went smoothly were good Type 1 fun. As for the jobs that took over 5x longer than expected (i.e., replacing the rear engine mount and replacing the timing belt), the fact that I was in the trenches with friends made them Type 2 fun, and I became a lot closer with them as a direct result.

After only a few short months, we had our race in March. We invited a bunch of friends, and a huge crowd of around 90 people showed up. One thing that really stood out to me was the camaraderie. Teams were coming over to check out our racing sim and live telemetry, people were freely lending their tools, and friends were DJing at our tent. We were certainly not the fastest car on the track that day, but we brought the car back safely and made a lot of great memories that weekend. For anyone interested in following our team, we make regular updates on our team Instagram magicarmotors.

As we went into the next season, we decided to get a second car: a 2000 Acura Integra. There was a lot of mechanical work to do and we brought on more team members, but many of the new and existing team members wanted to learn more about cars before they started working on them. This was the main reason I put together my Figma car diagram. By writing down things I had learned in the past few months, I wanted to make it easier to share car knowledge with other people. In the long term, I also wanted to have a quick reference guide to go back to in case I forgot this knowledge in the future.

The Figma diagram took the better part of a month for me to make, but once it was done another team member and I co-hosted two learning sessions for everyone on the team. We pulled out a spare engine, opened up our engine bay, and went through every major system of the car that people might work on: the engine, air intake, fuel, ignition, cooling, steering, brakes, drivetrain, suspension, structures, and exhaust. After these learning sessions, there was still a huge amount to learn through hands-on car work and deep dives into specific subsystems. But based on feedback from the team afterwards, the learning sessions were a solid introduction to the vast space of car knowledge. It was really encouraging to see multiple team members without prior car experience begin to help and even lead car jobs over the coming weeks. With that in mind, my hope is that this car diagram will be useful for anyone else interested in learning more about cars. I created this diagram based off of what I wished I had when I was first starting that journey, and I hope this diagram will make someone else’s journey easier.