Why do combustion engines explode

Depending on how the fuel, water, and power are transported, the Redstone signal may be able to come from a Gate placed on a Fluid Pipe or Kinesis Pipes transporting liquid or power. However, if Liquiduct is used for both liquids and Redstone Energy Conduit is used for power, the Redstone signal will have to occupy a separate block, for a total of 4 blocks neighboring the Combustion Engine occupied by supply, signaling and output lines.

The Redstone signal can of course still use Gates for more compact logic and state detection than would be possible with Redstone Dust ; the pipes carrying the Gates and Pipe Wires simply won't serve a double function.

For small setups, Fluid Pipes and Kinesis Pipes will suffice. As an engine room grows, the first obstacle reached is generally the water supply, as a Combustion Engine at its maximum stable temperature consumes a very large quantity of water.

If the engines are drawing water from a tank, Wooden Fluid Pipe are necessary and will be a bottleneck, providing only 1 Bucket of water per second. Multiple Wooden Fluid Pipes outputting into a higher-capacity Golden Fluid Pipe should be a feasible solution, but will the liquid from one wooden pipe will have a tendency to go through the golden pipe and into another wooden pipe, so that they limit one another's output capacity.

Liquiducts have an advantage, being able to pull two buckets per second and put it into a pipe system that does not suffer from this backflow issue.

In older versions of Buildcraft up to BuildCraft 3 , conductive pipes were used instead of kinesis pipes. They could explode under certain conditions, notably the creation of loops in the system, which allowed the power to build up in the pipes without ever reaching its destination. Kinesis pipes will just stop accepting more power if they're already at their limit, and loops are therefore completely safe. When building a large engine configuration, it may be desirable to have an excess of energy available to meet variable demand, or the engine room may be built before the machines that will use the power.

It is possible to use manual control to switch on the number of engines that are desired at any given moment, but it is also possible to build a regulator system that buffers the power output of the engines, provides the power needed at any given moment, and shuts engines off when they are not being used in order to conserve fuel.

The key components in such a system are Redstone Energy Cells and Gates. The idea is to buffer the output of the engines in the cell, with machines drawing from the buffer rather than directly from the engines. Then a Gate can detect when the buffer is empty and send a signal to switch the engines on, and detect when the buffer is full and send a signal to switch the engines off; a second Gate can latch the "On" signal, effectively remembering that the buffer is charging, and reset the latch on the "Off" signal to allow the buffer to discharge.

There are two problems with this:. The first issue is solved using a double buffer setup and a redstone clock. The cell will reliably send a Full Energy signal if power is not constantly being drawn from it and continues to be supplied.

By briefly interrupting the output of the energy cell, it is possible to detect, at regular intervals, whether or not the buffer is full. Combustion engines can overheat, leading to a large explosion, if they are not properly cooled with water.

Initially the engine will be blue. After being powered for several minutes, the engine will change colour depending on whether it is being cooled or not.

The engine can be 1 of 4 colours:. A Combustion Engine that has become yellow or red for even a few minutes will require two buckets of water to regain green status.

One Combustion Engine can adequately power all BuildCraft machines, however two are required to fully power a Quarry or a Refinery. The Combustion Engine is fueled with Lava, Oil, or Fuel, but unlike the other engines, it must be cooled with Water or the engine will overheat. Do combustion engines explode BuildCraft? How hot can combustion engines get? Can a Stirling engine power a home? Can combustion engines use lava? How do you stop a Redstone engine from overheating? In further versions you can still use lava as fuel in Stirling Engines.

However, the ability to use lava as fuel for combustion engines was removed. See Also: Crafting Guide. Combustion engines can overheat, leading to a large explosion, if they are not properly cooled with water. Initially the engine will be blue. After being powered for several minutes, the engine will change colour depending on whether it is being cooled or not. The engine can be 1 of 4 colours:.

An un-cooled combustion engine running on fuel will burn out in 9 minutes and 15 seconds. It will go from blue, to green, to yellow, to red, every 4 minutes.

Engines powered by oil will heat up much more slowly. Buildcraft version 2. Water can be pumped into them to fill this need. Alternatively, buckets of water can be placed into the engine to keep it filled up. While active, the engine will consume the water stored inside it. The current water level can be seen in the engine's GUI. Pumping water into an engine is preferable to manually filling it with buckets because provided the supply is adequate and set up correctly it is guaranteed that the engines will not overheat.

When switched off after running, a combustion engine it will drain its internal water tank to initiate a rapid cooldown.