Providing durability and comfort beneath beauty

Infiniti speaks design. Design translates into style. Style into energy. Energy into power. It is with this idea that Infiniti produce automobiles that go beyond just performance, precision, and refinement to inspire the senses and stimulate the soul. Plainly speaking, Infiniti's line of luxury cars is not just about design. Beneath the design lies performance, stability, and comfort. Enter Infiniti's specially designed engine and suspension systems.

To enhance protection of Infiniti's engines from overheating and wear, Infiniti produces custom head gaskets for the particular makes of their vehicles. As perhaps the most critical component of the engines of the Q45 and its siblings, Infiniti head gaskets are designed to seal all combustion chambers, coolant and oil passages between the head and block. Their specific purpose is to seal the cylinders to ensure maximum compression and avoid leakage of coolant or engine oil into the cylinders.

Basically, the head gasket contains all the heat and compression generated by a vehicle's engine. The head gasket is compressed between the engine block and the cylinder head. So intricate is the head gasket's position in an engine that removing and replacing it means undertaking the major operation of removing an engine's head.

Occasionally, due to wear and tear and the daily the grind on the road, the head gasket may show signs of blowing up. If the gasket blows, a variety of problems can occur, from compression loss (leading to power reduction, or a rough engine), to exhaust gases being forced into the cooling system, leading to the engine overheating and increased engine wear due to the motor oil being mixed with antifreeze fluid. If a very large amount of coolant leaks into the cylinders, hydrolock can occur, causing extensive engine damage.

This problem has been made worse by the use of aluminum rather than iron cylinder heads. Although it is lighter than iron, aluminum has a much greater heating expansion rate, causing more stress to the head gasket. Engine makers like Infiniti have responded to this by adding a non-stick coating such as Teflon to the surface of the head gasket.

Infiniti head gasket may have added endurance to the automobile line's performance, but without a good suspension system, Infiniti could not boast of its luxurious cars. Built to constantly absorb the impact of speed bumps, potholes, rumble strips, and whatever else may be in the road, the Infiniti shocks provide a more stable and comfortable ride and give the necessary buffer between the unpredictable road makeup and the Infiniti chassis.

As a key part of its suspension system, Infiniti shock reduce the effect of traveling over rough ground, leading to improved ride quality. Control of excessive suspension movement without shock absorption requires stiffer (higher rate) springs, which would in turn give a harsh ride. Inifniti shocks allow the use of soft (lower rate) springs while controlling the rate of suspension movement in response to bumps. They also, along with hysteresis in the tire itself, damp the motion of the unsprung weight up and down on the springiness of the tire. Since the tire is not as soft as the springs, effective wheel bounce damping may require stiffer shocks than would be ideal for the vehicle motion alone.

Truly, Infiniti is not purely aesthetics. Infiniti creates performance and comfort beneath its design.