Up and coming YouTuber Jason Fenske, host and creator of the Engineering Explained YouTube channel, hardly takes any time off to educate his audience about the inner workings of the automobile. Since starting his channel in 2011, he has accrued more than 400,000 subscribers and gone over everything from turbochargers to Wankel engines to Formula I aerodynamics.

In his latest video, Fenske teamed up with fellow YouTuber Charles Sanville (known as HumbleMechanic on YouTube) to check out common rail fuel systems, which are popular on GM, Ford, and Chrysler diesel applications. For the purposes of the video, the duo examine the fueling system from a first-generation Volkswagen.

“The great thing about fuel components is that the name tells you exactly what they do,” says Sanville. He explains the process of how diesel fuel is pulled from the tank and into an electric volume pump, which then routes to a fuel filter and an electronic fuel pump.

A mechanical high-pressure fuel pump takes over from that point, and is driven by a camshaft to shoot fuel at about 12,000 psi into the fuel rail, and from there the fuel goes into the delivery line for the injectors. Finally, the fuel enters the combustion chamber, and “Kaboom, that’s where all the magic happens,” says Sanville. He jokes, “After that, it comes out of the tailpipe and that’s where we get 40 times more NOx emissions. Oh wait!”

All joking aside, it’s another great video from Engineering Explained and one that diesel folks will get a kick out of. What other diesel components do you think Fenske should cover in the future? Let us know in the comments below.

A closeup of the fuel injectors in a VW diesel fuel system.