Understanding Tickover (for US readers)
Probably a british English vs what the rest of us speak issue

, but what do you mean buy ?tickover? or ?get the tickover down??
tickover=idle speed.
the lower the number for brit "piss" = lower number US. Piss
Obviously a full explaination of what Tickover is for those who donk speak and understand english, and the americans out there ....
What is tickover ?
Tick can be divided into 2 parts - "tick" and "over".
The Tick referrs to the 'tick' sound of the cars engine, generally when idling.
Some car owners, who have diesels engines may hear a "klonk" sound.
Hovever some protective owners may get irrate i you refer to their engine "Klocking" rather than "ticking". One Tick is usually determined at one tick to one revolution of the cars engine
Over refers to "over time" and the scientiically accepted model of time is 1 minute, in regards to the application of ticks.
The clever part ...
Put them together and you get "tickover" thus 1 tick per revolution per munute.
This is equal to idle speed in Revolutions Per Minute. Thus "tickover" accurately describes the cars idle state - RPM.
Elaborating on suterman's excellent scientific equation by using capitals and an extra space or two:
TICKOVER = IDLE SPEED
For diesel owners, the tickover could be described as "klonkover". However scientiic study has shown that there is often more than one klonk on diesel engines, and in some cases more clonks than the engines cylinders.
Thus this equation was formulated for "klonkover":
TICKOVER = IDLE SPEED = (KLONKOVER -X ) / n
where X = number of extra klonks the diesel engine makes in 1 munute
n= number of cylinders
The trouble was with this is that X could, and would vary significantly from car to car, and would vary in different engines, even of the same design. Factors contributed to this was the age, and milage of the vehicle, and the general noises of diesel engines.
Hence the Klonkover theory and calculation was dropped, and they decided to stick with "tickover" here in the UK.
Hope this helps.
