The paper aims to assess the performance of large eddy simulation (LES) in predicting the unsteady reacting flows in internal combustion engines. The incompatibility due to the turbulence dissipation was avoided in the k-equation LES formulation. Two versions of the LES have been tested with different filtering. The cell-specific filtering was found to give realistic prediction of the instantaneous temperature and pressure field during the combustion process. The coupling of combustion heat release, temperature field and turbulent flow field was found to be strong in the LES predicted flow and combustion fields which showed wrinkled flame structures. The formulation gives improved agreement with available experimental data.