Just stop for a moment and think whether you have even considered about your car’s engine oil over the years?? Many of us even think that it doesn’t even matter. I think it’s time to get serious and know about your car’s engine oil in detail. And let me tell you, IT DOES MATTER. As blood is for our body, oil is for the engine’s body. Motor oil is a kind of oil that is used for lubricating different types of internal combustion engines. The main reason to lubricate the engine is to enhance cleaning, inhibiting corrosion and cooling the engine by taking away all the heat from the consistently moving parts.
Inside the engine, there are constantly moving parts that cause them to friction against each other. This causes the parts to wear out earlier than the time and degrades the engine at the same time increasing the fuel consumption and risks of engine failure. In addition to this, oil also should able to hold in suspension all the dirty by products of combustion like silicon oxide and acids. And while doing all this, it has to bear the tremendous pressure and heat.
All car lovers must be aware of Black death which appeared in the 1980’s which was a black sticky substance found as main cause of engine seizure in many places around Europe and Japan. Black death became an extremely frustrating phenomenon for car owners since in early days most of dealers and mechanics had no idea about the solution to this problem. Most of renowned manufacturer’s engines failed and were affected by the Black Death. The main contributors to this problem were the developing faster road, higher temperatures under the hood, tight tolerance and overworked engines. In this scenario oil could not handle the pressure and would result in change in their chemical makeup turning them into tar like substance which blocked channels in the engines.
Another similar problem which kept hampering the car engines like the Black Death is known as sludge. However, the cause of sludge formation is same as Black Death and irrespective of maintenance sludge formation keeps occurring. In events of poor maintenance habit, the chemical compounds in the engine oil start to break down due to exposure to high temperatures. This oil oxidizes leading to separation of additives and then begins to solidify leading to gelatinous deposits.
The most important and common factor in buildup of sludge is a combination of multiple factors like combination of minerals in engine oil, harsh driving condition and mainly lack of maintenance by the owner of car. A consumer report article of year 2005 has shown that some engines from Toyota, Saab and Volkswagen are more prone to sludge no matter how often the owner changes the oil.
In order to prevent these problems it is advisable to change engine oil and filter which is designed to remove contaminants from engine, hydraulic, transmission and lubricating oil. Usually the engine builders recommend the intervals at which you need to replace these oil filters. It is often published using charts which factor conditions using mileage and hours. One can never go wrong if car owners adhere to the recommendations faithfully and change oil more often than usual. One can be relaxed if they replace dirty oil with clean oil, keeping the phenomenon of maintenance as priority.
A variety of vehicle are designed to run longer without any regular maintenance however this is true only in case of commercial trucks however this is not true in most of light commercial vehicle where regular maintenance is extremely important to enhance the engine life. Hence periodic Engine Oil and Oil Filter Replacement are necessary.
