What Actually Is The Function Of The Engine Oil?

The Engine Oil is said to be the most important fluid in your car. But the main question to be answered is why? Knowing why how important the Engine Oil is will help you keep up with the disturbing task of checking your oil gauge and changing your oil at the manufacturers advised duration. So what exactly is the function of the engine oil? lets see the clear explanation.

Many people will just say that the engine oil lubricates the engine, But the function of the engine oil goes beyond that fact. Lets consider 5 (Five) important function of the engine oil.

Functions of the Engine Oil

• Lubrication

Your engine oil performs many functions. It consist of constantly moving metal parts that glide, mesh and rob against each other. As we know, gliding, meshing of gears and robing of metallic surfaces leads to a lot of friction that causes serious wear and tear. Now the engine oil comes to play. It prevents all the metal surfaces in your engine from grinding together and tearing themselves apart from friction, thus making your engine run smoothly and last longer by reducing the friction in these rubbing engine parts.

• Cooling the Engine

The Engine Oil Cycle

As said earlier, The engine function with the gliding, meshing of gears and robing of metallic surfaces leads to a lot of friction that causes serious wear and tear. Friction never walks alone. It goes with a lot of heat production. Is such heat generation good for your engine? NO. When the metals heat they expand, and such expansion could lead to seizing of engine parts since they cannot move freely through the space designed for them. Now the engine oil comes to play. It  absorbs heat produced by friction as it circulates, Thus cooling the engine.

• Cleaning the engine

Combustion of fuel always produce nasty by-products that could disturb the engine movement. These nasty by-products of combustion could include silica (silicon oxide) and acids or other small particles of dirt and contaminants. Now the engine oil comes to play. Engine oil holds in suspension all these unwanted materials and carries them away to be filtered out.

• Serves As Seal

In an internal combustion engine ( That used in your car) the combustion chamber is the power house. In it, fuel-air charge is meant to be ignited by the spark plug or vapor compression, and at a precise point in the piston's stroke leading to combustion that drives the piston then the crank shaft then other engine parts. However for their to be a combustion the fuel air char must be compressed to a certain pressure. This is done by the movement piston alone the cylinder. (To understand this working principle click here). If there is a pressure leak combustion proper combustion wont take place. In some cases it wont happen at all. Now the engine oil comes to play. It works along side a device called seal to helps to seal or close the space between the pistons and the cylinder walls so that compression is more effective and power is not lost during combustion yet still allowing the free movement of the piston.

• Protection

When metallic parts are exposed to moist air at high temperature their is great chance of corrosion/rust. This would drastically shorten the life of your engine. Now the engine oil comes to play. The engine oil coats the engine parts to provide a layer of protection against corrosion/rust. Longer life for your engine.

The Right Choice

The right choice then is to follow all instructions given to you by your car's manufacturer. You can never be to careful on that. Do you now see that the engine oil is one of the most important fluid in your car?

What other fluid is so important? Why can't water do the work of engine oil? We shall discuss that in subsequent articles.