The Hot Life Of Motor Oil | Chapel Hill Tire

The Hot Life Of Motor Oil

Explosive things happen when you turn on your car’s engine.

Thanks to your motor oil for keeping the destruction to a minimum.

Imagine thousands of little firecrackers going off every minute. Under the hood of your car. Those thousands of small, controlled explosions are how your engine moves your car down the highway.

You can’t hear them – your car’s muffler takes care of that. You can’t see them, either. Everything happens behind the metal walls of your engine compartment. And thanks to your motor oil, those explosions don’t destroy your engine.

It’s a constant fight against heat and friction.

What those explosions do is move your engine’s pistons up and down. Then, lots of parts turn that up and down motion into the round and round motion of your wheels. Motor oil bathes those parts as they work together, keeping them slick and slippery, making sure metal doesn’t scrape against metal. Without motor oil, the moving parts of your engine would bash and smash against each other, turning a finely tuned machine into a useless pile of scrap.

Providing that protective bath is extremely hot work. The temperature inside your engine’s combustion chamber can easily reach about 2,700 degrees – hot enough to melt iron.

And dirt, too. Plenty of dirt.

Plus, the inside of your engine isn’t the cleanest place on earth. A little dirt here, a little dirt there, and before long little gobs of goo are floating along in your oil. And not only that, friction from all of those moving parts can cause little tiny bits of metal to flake off into your oil. Stress from heat, gobs of goo, itty bitty bits of metal. This can’t go on forever. For most cars and most motor oils, the limit is about 5,000 miles.

So, next time your car tells you it’s time for an oil change, remember, your engine has worked hard for its spa day. Oh, and if you’d like us to take you to the spa (or you just have to get back to work), just ask us for a ride in our free shuttle. We’ll be happy to take you where you need to go, and pick you up when your car is ready.