If you are a car owner, you're probably familiar with the recommendation to keep up with routine oil changes. However, what you may not be familiar with is why those oil changes even matter. Understanding why oil changes are so important for your car is a first step toward ensuring that you do right by your car's engine. Here's a look at some of the many reasons why oil changes are so important for your car's engine and why you should always have this routine maintenance done in a timely manner.
Oil Changes Maintain Essential Lubrication
One of the most important things that oil does for your car's engine is to provide lubrication. This is vital for a few reasons. First, there are many different moving parts in the engine, and many of them are metal components. When they move, you'll face friction and thermal issues if they aren't properly lubricated. Fresh engine oil will help ensure that those things move the way that they should without binding, seizing, or grinding on each other.
In addition, since those metal components rubbing on each other can create heat in the engine, your oil changes also contribute to cooling the engine. As the fresh, clean engine oil flows through the engine, it keeps those components cool. When you skip your oil changes, that oil will thicken with sludge, dirt, and other particles. This reduces its ability to adequately flow through the engine and cool it.
Oil Changes Keep The Engine Clean
One of the challenges of your engine oil is dealing with the dirt and particles that end up in your engine. Your oil filter catches a lot of this, but eventually, the filter builds debris and accumulates to a point where it can't let the oil flow properly. That's another reason for routine maintenance like timely oil changes.
Changing the oil filter and the engine oil in a timely manner will help to keep your engine clean and free of debris. This protects your engine from debris accumulation, which can damage the more delicate components.
Oil Changes Improve Fuel Mileage
When your engine oil is dirty, your engine has to work harder to pump that oil through it. This can actually lead to inefficient operation, which costs you far more in gasoline than you should be using. That fuel inefficiency can prove costly over time. Instead, keeping up with your routine maintenance like these oil changes will help your engine run at its best and most fuel-efficient.
Talk with your local service center for more information and to schedule your car's next oil change. If you need more advice about specific types of cars, like a British 4x4, ask them about this as well.