How Does Friction Cause Harm to the Engine of a Car?

Friction is the well known enemy of a car engine. Ah, but how does friction cause harm to the engine of a car? The answer is found in two words – heat and wear.

I love summer blockbuster movies. You know, the ones like Terminator with the big explosions. While these movies are obviously not real, we are surrounded by explosions every day. Obviously, they aren’t as big or spectacular, but they play an important role in our modern society. Why? They propel us in our cars.

The modern car engine is known as a combustion engine. This essentially means that the engine produces power by creating small, controlled explosions. It does this by adding gas and air to a chamber in the engine block. A spark is then added from the spark plug. This cause the gas air mixture to ignite. The resulting explosion pushes the piston down in the chamber. The bottom of the piston is attached to a crankshaft. When pushed down, the crankshaft turns and rotation is created. This rotation is transferred via the drive train to the wheels and we have propulsion.

So, how does friction cause harm to the engine of a car? Well, you can probably already guess. The movement of the piston up and down causes a lot of friction. The piston is made of metal and so is the chamber wall. Metal against metal produces heat. It also produces wear and will actually shave off slight bits of metal from the surfaces. These bits then can cause even more problems as they get caught in the moving parts of the engine.

The combustion process only works if the result is pressure. Friction impacts the ability of a piston chamber to hold pressure. As it slowly wears away tiny parts of the piston chamber and the seals in it, the chamber loses the ability to tightly hold the pressure. This in turn cause the engine to lose power since the pistons don’t push down with as much force.

Fortunately, dealing with the friction in a car engine isn’t that difficult. Engine oil fights friction by lubricating the moving parts of the engine. The oil filter also plays a critical part. As the oil moves through the piston chambers and then circulates back to the oil pan, it will pass through the oil filter. The filter, in turn, will remove all the debris and metal shavings caused by friction.

This two part process goes a long way to minimizing the impact of friction on a car engine and is the reason that you should change your oil and oil filter as frequently as recommended by the manufacturer. To this end, the oil and oil filter is one place where you want to spend the money on top quality products like Mobile 1 and Fram oil filters.

How does friction cause harm to the engine of a car? Through heat and wear. Fight it with quality oil. 

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