Choosing the correct engine oil for your car

Your car is a very important entity in the smooth functioning of your daily life. Whether it is the morning school run to drop the kids off to school, or the office run when you sit in the air-conditioned comfort through endless traffic, or rushing to that appointment set days ago, your car has always been present as your humble servant. Just as boiling oil provides a medium for deep frying your favourite dish, similarly engine oil provides a smooth functioning environment for all the components of an engine.

Engine oil is the most important fluid an engine requires for efficient functioning and optimum performance. Engine oil keeps the moving parts of the engine smooth and lubricated and protects them against wear and corrosion. The usual service schedule states that it is ideal to change the lubricant in your engine after every 10,000 kilometre usage. Now you to open your vehicle manual to check the quantity of the oil required.
Most vehicles indicate right on top of the oil cap what weight of oil they recommend as well as in your owner's manual. 5w30 and 10w30 are the most common grades used for the majority of vehicles today. However, if you have a diesel engine, the standard oil is 15w40. Keep it very clear in your head that 'W' in 5w20 or any other weighted oil stands for winter. These multi grade oils have temperature responsibilities and variables in order to function properly. The hardest thing on an engine from a lubrication stand point is the start-up. First thing in the morning, all of the engine oil is sitting at the bottom of the oil pan, until the oil pump pushes the oil from the pan to the top of the motor. The thinner the oil, the faster it can get to the top of your engine to lubricate the upper parts of the engine.

There are three types of engine oils.

Mineral based engine oils:

These are by-products of crude oil mined directly from earth, processed to be used in your engine. The advantage that mineral based oils have over the rest is that they cost less at reduced mileage. Note here, mileage (age based on miles covered) means the amount of total distance covered, and not fuel efficiency. Where synthetic oils give you a possible mileage number of 12-15,000 kilometres, mineral based oils shall be replaced at about 10,000 kilometre interval.

Semi-synthetic engine oils:

These are a blend of mineral based and fully synthetic engine oils. Semi-synthetic engine oils usually are about 30-40% mineral oil blended with remaining percentage of synthetic oil. The idea behind these was to combine the superior performance of fully-synthetic engine oils, with the reduction in price due to part addition of mineral-based oil.

Fully-synthetic engine oils:

Fully-synthetic engine oils are, simply put, man-made in a laboratory. Companies spend millions to design, test and develop synthetic engine oils for increased performance and efficiency for road as well as track use. In fact the development of these oils is closely associated to Formula 1 and MotoGP! These race series provide the knowledge of extreme conditions forced on an engine. This information then trickles down in the development of engine oils that are being used by you. Fully-synthetic engine oils provide the best performance and efficiency quotient, at the trade of increased cost. Yes they cost more, but then they perform more and better than mineral or semi-synthetic engine oils.

Myths associated with engine oils:

There are a few myths surrounding engine lubricants which are not true. We will try to straighten out things for you in the next few words.
It is not necessary to change your engine oil every 5000 kilometres to keep the engine in top form. Also if the colour of the engine oil turns dark, does not mean it has lost viscosity. In fact if you use your car carefully, engine oil will keep functioning till 12,000 to 15,000 kilometres without causing damage. It is only extreme usage that ends the life of engine oil.

While choosing engine oil for your car, it is important to know the level of its viscosity. Lesser the viscosity, the more smoothly will the oil flow through your engine.The best know engine oils have a viscosity that is neither too thick that it barely flows or too thin that it slips through the engine like water. There are two methods in which oil viscosity is measured, single grade and multi-grade. Oil changes viscosity with temperature and the single viscosity rating only represents the flow of oil when it's warm. If you need to start your vehicle on a winter morning, single grade oil will flow more slowly, so the cold viscosity rating is important too. A multi-grade rating gives you both the hot and cold viscosities. For 10W-30 oil, the 30 is the same as the SAE 30 viscosity rating for warm oil, but the 10W is the viscosity rating for cold oil, according to a standardized rating system developed by the SAE for winter oil use.

Performance oriented motorists tend to keep their cars in good running order, and worry from time to time if the oil has gone dirty and is causing sludge to build up in the engine. Chances are that the after a while the colour of the engine oil has gone dark, and is no longer the light amber colour that it had when was fresh. So now you wonder if it is time for you to change it as it must be forming sludge now. You’d be wrong. In fact, just the opposite is true. If you're using a detergent engine oil (and most modern engine oils have detergent additives), the oil is working just the way it's supposed to, dispersing the tiny particles that can result in engine sludge and holding them in suspension in the oil itself so that they can't build up. That's why the oil appears darker, but this in no way impedes the oil from performing its normal functions of lubricating and protecting the metal surfaces inside the engine.

You would imagine that adding additives to engine oil improves its performance and increases engine life. No Sir, most modern engine oils already have additives as their ingredients and there is no need for you to add more. As a matter of fact, putting in more additives might actually dilute what's already there and lessen the lubricant's effectiveness. Check your car's manual to see if it has any special additive needs, but this is unlikely in anything except some of the high performance engines.

Synthetic engine oils are often associated with seal breakage, which in turn caused leaks. Some people still fear that synthetic oil will cause leaks and so they continue to use petroleum-based oils instead. These statements are no longer true. Oil manufacturers have come a long way into the development of synthetic oil technology. Synthetic oils do not cause any seal shrinkage anymore. The synthetic oil can clean oil sludge off the seals that may actually have been blocking off tiny cracks in the seals, revealing leaks that have been there all along. This probably won't be a problem on newer cars, but if you're restoring an old classic jalopy for your use then you might not want to make a sudden decision to switch to synthetic oil.

Anybody who tells you that you can't switch oil brands or oil types is simply wrong. Unless, you are under a manufacturer's warranty and that manufacturer must provide your oil changes for free, you can use whatever brand you prefer.