Have you ever noticed that the engine oil that you use, goes dark and gets dirty after a time? How does it happen? Does it mean that the oil isn’t useful anymore? Should we change it?
Here we want to know more about engine oil shelf life and the reasons that why it goes dark after a time? Engine oil absorbs soot caused by the engine combustion because one of the basic engine oil feature is absorbing.
If the color of the oil doesn’t change, it means that the oil that you are using is not good enough and it is time for you to get worried and change your oil as soon as possible.
Because as we mentioned one of the most important featured of an acceptable oil is absorbing, this feature causes protecting engine.
Soot deposits on the moving parts of the engine and causes oil burning, wear of parts and it cause damage to the engine.
When engine starts working, the oil is in exposure of oxidation and thermal decomposition.
The oil’s ingredient goes bad after a time and this absorption of impurities and cleaning power decrease, now it is the right time to change the oil of engine, not just because of the color but also because of the lack of function.
Engine Oil Importance
When we want to mention importance of engine oil, we can give you an example and compare it with human body, as water is essential for our body, engine oil is essential for engine.
Without it engine become fragile and dry.
Now imagine this dry part has to work constantly, not only it hurts itself but also it causes damage to other parts too. 
This is why we can’t use any unknown and cheap lubricant for our engine and we have to pay extra attention to choosing the right one.
We have to consider feature of a good engine oil, its replacement time and its replacement location.
Let us remind you couple of importance of engine oil:
- It has effect on Lifespan of our vehicle
- It has effect on Lifespan of our engine
- It has effect on Reduction of friction
- It has effect on cooling engine
- It has effect on Prevents Corrosive wear
So as we mentioned one of the most important usage of engine oil is cleaning engine and collecting dust and dirt and sediment.
If we don’t change it on time, it will be extremely harmful for engine.
These sediments increase oil’s density and imagine this thick oil with high amount of sediment, wants to lubricate metal parts it will be a sandpaper for sure, instead of lubricant.
Properties of Engine Oil
A good product, should has some properties. When we talk about engine oil, we talk about an essential additive of vehicle engine. You can read some of its features as follow.
- Cleaning and flowing combustion material, inside the cylinder chamber and the piston until it reaches the oil filter.
- Antioxidant property and less combination with air, increases the viscosity and production of organic acids in the oil, it prevents oxidation of antioxidant oils added.
- Anti-wear property: when the oil is in high pressure and high temperatures, a very thin layer is created between the surfaces, which adds a lot of resistance by adding these materials.
- Suitable permeability for lubrication operations in different parts of the engine.
- resistant to heat for balancing engine environment, which is extremely hot cause of combustion.
We can also say that engine oil cause cooling the engine, reduction of friction and prevent its abrasion, transferring metal particles of engine to oil filter, preventing deposit of soot on piston ring, bearings and valves and so on, keeping engine part clean, preventing rust and corrosion of engine parts, assist in sealing the piston ring to preventing gas leak in cylinder, reduction of engine vibration.
If we expect the oil, does its job perfectly, it should have this feature:
- Enough viscosity, it means that oil should has enough fluency style
- Chemically it should be heat resistance and could tolerate high temperature.
- The oil should be fluent enough in cold, to helps engine turning on easily
- The oil shouldn’t get too loose in heat and its evaporation rate shouldn’t be high
Disadvantages of Engine Oil
Now we want to mention disadvantage and advantage of engine oil that we use for our vehicle engine.
As we mentioned above, engine oil for engine is like water for body, what happens if we drink polluted water?
Absolutely something wrong will happen with our body, like some poison through in our vein, it causes malfunctioning in our body.
Now imagine what happens if we use fake or expired oil.
Since demand for engine oil is highly increase these past years, some frauds, use this opportunity to sell their own fake goods, lack of knowledge about these goods, cause this confusion and also people can’t recognize fake or original products themselves.
Suppling fake oil is some kind of fraud, but sometimes people are looking to purchase this, because these fake products are really cheap in market.
This common mistake may cause engine breakdowns in long term.
Because side effect of this fake oils is going to cost you a lot.
Some features of fake products:
- Smell like petroleum (When you feel that the oil smells like petroleum and too similar with each other, the chances of this oil breaking down is very high).
- Extra dark color (The dark color of the engine oil is very normal and can’t be denied, But if the engine oil color is close to black, this sign can’t be simply ignored).
- Engine oil has a relatively high density and its viscosity is generally around 5 to 50. Naturally, this engine oil cannot be trusted when the oil has an unusual and intense density. The viscosity of engine oil must be somehow that lubricate the surface.