You’ll wish you had

It’s highly recommended that you change your car, truck or SUV’s oil according to the schedule in your owner’s manual. As we’ve written here before, this is one of the best things you can do maintain your McHenry vehicle for the long haul and to maintain the value. Some people don’t do a good job of changing their oil on schedule. But imagine if someone never did change the oil.

Back in 1974, a man, we’ll call Ray, went a couple years without changing the oil in his 1968 Olds 88. In that time, he put about 34,000 miles on the car. He checked the oil periodically and, if it was low, he added another quart of oil.

He joked with his friends about how long he’d gone without an oil change. Some were impressed. Others just shook their heads thinking, ‘That’s a real bad idea.’

The latter group was right – it was a bad idea. It was a very bad idea.

Eventually, at about the 34,000-mile mark, their car started acting up. It wasn’t running right. It got bad enough that he finally brought the car in to have it checked out. He received a long list of necessary repairs that included:

• A carburetor cleaning and rebuild
• A new timing chain
• A tune up with wires, plugs, rotor and points (the old fashioned system to bring sparks into the cylinders)
• A new exhaust system (everyone who ever heard his car run knew he needed that)
• And they needed to take the engine apart and clean ‘the gunk’ out of it

The ‘gunk’ referred to is sludge – the remnants of motor oil that was in the engine about 31,000 miles too long.

The oil had thickened and thickened, over time, while it accumulated more dirt and debris, until it had the consistency of butter fresh from the refrigerator. The auto repair shop had to scoop it out with putty knives and flush it out in a high-pressure parts cleaning tank.

They got the sludge out of his engine, put the engine back together for him, but it was never the same. The damage that was done to his engine, during the time it was fresh-lubricant deprived, was significant. 

During the time the engine was running while filled with sludge, the passageways that are the arteries of the lubrication system were mostly blocked. Moving parts didn’t receive the oil they required to put a layer to slide on between them. There was more friction and the additional friction generated increasing levels of heat.

In the meantime, the oil pump was fouled with sludge and was working at a fraction of its capacity moving the oil through the engine. The amazing part is that the car ran as long as it did.

You don’t have to drive 34,000 miles without an oil change before your McHenry car, truck or SUV’s engine starts feeling the heat and experiencing the damage. Considering the cost, changing the oil on schedule is an inexpensive way of ensuring that your vehicle’s engine has a healthy lubrication system and that supports all the other parts of the engine, too.