Lillie is always busy around her McHenry home. She weeds and plants out in the garden. She cuts the lawn and edges along the driveway and sidewalks. She regrouted her bathtub recently and, on the same day, replaced the air filter in her furnace. She had the gutters cleaned in the Fall and plans to power wash the house in the Spring. But is she as attentive to her car, such as changing the oil on schedule?

Lillie’s McHenry house requires regular maintenance, or it will fall into disrepair. Disrepair means that it requires repair and repair is usually far more costly than timely maintenance. The same is true with a car.

Perform timely maintenance on your car or it, too, will fall into disrepair. And, just as with your home, it costs a lot more to fix parts than to maintain them so they don’t require repair as often.

Automotive maintenance includes inspecting parts to ensure that they are still in good condition. For instance, you want to inspect your brakes, suspension and steering system. You want to inspect belts and hoses since they’re far more costly and inconvenient should they fail while you’re out on the road somewhere. But the most important maintenance you can perform is to change the engine oil on schedule.

Engine oil is the lifeblood of your vehicle’s engine. It provides lubrication so that moving parts slide against each other without tearing each other apart and overheating. In fact, without engine oil, an engine will only run a short time until it fails completely. At this point, you may have a block of molten metal rather than a mechanical apparatus that will convey you from place to place.

Even when you have engine oil in the engine, that doesn’t guarantee that it will achieve its intended goals unless you change it regularly. Overtime, the engine oil picks up particles and foreign matter that inhibit it’s ability to adequately lubricate and protect the moving parts in your engine.

This is why an oil filter is also important. The oil filter cleans foreign particles and dirt out of the engine oil. It keeps it in a condition where it can do its job lubricating the engine longer. But, eventually, the engine oil will lose its capacity to protect the engine.

The engine oil will eventually break down and cease to have the properties, in sufficient quantity, so that it can lubricate and protect the engine. It needs to be changed.

The longer you operate your vehicle with engine oil that needs to be changed, the greater wear and tear your engine will experience. This will shorten the lifespan of you engine and increase the depreciation of your vehicle. 

Simply put, changing the engine oil on schedule is an inexpensive way to extend the life and value of your McHenry vehicle.