The famous American engineer Robert Sikorsky listed five major causes of engine wear in his book “Always Driving It”:

1. Corrosion wear

After the combustion of fuel in the engine combustion chamber, a lot of harmful substances will be produced. Generally, 1-5 pounds of nitrogen and sulfuric acid will be produced per 100 gallons of gasoline. These substances will not only cause corrosion to the cylinder, but also rush into the engine through three piston rings (top, middle and bottom rings), causing metal corrosion to the main parts of the engine, such as the cam crankshaft, etc. This corrosion cannot be eliminated by using lubricating oil alone.

2. Rust wear

After the engine is shut down, it will be cooled from high temperature to low temperature. This process of temperature change will generate water-cooled condensate and even water accumulation in the engine. This will cause serious metal corrosion to the engine, especially when the engine is restarted for a short distance and the engine temperature is too late to evaporate the water vapor, the situation is even worse. This wear can not be solved by lubricating oil.

3. Dust

The engine needs to suck in air when it is burning, and even the best air filter device can hardly prevent dust from being sucked into the engine with the air. Strong wear is caused by dust inhalation, which cannot be completely eliminated by lubricating oil. Especially in the dry, rainless and windy areas of our country, this kind of strong wear is more prominent.

4. cold start dry friction

GM’s research shows that when the engine stops running for four hours, all the lubricating oil on the friction interface will return to the lubricating oil tank. At this time, start the engine, because the oil pump has not enough time to pump the lubricating oil to all lubricating parts, the dry friction of periodic loss of lubrication will be generated in a short time, resulting in serious abnormal strong wear of the engine. This kind of strong wear cannot be solved by lubricating oil. (according to other relevant data, this kind of strong wear accounts for more than 70% of the total engine wear.)

5. Normal wear

Wear caused by normal operation of the engine. After making clear the causes of engine wear, we will also know the role of lubricating oil in reducing engine wear. At the same time, it is clear the importance of using anti-wear protection products to extend the service life of the engine and maintain the engine.

Moreover, although additives such as antiwear agent, viscosity index improver, detergent dispersant, antirust agent and antioxidant are more or less present in all efficient lubricants, it should be emphasized that the above additives are not equivalent to professional automobile maintenance products. In the actual use process, people often want to obtain the maintenance products with excellent comprehensive performance, which requires the selection of a variety of additives, the use of composite technology and configuration process to produce a composite product with wide applicability.

It is not easy to develop a good compound formula, and the use of additives mainly depends on the experimental results. Secondly, there are synergistic effects between different additives, which may be positive or negative. Therefore, to develop a good automobile maintenance product, it is necessary to fully understand the performance of various basic additives, and it needs a lot of laboratory and road vehicle experiments. This is the reason why the professional automobile maintenance products compounded by basic additives are quite different from the basic additives only used as the additives of various oil products.