Mechanic & Engine Servicing for Alberton

This page is about engine oil, which sounds like the least interesting subject in servicing and is quietly the most important one. It is also the thing a mechanic Alberton drivers use can most easily get wrong for you.

Oil is specified two ways. The viscosity, the 5W-30 style number, and the manufacturer approval, which is a specification code from the maker.

The viscosity number people generally get right. The approval is the one that gets ignored, and on modern engines it matters more. Manufacturers specify particular additive packages because of what their engines contain. Cars with diesel particulate filters need low-ash oil, or the filter blocks prematurely. Engines with variable valve timing depend on oil flowing through narrow control passages at a particular rate.

Putting a correct-viscosity but wrong-specification oil into one of those engines will not destroy it next week. It shortens the life of components that were designed around a specific oil.

A mechanic Alberton drivers use should be able to tell you which specification your engine takes and why, not just the viscosity.

Manufacturer service intervals have stretched considerably, some to 15,000 km or more. Those figures are achievable, on the manufacturer’s oil, in the driving conditions the manufacturer assumed.

Adelaide short-trip driving is not those conditions. An engine that never fully warms accumulates fuel and water in the oil, both of which dilute it. If most of your driving is under fifteen minutes at a time, a shorter interval than the book figure is money well spent.

Some engines use oil. A litre between services is not unusual on certain designs and is not a fault. What matters is a change in the rate.

An engine that used nothing and now uses a litre every few thousand kilometres has developed something: valve stem seals, worn rings, or a leak you have not spotted. Blue smoke on start-up points at valve seals. Blue smoke under acceleration points at rings.

Checking the level between services is worth the two minutes. Running an engine low on oil damages it faster than almost anything else you can do.

2/208 Grange Rd, Flinders Park, roughly eight minutes from Alberton. Ask any mechanic Alberton locals recommend which specification your engine takes, and be wary if the answer is only a viscosity number.

Call (08) 8443 7900.

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