The Importance of Oil in Your Car

Helming’s Auto Repair owner and master auto mechanic, Mike Reelfs, tells a group of young drivers how important oil is to a car’s engine and how costly it can be if you run out of oil. We also see the damaged caused, such as bent and broken valves.

Video Transcripts

Part I

Look look at this…this is uhh…off that Volkswagen out front, this is what happened to a car…that…uhh, they ran it out of oil

These are the valves, they’re all supposed to be closed, you see how these are all…they’re kind of bent, they don’t sit right, so they’re open

This one is…missing, actually it broke

Uhhhh, the other…it’s a V6, so the other head, the cylinder head is the same way

It’s umm, by not checking the oil, this about five thousand dollars worth of damage

So, um, you know, if it’s your car, you’re out five grand

Or, if it’s your parents’ car (laughs), they might not be very happy with you

Umm, so yeah, this just destroyed this motor…and so we, we ended up, we had to get a used motor for it, but the used motor actually got…dropped in shipment to us, and it got damaged too, so…no luck with this car

But, these are the things that can happen, it’ll bend valves…

Umm, timing belts can break

Part II

And they open and close the valves, but what happens is the bearings inside here don’t get oil, and then one of these will cease up and stop, and that’ll…and as the…then…the camshaft stops the

That’s what this one did…one of the cams stopped…the…the timing belt then slips or jumps, or breaks

Uhh, the pistons still move and the valves are open so everything comes together and smashes…and it bends the valves like it did on that one…and because it did that, the other head is still moving and it broke all the valves on that head too

So…Oil is very important and…unfortunately, I see customers that with new kids that are driving that do it, I see adults do it, I see everybody do it

This is uhh, Leane’s car, our car, we actually bought it from a customer that had an oil leak…and the customer…who, a couple hundred dollars to repair the oil leak, they didn’t want to do it, they kept driving it and they didn’t check the oil…and they burned up the motor

…and so, as we run the shop, I was able to…actually my youngest son and me took the motor out.

We got it rebuilt, and put it back in

But, you know…For a couple hundred dollars that they could have repaired the car…or, at least, for a quart of oil every two weeks, they could have kept it running, but they didn’t check it and it burned up

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *