Like all other machines, cars need regular care and maintenance to work efficiently. Among all the parts that make a car, the engine is the most critical. There may be many things that we do unknowingly while driving a car that have adverse effects on its engine over a period of time. Here are the 7 most common things you may be doing wrong that is causing a huge loss to your car’s engine life.
Not letting the engine get ready
If you begin revving up the engine just after starting, it leads to wear and tear of the engine components and irreparable damage to expensive components over a period of time.
After starting the car, one should let the engine get properly lubricated with circulation of oil and let it warm up a bit. Once the circulation is complete (which takes roughly two minutes) and the engine has reached an optimum functioning temperature, the drivers can accelerate and move the car.
Constant speeding and applying brakes
If you don’t maintain a normal speed while driving and keep applying brakes every now and then, it cause serious damage to the rotors, discs and drums. This leads to wear and tear of brake components and makes them less effective in situations of emergency. Maintaining a constant speed and avoiding the constant use of brakes can save the engine’s brake components from wear and tear.
Riding the clutch
Resting the foot unnecessarily on the clutch in heavy traffic conditions or during long drives is another common but detrimental habit that drivers should refrain from. It can lead to premature wear and tear of the clutch plate and even other serious damages. Some car manufacturers provide a separate dead pedal to lay your foot on while driving. ASK Automotive are known clutch friction products suppliers for premium car manufacturers in the country and abroad.
Engine Lugging
Engine lugging refers to the practice of driving the car at a speed lower than that of the engine. It happens when you do not lower the engine gear when slowing down the car. This effectively means that you’re making your engine work harder when it doesn’t need to. Engine lugging can cause damage to your engines as it raises the engine temperature, make them run less efficiently and create issues with the engine’s timing. Therefore, always coordinate your car’s gearing with the speed at which it’s running.
Skipping regular maintenance
All machines need regular maintenance and so the engine is no different. Skipping regular servicing and check-ups leads to many problems in the long run which can cost a lot more to rectify. Frequent oil change is also essential for smooth engine operations.
Constant speeding
Constant speeding causes unnecessary heating and friction in the car’s engine and pressure on other components like tyres. Maintain a constant and optimal driving speed so that there’s less pressure on the car’s engine parts and a better engine life. ASK Automotive is one of the best control cable manufacturers in India that is working consistently with premium car manufacturers to make your car driving experience smoother and hassle-free with new and innovative additions.
Bringing turbo engines to a sudden stop
Turbocharged engines are efficient, economical and provide additional power to the car. However, these engines get very hot when the car is driven hard. If the engine is brought to a sudden stop after a long and intense drive, the oil in the turbine is still boiling hot, which damages the internal components of the engine. So if you drive a turbocharged vehicle, make sure that you don’t shut down the engine immediately after a long drive. Drive gently on nearing your destination or let your car idle for a few minutes
Every human behind the wheel of a vehicle propelled by an internal combustion engine has experienced some form of engine lugging at one time or another. Although this condition can happen in any internal combustion engine, the damaging effects associated with it are most commonly seen in small displacement turbocharged engines and has a high probability of causing severe engine damage.
Engine lugging occurs when the driver smashes the throttle to the floorboard, usually while overtaking on the highway or climbing a hill in too high of a gear and causing the engine to experience high load at too low of an RPM.
For Engines In General
When you attempt to accelerate at too low of an engine speed and in too high of a gear, crank driven oil pumps won’t be able supply a large enough volume of oil to support the load being put on the internal components and leading to oil starvation related failures.
Another common problem when lugging is that the engine has less available torque and has to work much harder to propel the car forward than if the transmission were in a shorter gear. This reduces the engines already poor efficiency, and when an engine becomes less efficient, cylinder temperature rises, and you start pushing the boundaries of the knock resistance of the fuel and will begin to see very high knock counts (detonation). Heat related lugging issues are of even greater concern for air-cooled engines, where the fan speed is controlled directly by engine RPM.
Knock is often considered to be the equivalent of hitting the top of your piston with an explosive hammer. Knock can cause severe damage to an engine’s cylinder walls, pistons, connecting rods, spark plugs, bearings, and hardware, presenting you with an engine that burns more oil and makes less power, if it still runs at all.
A diagram comparing a normal combustion event (left) vs a knock event (right).
Although knock related damage is less of a concern on most modern EFI engines because they have a failsafe that pulls timing and or adds fuel to counter high knock counts.
For a more in-depth look at detonation and its associated effects, be sure to check out our article on the topic here.
Small Displacement Turbo Engines
Low speed pre-ignition (LSPI) is considered a serious problem for turbocharged small displacement direct injection engines. It is becoming more common as manufacturers continue to increase the stress being put on these engines by reducing displacement and increasing pressure and ignition timing to meet the ever more demanding fuel economy and emissions standards.
Graph showing the average brake mean effective pressure (BMEP) of an LSPI event vs a normal knock event. With brake specific fuel consumption islands. (Image courtesy of PCEO)
LSPI occurs before the spark plug even fires, and while engineers have yet to identify all of the variables that may cause LSPI, they have been able to pinpoint several secondary ignition sources such as cylinder temperature/pressure, hot engine deposits free-floating in the combustion chamber, and large oil droplets after mixing with the fuel injected on the intake stroke.
In addition to avoiding lugging, a few studies presented at the JSAE/SAE Powertrains, Fuels and Lubricants International Meeting in 2015 showed that even reducing the calcium carbonate (CaCO3) levels being used in engine oil as a detergent greatly reduced the occurrence of LSPI during testing. A catch can system will also dramatically reduce the amount of blow-by that is able to enter the combustion chamber and reduce the occurrence of oil deposit build up and foreign materials in the combustion chamber. To learn more about about reducing blow-by, check out our guide on catch can systems.
Low speed pre-ignition has the ability to cause severe engine damage, because the flame front propagates and builds cylinder pressure faster than the piston can travel at that low of an RPM and creates extreme pressure spikes, or it may even ignite on the compression stroke and build against the upward motion of the piston in rare situations.
Graph showing the crank angle and cylinder pressure of a normal combustion event vs an LSPI event.
Pre-ignition cannot be prevented by pulling ignition timing or adjusting the spark plug heat range, so auto manufacturers have worked very hard to prevent LSPI during the design phase of the engine and by adding as much fuel in these load cells as possible without noticeably affecting efficiency.
The Takeaway
While LSPI may not be completely understood at this point and large displacement engines are less susceptible to knock and pre-ignition at low RPM and high load, we do know that it can happen to just about any internal combustion engine when the conditions are right, especially turbocharged small displacement direct injection engines and will often lead to piston damage or a snapped rod putting a nice new window in your block skirt.