With an oil appetite of more than a liter for a couple of thousand kilometers, a normal driver thinks about piston repair, and the abnormal stops changing oil at all, limited to refilling it. Of course, in the most extreme case, the presence of oil in the crankcase is more important than its quality, but during operation it is actively changing under the influence of aggressive chemistry and wear products. Cleaning with a filter does not ensure full restoration of its quality: it changes as the very basis of the oil, which causes it to become more liquid, and it works or drops out in the form of ash and soot in the places of overheating the additives present in it.
Topping up with new servings of oil slightly restores the amount of additives and fractional composition, but this measure is not enough for long. Quickly enough, the volume of new components is simply lost in the volume of the sludge accumulated in the engine crankcase, and the base number does not recover at all to a normal level. Continue reading →