Can I Just Add Oil Instead Of Getting An Oil Change?

Somewhere in your life, one of your parents or an older relative or mentor may have taught you how to check the oil in your car. They could have taught you how to add oil as well.

It is understandable that certain car owners would prefer to only add oil instead of getting it modified. It’s much easier to buy some oil from a store and add it to your engine, and who doesn’t want to save money?

That said, if you’re going to handle the oil aspect of your car on your own, you need to learn how to adjust the oil instead of only adding oil to your engine on a continuous basis. This involves going under the engine and locating the oil filter and drain plug and removing the oil and then applying it (there’s a little more to it than that, but that’s a basic version of how to do it).

If you’re only adding oil to your car’s engine on a regular basis, that’s much better than having your car run out of oil, but you’re always going to cause a lot of trouble if that’s all you do. Then why are we removing oil instead of just adding it? There are a couple of explanations.

In the gasoline, there’s dirt. When you first put oil in your engine, no, there’s no dirt in it. But oil helps the metal parts of your engine to operate in tandem with each other, and even the best engines will end up with little bits of metal shavings falling off and ending up in the oil. Other bits of debris will end up in the oil, too, thanks to the oil filter — we’ll get to that in a moment — and then, finally, the oil will become dense and sludge-like.

You’ve got an oil filter that needs to be replaced. So, let’s say again, you’re still adding oil to your engine, but you’re never replacing it. If that’s the case, you’re likely to keep the same oil filter in the engine as well. But this is never being substituted.

Eventually, the filter becomes so dirty that it keeps removing metal shavings, debris, and everything else that would usually keep you away from getting into the engine oil.

So if you don’t change your oil filter, your oil will be filtered. And the dirtier your oil, and the deeper and thicker your sludge, the less you can lubricate the metal sections of the engine that are pressed together.