LAST
WORD
Oil workload
Engine oil performance in numbers
W
ith the
Olympics
around the
corner and looking at
the eager and focused
athletes preparing,
one can hardly picture
the simplicity and
By Joseph Kitui purity of nature such
Joseph kitui has that winning or losing
the medal depends
been working in
the transport and on miniscule things.
logistics sector for My favorite wonder
close to 20 years in the human body is
the knee joint which
comprises of 3 bones that are not permanently connected to each other rubbing constantly
and in different directions and still absorbing
upwards of 250 strikes per kilometer equating to nearly 40 tons of force per knee. All this
happens in the background of science and
most people hardly ever notice until one day
when climbing that stair or bending to tie the
laces a cracking sound emanates and a whole
lot of pain follows.
While not nearly comparable in magnanimity, oil in the engine suffers similar fate
and is required to perform without breaking a
sweat(and I mean that). Let’s look at the num28
bers: a 4 cylinder vehicle engine with a piston
stroke (distance between top and bottom
positions of the piston) of 85mm turning at
1000rpms will require the piston to move up
and down almost 50 meters per minute while
rubbing on the surface of the cylinder. These
may not be exactly spectacular numbers.
However, if you factor in that the vehicle
will take a minimum of 10 hours to get to
Mombasa on that holiday trip( driving within
the speed limit!) the piston will travel upwards
of 25,000km(( 85x2x250x60x10)/1000) equivalent to the equatorial diameter of the earth
and still perform the following morning for
that “drag” race with the tuk tuk guy over the
New Nyali bridge…now are those spectacular
numbers or what …!
Remember the oil is the only thing that
separates the piston rings from the cylinder
liner surface and therefore protects the liner
from being corroded and minimizes wear on
the rings. It also carries out the functio