Question

Jerri is planning to rebuild the engine of an antique car. She has chosen all the materials she needs including a high quality synthetic oil to reduce friction in the engine. What effect will reducing friction have on the engines performance?

Answer 1

Oil keeps the moving metal parts of an engine smoothly rubbing together through lubrication. Just like with other mechanical devices, energy can be lost due to friction caused by lack of proper lubrication. When an engine is running on old or insufficient oil, more friction and heat is produced between the rubbing moving parts. A decline in gas mileage follows this since the fuel takes more than usual to do the same task.

Answer 2

Hello!

There are several answers for this question, although the main effect that we can find with friction reducing on an engine is reducing the heat transfer between the moving parts.

Why?

Reducing the friction between two moving parts means reducing the heat transfer. One of the more important effects of the engine oil is to reduce the friction between the moving parts, which means reducing the heat generation or heat transfer, and it's especially true when we are talking about synthetic oil (synthetic engine oils can resist heat transfer better than traditional engine oils).