Certainly, you’ll agree with me that regular maintenance and servicing is one of the effective ways to prolong the life of a car. Although every single part of a vehicle is important, certain components require more attention from you than others. An example is the engine oil filler cap, which many people don’t always see as a big deal.
For those who don’t know, the oil filler cap is a round cover of about 2 inches in diameter that usually sits on the top of an engine. Its primary function is to prevent dirt, dust, and debris from entering the oil fill hole. As simple as an oil filler cap function, you need to understand that a vehicle cannot do with it for a long time while driving.
Furthermore, one of the most common issues of engine oil filler caps is that, for certain reasons, they tend to become loose over time. That said, here’s a quick question; what are the warning signs that your car is having a loose oil cap when driving?
There are several different warning signs that you’ll get to understand that you have a loose engine oil filler cap. One of them is the long-lasting odor resulting from the loss of oil within your vehicle.
What are the symptoms that you’ll notice to understand you have a loose engine oil filler cap? How can you avoid losing your oil cap? Can you drive your vehicle without the oil filler cap on? Read on to find the answers to these questions and many more.
What Is an Oil Filler Cap and How Important Is It to Your Car?
As previously mentioned, an engine oil filler cap is the round cover on top of your engine. One of its advantages is that it helps to keep the oil fill hole locked at all times. This way, dust, dirt, and debris won’t be able to enter and reduce the performance of your engine.
Apart from keeping the engine safe from dirt and all, another benefit of the oil filler cap is to prevent the loss of oil from the fill hole. With this, it’s safe to say that keeping the engine oil filler cap properly closed at all times is essential for you to achieve the best performance.
Unless you’re trying to top up the oil in your car or you want to perform quick maintenance, it’s not a good idea to always unscrew your engine oil filler cap. Sometimes people tend to forget to screw back the cap after opening it. And of course, this act is very unsafe and can cause serious damages to your car.
Another thing is that continuously unscrewing the oil filler caps can also cause them to loosen. In this case, if you don’t get to find out about it on time? Or are there any warning signs that you’ll get to understand that you have a loose engine oil filler cap? Let’s find out the answers to these questions in the next section of this post.
What Are the Symptoms of a Loose Engine Oil Filler Cap?
Now, we are back to the burning question of the symptoms of a loose engine oil filler cap? To answer this question, I’ll say that there are a couple of warning signs that you need to always pay attention to when driving.
First, once you keep getting a long-lasting oil odor, this could be a sign of loss of oil from your vehicle. Most times, the cause of this issue is a loose cap or loss of the engine oil filler cap.
Furthermore, if you keep noticing smoke forming from the hood of your car, it could also be a symptom of a bad or loose engine filler cap. This is true because a loose cap will always cause the loss of oil to every part of your engine. If this should happen and oil sprays on any hot component of the engine, it could bring out smoke.
What Happens If You Lose Your Oil Cap?
Now that you’ve seen some of the symptoms of a loose oil cap, here’s another question; what will happen if you notice your oil cap is no longer on the top of your car engine?
You need to understand that some cars can always work perfectly with or without the engine oil cap on. Well, this is possible because of the way their engines are developed, which is way different from the way modern engines are engineered. So, if you lose the oil cap of your old car model, you might still be able to drive the car.
However, for modern cars, I’ll suggest that you stay away from driving them because of the potential issues attached to them. Here are some of the often faced challenges attached to driving your car without the engine oil filler cap on.
- Penetration of dust and debris
By losing your engine oil filler cap and driving without replacing it, one of the challenges that you’ll likely encounter is having dust and debris penetrating the oil fill hole.
The oil in the hole is there to help you lubricate your car engine. However, if debris, dust, and dirt penetrate and mix with the oil inside the fill hole, you’ll end up having a low engine performance – due to the lack of smooth oil.
- Oil loss
Oil loss is another common challenge that you’ll face when driving with an engine without the oil filler cap. The oil from the hole will keep escaping and spraying on every part of your engine. This could bring about a loss of money.
Apart from your loss of fortune, there’s another thing you need to know about the oil that keeps spraying on the engine part as you drive. If the oil sprays to any of your engine components, it might lead to a smoke formation inside the car.
