If you have ever wondered why there is so many different types of greases and lubricants for automobiles, well you might be surprised to see they’re not universal.

Now if we look at greases in particular, grease is primarily a vehicle to hold oil and it releases that oil to lubricate the part that it’s on based on temperature or pressure or a combination of both. So what you have are high pressure greases and so on that are used on wheel bearings and things like that or low pressure greases that are used on other parts in the car. So the big thing here is to make sure that you use the grease that is appropriate for the job that you have in mind. Now that also applies to other things. Like here we have a difference between lubricants and penetrating lubricants and penetrating oil. This penetrating oil could be used to free up this jack that’s badly rusted. Oil by itself might not do that because it doesn’t have the penetrating qualities.

Now in some cases you’ll find greases such as we have here. These are universal and they can be used for a lot of different things but rarely anything that is high pressure like a bearing or something like that. Then of course here we have silicone. Silicone is what we use on the weather stripping on cars or anything that is made of rubber because rubber doesn’t like petroleum products. Petroleum products can cause rubber to swell up and become real slimy and just disintegrate. So we always use the silicone on things that are rubber.

Last but not least, here is one of our favorites here in the shop. This is white lithium grease. This is a light duty grease. We use it on hood hinges, door hinges, door latches, all sorts of things. So the key to all of this is to figure out what you’re going to lubricate, what lubricant works best for that application and you do it correctly, you’ll have something that is protected and wears a lot longer. And if you have a question or a comment, drop me a line right here at MotorWeek.