Why does your chain actually need oil?

How does motor oil actually prevent an engine from destroying itself?! 🚀⚙️
Inside modern engines, heavy-duty steel chains connect the crankshaft to the camshafts to keep the entire motor in perfect synchronization! When the engine is running, these metal chains spin around steel sprockets at thousands of RPMs. Without constant lubrication, this rapid movement generates extreme heat and friction, causing the chain to stretch, snap, or grind the gears into metal dust!
To prevent catastrophic failure, engines rely on a continuous flow of thick motor oil. In this mesmerizing demonstration, a mechanic squirts a stream of fresh oil directly onto a high-speed spinning chain and gear assembly! The liquid instantly wraps around the fast-moving metal, engineering a microscopic, frictionless barrier! Because of this tiny film of oil, the raw steel parts never actually touch each other, saving the motor from completely eating itself alive!