How To Check Dipstick & Engine Oil - EASY

back it's an automotive Monday at Sinclair Community College my name is Justin Morgan the chairperson of automotive you guys haven't got a chance go back and look at some of our previous videos on used car inspection how to install safety feet that mr. Singleton's been a big part of and done a great job today we're going to talk about how to check your own engine oil so it's something that maybe some of you have done in the past or something that you guys are scared to do out there and the one thing I want to try to do is go through and give you the information that you need to check your own engine oil the reason this is so important is today on vehicles we have boiled life intervals and what we do is we use a monitor on the vehicles computer to tell us when to change oil the problem with that is on new cars is sometimes that oil life interval will go to six seven thousand miles and for those of you that are uninformed our typical oil interval and the past has been three thousand miles so what do we need to do is when we do those guests that looks at the local gas station is that's a good time to go ahead and pop your hood and check your own engine oil so today we're going to go through that procedure the one thing I always recommend as we do in all of our videos is consult your owners manual if you're unsure and you don't want to do this and always go ahead and go to your local service repair facility but it's a good idea at least once a month to go ahead and check your engine oil or at every gas fill up whatever you would like to feel comfortable with so let's go ahead and get started here so the first thing that we want to do is locate the engine oil dipstick usually that's noted by a yellow color or like an orange color on that dipstick to let you know another dipstick that you might find underneath the hood is the automatic transmission fluid dipstick on some vehicles especially older vehicles so if you're unsure you consult your owners manual to make sure that you have the right one so one thing you want to make sure is is anytime you're checking the engine oils the engine should always be in the off it's a good idea in some cars a thing to just sit for just a few minutes to let the oil settle to the bottom of the oil pan so after you shut the vehicle off go ahead and get ready pull that dipstick out before you proceed you probably want to go ahead and get you a paper towel some sort and of course at the gas station they'd have a towel for you basically to go ahead and check that oil for you so go ahead and grab one of those to get ready to do this so we're going to pull the dipstick out just use one index finger I'm going to go ahead and use my rag here and as I pull it out slowly I'm going to wipe the excess of oil off the dipstick as we pull it straight up and out okay so I don't need to look at it right now I'm just going to clean off the dipstick place it back down into what we call the dipstick tube push it down I like to go ahead and push it down all the way count to about one one thousand two one thousand three one thousand that allows the oil to get saturated on the dipstick we're going to pull it back out and our fill level is going to be viewed down here on our level here there's going to be hash marks and invitations there's a max level and usually a ad level usually in that region is a safe region on our vehicles that have those oil life intervals that are going 6000 or more on our oil change we are starting to consume oil so although the oil may be fine the issue is is we are getting low on oil and what's happening is on a lot of newer vehicles is we're having engine failures due to the fact that customers are not checking the oil and so although the oil change says it does not need it our oil level is actually low okay so there are some things being done in by the manufacturers to go ahead and kind of remedy that that issue right now you as a consumer a customer one of your jobs is to make sure that you're checking the oil regularly so any of you that have had some expense of the engine repair bills due to oil consumption this might have been something that you want to do on your next purchase is to go ahead and continually change the oil every 3,000 miles so as we take a look here we're basically up about right up here at the fill level so we're good to go if we wanted to double check I always like to check it twice just to make sure so I'm going to go ahead and pull it off again clean it off I got a little drip right here on my map I'm going to put it back down in there and if you can see right now here's my full hash mark here's my add hash mark anything below that or no will on the dipstick would be cause for concern for me so you would always want to make sure it's at least viewable on the dipstick and just specifically it should be falling in the hash marks at any oil change okay one one thousand two one thousand three one thousand grab it and as you can see it looks like it's actually filled up in this case although on one side it showed that it's a little bit filled it's right here to the top marsh and it looks like it's good so a lot of vehicles today have oil life monitors most of those monitors do not actually go off the mileage some vehicles do or some manufacturers do but a lot of them actually go off of engine rpm engine run time the amount of miles and a logarithm basically that is done through engineering so there's no set miles so as you can see on this vehicle it's actually at 98 percent life left so there will be a prompt that comes up in your intrument cluster that says that change oil soon or you know you're at 20% oil life on this vehicle you can see that it's at 98% so downside of this though this vehicle could have been 6000 miles since the last oil change and that's when we need to make sure you're continually checking your engine oil because if the engine starts to run low on oil that causes catastrophic engine repair and now that's costing the customer or the consumer a bunch of money you're looking at maybe possibly an engine replacement at two or three thousand dollars so as you can see from the odometer this oil change is close to the oil life the oil change interval judging by the sticker we're about thousand miles left or so so that tells me that even though we have ninety-eight percent real life or about a thousand miles away from our oil change so I really like to rely on my old change stickers from the repair facility rather than the oil life monitor I feel like that is a better a better idea of to keep you constantly checking and changing that oil regularly just a quick tip here today on automotive Monday's give you guys an idea of how to check in on oil something that's easy easily done and can keep you out of a costly repair bill in the future so thanks again and thanks for watching

Channel: Automotive Technology By Sinclair College

Views: 2,126,565

Keywords: how to change oil, not to not change oil, all vehicles, in car, at home, filter, owners manual, fail

Id: H9-YT9RiM84

Length: 5min 33sec (333 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 10 2017