How to CheckAdd Power Steering Fluid to My Car or Truck

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Hi, I'm Mike Green. I'm one of the owners of 1A Auto. I want to help you save time and money repairing or maintaining your vehicle. I'm going to use my 20-plus years experience restoring and repairing cars and trucks like this to show you the correct way to install parts from 1AAuto.com. The right parts installed correctly: that's going to save you time and money. Thank you and enjoy the video.

In this video, we're going to show you how to check the power steering level on this '98 Ford Explorer. It's really the same as most vehicles. Basically, the symptom of low and really extremely low power steering fluid is a whining noise that changes pitch as you move the steering wheel.

The power steering is right here, and it's always going to be a similar container on most vehicles, although some vehicles now have reservoirs located up higher. It's usually pretty well-marked. Generally, you just twist, pull it up and off. This vehicle has a dipstick that shows you the fluid level. You can see that we actually do need quite a bit of fluid. You can also just check it visually.

Generally, you don't want to fill fluid all the way up because as you use the power steering fluid, it both expands and when different pressures come into play, it rises and falls. Generally, the level is somewhere not quite full of the whole container, so we'll add some power steering fluid.

In general, power steering fluid is pretty much power steering fluid. Although, even this bottle says don't use it in Honda vehicles. The other thing is, actually, power steering fluid actually is automatic transmission fluid with no red dye in it. If you get in a bind and you don't have any power steering fluid, you can use automatic transmission fluid. Just keep in mind that it's going to be red, and the reason they dye automatic transmission fluid red is because when it leaks, you can identify it quickly and make sure you don't have a problem, and you don't have an expensive fix for the automatic transmission. Just keep in mind that if you start putting automatic transmission fluid into your power steering, and your power steering starts leaking, don't have somebody mistake it for a transmission problem.

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