How Do I Check or Add Engine Oil 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 oil and where to fill the oil on this '98 Explorer, very similar for any car, so if you're wondering about checking your oil, watching this video should help you out and we also go through finding out what type of oil you need in your car.

So, we're checking your engine oil. This vehicle is a Ford Explorer. It's pretty obvious, big cap on the top here that says engine oil, depending on your vehicle, there's that cap. This is a rear wheel drive or 4 wheel drive, so the engine is mounted this way. If you engine is mounted across with the front wheel drive vehicle, your oil cap will generally be a little further closer to the front of the vehicle and then the oil dipstick is right over here, nicely labeled in this car. Generally it'll look something like this or it'll be a loop that is colored gray or black.

To check the engine oil, you just grab the dipstick but we'll twist it a little bit and pull it up and out. You can use a paper towel or some other cloth, wipe it off, put it back in, and then pull it out and then you can see where the level of the oil is. I'll just wipe it off a little bit. You can see that there's a cross hatch pattern here, so you want the level to come up right in that cross hatch, also right in the middle of these 2 dots and you can see that actually the level is fine in this vehicle.

It's important to note that you want to do this on a level surface because this does go down into the side of the oil pan. If this vehicle was tilted towards the driver side, the oil would appear higher than this and if it was tilted toward the passenger side, it would appear lower, you want to try to do is on a fairly level surface. Usually at a gas station is the best place. Make sure you put the dipstick back in. That's another important thing, is to make sure when you're checking the oil to push it all the way down and in and then pull it out. If you need to add oil, remove the cap, usually these caps twist and this one actually twists all the way off. Sometimes they'll twist off like that, other times they'll twist to a point and then just pull off and then obviously you would pour the oil in there and then as far as it goes. You need to make sure you use the oil that's recommended for your vehicle and you can find that in a couple different places. On this vehicle there's a tag right here on the radiator support and you can see it recommends 5W30. Sometime this tag can be located further back in the engine compartment or it can also be located up on the hood on some vehicles and then the other source of that information is in your manual and if you look, here's the engine oil recommendation and then down below, you'll see 5W30. You can usually find this in your manual by looking in your index either under engine oil or you could also look under . there's usually specifications and sometimes there's a fluid levels and specification section depending on what vehicle you have. Also some vehicles will actually have the oil specification printed right on the cap

We hope this helps you out. Brought to you by www.1AAuto.com, your source for quality replacement parts and the best service on the Internet. Please feel free to call us toll-free, 888-844-3393. We're the company that's here for you on the Internet and in person.