How to Check and Fill Fluids 2014-19 Chevy Silverado

Hey everyone. Mike from 1A Auto. Today I'm gonna show you to check and fill the fluids on this 2015 Chevy Silverado, pretty much the same as the GMC Sierra as well. Pop the hood on your Chevy Silverado. Hood release is right here in the middle under the steering column. And then as you're looking at the truck just go slightly to the left here, there's a little tab it sticks up, just move it to the center of the truck and lift up. Once you pop the hood, your coolant it's on the passenger side. Right here in the middle and you can see there's a line right here. It says, "Full cold." So you only wanna do this when the engine's cold. Remove this cap. Make sure you're using GM specific coolant and a funnel can be good. But then we're just gonna add coolant until we're up that cold line.

And you don't have to always be quite perfect but close. Make sure you put the cap on nice and tight. And just clean up any coolant that you might have spilled. The oil check is on the driver's side, yellow loop. Just put your finger in, pull it straight up and out. All right? You wanna wipe it off the first time and kinda get yourself familiar with what the dipstick looks like. At the end it has a little cross hatch pattern and two dots on it. Your oil level, you want it between those two dots and generally you wanna do this after the vehicle's been running, shut it off, let it sit for, I don't know, about a minute or so. And then check the oil, down in. Okay, and you can see we're right at the top. Right at that second mark which is great.

When you're checking it, look at the condition of oil and you can see actually that this oil is really dirty, really brown, really in need of an oil change. You re-insert the dipstick and if you need to add oil, the oil fill's right here. Turn counterclockwise and pull it up and out. It specifies Dexos 0W-20 oil. And so I get the proper oil and they actually make it pretty easy, get down in and add oil if you need to. Make sure after you add any oil, put the cap back on and re-check your oil to make sure you're at the right level. Right here we have brake fluid. It's right in front of where the driver sits and you can see the reservoir very easy, if you need to, wipe it off. You can see that there's an arrow with a minimum sign on it, and an arrow with a maximum sign. And you wanna fill it somewhere in between there. Fill cap's right on top. Turn it counterclockwise. You can even see on top of it. It says, "DOT 3". That's the type of brake fluid you wanna put into it.

And then you can see here, I have some DOT 3 brake fluid and we're just gonna add that to it, until we're between those two lines. Okay, so now you can see the fluid's right between. I generally don't like to be up at the max or definitely not below the minimum, but somewhere in between is good. And then put the cap back on. Turn it clockwise and if you like and you want the ... it all lined up clockwise and make sure it's nice and tight.

The fluid reservoir is right here. Generally these trucks have a sensor on them so you know when the fluid's low. Open it up and make sure you got good negative 20 degree fluids, especially up in the Northeast. And if these are empty, usually they'll take a whole gallon of fluid. Once you fill that up, just make sure you put the cap on nice and secure. Always good to have a gallon of fluid in your truck, in your vehicle with you.

Whenever we check the transmission fluid, you wanna have the vehicle running. You can see it's idling here and then you're gonna come into your driver information center and by turning this knob, you go through the different menu items. And you wanna go to the transmission temperature. So transmission fluid temperature, and to check it when it's cold, you want it between 80 and 90 degrees Fahrenheit. So you can see we're up at 81 right now.

So we'll go check the fluid. So our transmission's between 80 and 90 degrees Fahrenheit. Again, this is the cold check. And this is just to make sure that you have enough transmission fluid in your vehicle so that you can drive it around and heat up the transmission. So we pull the dipstick out, wipe it off, push it all the way back down in and pull it out. And our fluid level is right here, and if we turn it over, we can see we've got our cold marks here and our hot marks here. And it was right in the cold marks. All right, so we just wanna drive around a little bit until our fluid temperature gets up to between 160 and 200 degrees Fahrenheit. And now you can see our temperatures up to 160, or it's actually at 170. You want it between 160 and 200. And then they tell you to kinda run it through the different reverse and drive just a couple times. Just to make sure that the fluid's all spread out through the transmission.

And now we'll pop the hood and check the fluid. Everything's gonna be warm, so just be careful. Pull the dipstick out, wipe it off and you can see there's my full hot marks. So put it back down in and then bring it out. And you can see that the fluid is actually right in between the hot. So it's perfect. One thing to note on this fluid though, you see when I wipe it off, how dirty it is. You can see if I dip the dipstick into clean fluid and pull it out, and you can see the fluid should be nice and red, not brown or gray. And this vehicle's in need of a fluid service.

So for these vehicles, Dexron 6 fluid, and if you did need to add some, just use a funnel and add a little bit at a time until you bring the level up to where you want it. Okay, and actually this pot represents a pint which is half a quart. Okay, so it was halfway in between low and high. So if I added half a pint, which is basically an eighth of a quart, or a quarter of a quart, I should bring it up to the right level. But anytime you add, if you do need to add, make sure you put the dipstick back in. All the way in and pull it out to check.

Thanks for watching. If you want the parts to do it yourself, check out 1aauto.com, the place for DIY auto repair.