How to Check Oil Level 2010-14 Subaru Outback

Hey, friends. It's Len at 1A Auto. Today we're working on a 2013 Subaru Outback. We're going to be checking the oil. It's going to be a very simple job. If you need any parts, you can always come and check us out at 1A Auto. Here we go.

What we're going to do is we're going to make sure that we've ran the vehicle for a little bit. We've got it to running temperature. We're going to turn it off and let it sit for maybe two, three minutes. Then we'll come over. We'll grab our oil dipstick, which is right here. It says Engine Oil on it. We'll pull it out with our rag. We're just going to wipe it off. You'll see there's two dots, one lower there and one upper here. Anywhere in between here is good--preferably closer to that top one, but not above it. If your oil's above that top dot, you need to drain some out, okay? It's worse for your engine oil to be high than it is for it to be a little low. If it was completely dry, well, you're going to want to add some oil.

We got it all nice and cleaned off. We'll just go ahead and put it back in the dipstick tube. Leave it in for a second. I'm going to pull it back out. You can see where our oil's at. As you can tell, it's pretty much in the middle, so I would say that's fine. If you wanted to, you could add a little bit more. Try to get it up to the dot, but like I said, if you go over, you're climbing underneath your car and you're going to drain some out for me.

Let's assume that we did have to add oil. It's low for some reason. What we're going to have to do is we're going to come over to the engine fill. That's right here, this yellow cap. It's got a little oil can on it with a drip. We're going to spin it to the left. We can remove it. This tells us specifically what kind of oil we need to use, 0W-20 oil, so that's what you have to use. You don't want to use 1030 or 1040 or 1540. That's going to be entirely too thick for this engine. That's where we would add, right inside here. We can use a funnel so we don't spill it all over the place.

We're just going to turn that back to the right once we have it filled, just like that. If you need to change the oil filter, luckily for you, it's right up top on this. That's great. Subaru did a great job with that. Yeah, that's pretty much how it goes with checking the oil level. Once you did add, you want to go back over to the oil dipstick once again and then just double check to make sure you're at the proper level. Once again, do not go higher than that last dot, okay? That concludes that episode.

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