Car Service - Checking Your Oil Level

Hi, I am Andrew Davidson, Master Technician from Currys Auto Service. Now I am going to show you how to check your oil level. Okay, what we are going to do now is I am going to start the car and we are going to check the leaks. Make sure we dont have a leak, the filter, the drain anything like that. Okay, now that our car is running we will take a quick peek under, make sure that we dont have any leaks. You can actually see the filter from the top on this car everything seems fine, no leaks everything is good. So, I am going to turn the car off.

Okay, what I am going to do now is, we are going to give the car a couple of minutes and we are going to check the oil. The reason we are giving it a couple of minutes, because this oil gets to the top of the engine and we need to give it a minute or two to drain back to the pan, so we can get a proper level. So, you never want to start the car, cut her right off and check it, because you may get an inaccurate reading and may read low, because theres still a lot of oil up in the top of the engine that hasnt drained back down, so well give that a minute. Another thing that you may -- on many cars, is you have you an oil reminder. A little light on your dash or a little message that will tell you when you need to change your oil, according to the manufacturers own-board computer. Consult your owners manual, many times you can reset these yourself, they will give you a procedure. Sometimes they cant be reset without special tools, so consult your manual and check into that and there are some online resources for that information as well that might help you reset that. Either way you are going to want to record the mileage and the time when you changed your oil in some way, so that you know when its due to be changed again. I am going to go ahead and check the oil now. I am going to remove the dipstick. I am going to wipe it clean, then I am going to reinstall the dipstick. Remove it again and read the level. So, if we look right here, we can see that our oil level is right halfway between the low and the high mark, which is perfectly fine. We dont want it overfilled and we dont want it under filled, were right in the middle. So, periodically this is another thing that you will learn from changing your oil is how to check it, because you should be doing this probably every time you feel low, at least every other time, just to keep an eye on the level and that will let you know if you have a leak or if you have consumption problem before it becomes an issue, because that little oil light on your dash, by the time that comes on, its often too late. Thats how you check your oil level.