Engine oil check in 4 easy steps
Engine oil is a crucial thing to keep your engine maintained and work properly. Engine oil lubricates, cleans and cools your car's engine. If there's not enough engine oil in your motor, it can cause some serious damage. That means, you should check car engine oil at least once a month and preferably more often.
If your engine is burning oil or losing it through a slow leak, you'll want to know this as soon as possible so you can inspect the issue and address the issue promptly.
The amount of oil you need depends on the engine type, the amount of driving that you take, and your driving style. The engine oil should be checked at least every two weeks and especially before long trips. So how do you check your engine oil? Here are how to check your engine oil in four easy steps
I. Turn off your engine
Before you do to check car engine oil, it's better to run on your engine for two to five minutes until it reaches an idling rpm. Then, please turn off your engine as it reaches an idling rpm.
Let it sit for another thirty seconds to a minute. That will refill all the oil passages in the engine, and then letting it sit will let the excess oil drain off. Otherwise, the oil could be above the full mark after the vehicle sits overnight.
II. Open the engine hood
After turning off the engine, you need to open the engine hood. To do this, you need to find the hood release button. Normally it's in front of the driver's legs, both left or right position.
Sometimes, it'll be down over the driver's left foot, or it's inside the glove box in rare cases. Pull the hood release button to open until you hear some "clack" sounds from the engine hood.
Lift a little bit the front engine hood to reach the safety lever. There's a secondary latch to keep the hood from blowing open if you accidentally pull the handle while driving. You may have to look down in here and find the lever. Swipe up the safety lever to open the engine hood.
Open up the entire engine hood to chec car engine oil, then attach the hood safety lever to its position to see the engine room securely.
Read also:III. Locate the engine oil dipstick
The next step to check car engine oil is to locate the engine oil dipstick. The engine oil dipstick can be placed anywhere inside your engine room. Sometimes it is put in front of or on the left or right side of the engine.
Sometimes, they have a yellow-coloured handle, but sometimes they're just black or white. The most important thing, the dipstick is headed for the engine oil pan, and most of the handles have an "ENGINE OIL" mark on top of it.
IV. Checking engine oil
Before checking engine oil, you're going to need a rag or a paper towel, a napkin, or something to wipe off the dipstick. When you first pull it out, there's going to be splashed oil up here for the engine running and flinging the oil.
It would be best to have a clean dipstick before checking the right level and engine oil quality for a better and accurate engine oil check. Yes, for a common gasoline car engine, you may have two purposes when checking the engine oil. The engine oil level and the engine oil quality. Here's how you'll do
a. Check the engine oil level
When checking engine oil level, do this :- Pull out the dipstick, then wipe off the oil with a paper towel to clean the remaining oil.
- Reinsert the dipstick
- Pull out again and read the engine oil level
If you doubt the reading level, then wipe off the dipstick. Reinsert, and pull out again until you have clear oil level reading.
Here's how to read engine oil level :
Most engine oil dipsticks have two marks on their end tip. They can be holes mark, strips, or just L and F letters. The upper mark tent to maximum oil level, and the lower side tent to the minimum oil level.
Your car oil level should be somewhere between the two. If your oil level is below the bottom line, or if there isn't any oil on the dipstick at all, you should immediately top up your engine oil. See the example of the engine oil level below.
- The green area means that your engine oil level is in the right level.
- The red area means that your engine oil level is low. You need to add some engine oil.
- The yellow area means that your engine oil level is overfill. you need to dump a little bit of engine oil.
b. Check the engine oil quality
Aside from checking the engine oil level, at the same time, we can check the engine oil quality. But, the engine oil quality checking is better only for gasoline car engines. From my experiences, the diesel engine oil will turn black faster than the gasoline engine, so it will be hard to determine the engine oil quality. See the picture below to help you determine the engine oil quality
- Good engine oil quality (new oil )
- Fair engine oil quality (oxidation build-up)
- Low engine oil quality (time to change oil)
- Bad engine oil quality (sludge)