How To Properly Check Your Oil (3 ways)

One of the most important things to do on your car is to check your fluids. This is especially important for cars that we store! However with the mix of old and new cars out there, even something as simple as checking your oil can be annoying and confusing. Here are 3 of the most common setups that we run across to measure how much oil is in your engine…

Old School-The Dipstick
The tried and true way (that is also disappearing from the engine bays of many cars) is the old school dipstick. Simply let your car sit for 10-15 minutes after running on a level surface. If the oil goes up to the lines, dots or hash marks at the bottom of the stick, then you are good. A word of caution though… many new cars will appear to have a dipstick but then when pulled out, it will just be a plug. That usually means they want you to check it through the dash cluster (see below).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4m32cfN0Sng

Dash Computer
More and more cars (especially the Germans) are using oil level sensors in the engine to measure the oil level. This has to be checked through the dash cluster computer or multimedia system. Every car is different but generally once you find the menu in which to check this, you run the car for several minutes, shut it down, wait a few minutes then check.

Air Cooled Cars
While a thing of the past due to emissions standards, there are still a fair amount of air cooled cars (and motorcycles) on the road. Older Porsche’s and VW’s are mostly air cooled and are quite collectible so we see a lot of them. Since these cars are older, they all have dips ticks but the trick here is that the cars have to be run to operating temp before the oil can be checked.

There you have it, ensuring that your car has the proper amount of oil in it will keep it running great!