Technology & Cars

How To Check Engine Coolant Levels

Perhaps the most important thing to note, if you are checking your car's engine coolant or antifreeze level, is that the expansion bottle where it is contained is marked with a yellow lid. This yellow means something you often need to check. For more tips and instructions, watch this video. Enlarge

How To Check Engine Coolant Levels

Perhaps the most important thing to note, if you are checking your car's engine coolant or antifreeze level, is that the expansion bottle where it is contained is marked with a yellow lid. This yellow means something you often need to check. For more tips and instructions, watch this video.

Right, I'm now going to show you how to check your engine coolant level. We start by looking to the expansion bottle which is right here. This is marked with a yellow cap which means that that's something you should be checking and topping up.

So remove the cap and look inside. There can be some coolant in there. We check by looking on the side of the bottle, to see there's a minimum line and a maximum line.

If it's somewhere in between those, it means it needs topping up. Try not to exceed the maximum line like too much. So if we find that it is low, we then look around the vehicle, around the cooling system to see if can see any visible signs of any leaks.

And these pair of hoses, so we check on the hoses, checking around the system making sure we can't see any visible signs of any leaks anywhere. All appears okay. We check the radiator to what extent we can with it in place and this appears without any visible leaks there at all.

There are no puddles, underneath the vehicle, of water which is normally with antifreeze, it will be coloured water. It will be either blue or pink. This vehicle is actually fitted with pink antifreeze which is quite easy to see.

Again, the black areas around the cooling system, if there is a leak, you're quite to see a pink residue around these. We can see here, there is no pink residue so that would indicate to us, there is no leak in that part of the floor. And so with the radiator, parts of the radiator you can see, you'll see if there is a pink residue on the radiator.

So now, we've established that the level is low, so we now need to add fluid to top that up, which we do with an antifreeze mix. It's a 50-50 mix that's 50% water and 50% antifreeze. If you're unsure about that for your vehicle, consult your main dealer.

So we top the fluid up like so until we get to our desired level. Once at desired level, we will replace the cap firmly, run the vehicle for a few moments just until it starts to get warm and circulates the water, then check the level again. It's always wise to check the level the next day because once it cools down, sometimes you'll find the water level will drop and just obviously replace and top that up to a normal level again. .