How to Change Engine Oil 2005-09 Chevy Equinox

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In this video we're going to be working with our 2008 Chevrolet Equinox 3.4 liter V6. We're going to show you how to change the engine's oil and filter, which should be done at the manufacturer's specified intervals. If you like this video, please click Subscribe. We have a ton more information on this car, as well as many other makes and models. If you ever need parts for your vehicle, you can follow the link down in the description over to 1AAuto.com. Here are the items you'll need for this repair.

Open your hood. Remove the hood prop from its retainer and place it into its slot under the hood. Locate the fill cap which is down here at the front of the motor. We'll unscrew that, place it somewhere clean and dry. I like to place them by the hood latch. That way if you were to go to close the hood without putting your oil cap on, you would notice it while closing the hood. Remember to do that because it's a very important step that does get forgotten pretty frequently.

Raise and support your vehicle. We're doing this on a lift to make it easier to show you what's going on, but it's easy to do this job in your driveway or garage with a jack and jack stands. Once you get under your vehicle you'll find the oil filter here, right at the front of the motor over on the passenger side. It’s nice and easy to get to. That's going to be great. There's nothing to drain down on and make a mess. Behind that is our oil pan with our 13 millimeter drain plug here at the back. We'll remove that with a socket and ratchet. Make sure you have a drain pan underneath before removing the plug. That's a great example of why we show you guys how to tighten these with a torque wrench. While a lot of the guys who have been doing this for a long time can do it by feel, it's common for people working on their car for the first time or inexperienced people to tighten that drain plug down way tighter than it needs to be, which can damage the pan or the plug, especially in an aluminum one like this. Make sure you place the drain plug somewhere clean and dry while we wait for our oil to drain.

Reinstall your drain plug. Wipe off any extra oil underneath there so you know if there's a leak. If you're not sure how much to tighten the drain plug for the oil pan, just go ahead and tighten it to 18 foot-pounds.

Using the strap wrench secure to the oil filter, loosen it up. Make sure you have your drain bucket underneath there before you get it all the way off. Once it goes a couple of turns you should be able to remove it the rest of the way by hand. We'll let it drain down there a little bit before we finish removing it so we don't get covered in oil. Finish removing your oil filter. Make sure that the gasket is here on the filter and not still stuck up to this face here, because if it's stuck on here and you put your new oil filter on, it's going to leak really bad. You're going to waste a lot of oil and make a big mess trying to correct it.

With some clean oil on your finger go ahead and lubricate the gasket for your new oil filter. Reinstall it onto the filter spindle. Get it as tight as you can by hand. There's no need to put the strap wrench or anything else on there to get it tight – just tight as you can by hand. Make sure it's not leaking once we fill it with oil and start the vehicle.

Place a funnel into the oil fill where we removed our cap earlier. Fill the motor with four and a half quarts of your preferred 5W-30 motor oil. On the back of the bottle you'll notice that there's this clear strip, which obviously you can see. Our oil is inside of there. That's our oil level. All the way full with the bottle held flat you'll see it sits just about at the top of this, which is approximately 1,000 milliliters. In reality, I think it's 946, but it's close enough that if you want to do half a quart, to make it easier you can just go right to this 500 line. We'll pour a little bit, place our bottle on a flat surface, check, pour a little more, place it on a flat surface and check until we get down to this 500 line. Then we'll check the actual oil level inside of our motor. Pour a little in, hold our bottle flat. That was about 300 milliliters so we need about 200 more. It doesn't take much to pour out half of this bottle. Being just a little over is acceptable.

Remove your funnel. I like to put a paper towel under there to keep it from leaking on the engine in the car when I move it. Reinstall the cap. These are one of those quarter-turn ones. They don't thread in, so you might have to spin it a little to find that tab.

When you first start your vehicle there's this little red oil light you'll see pop up over in this corner. That's to let us know that there's no oil pressure in the vehicle. As opposed to having a gauge it just has a light that lets you know that there's now no pressure. That may turn on when we first start our vehicle. Once it shuts off you'll know that we've circulated oil fully through the system. There it goes. Let it run another couple of seconds, and now we're good to check your oil level.

Remove your dipstick. Wipe it off. Put it right back in the dipstick tube all the way. Remove it and check your level. These hash marks here and here at this hole down to this hole indicate one quart of oil in the pan. Ours is right up at the top of those hash marks so we have exactly four and a half quarts in our motor. If yours is down inside of the hash marks, this middle hole indicates about a half a quart, so you can gauge how much you need to add based off of that.

To reset your oil change reminder light that pops up in your little information center here turn the key to the run position which is as far as it can go without starting it. Fully depress and release your gas pedal three times. Turn your vehicle back on and your oil reminder is gone.

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