Created on: 2019-04-18
How to check and fill the transmission fluid in a Chevy Silveradoon 14, 15, 16, 17, 19, 19 Chevy Silverado
Hey, everyone. How you doing? Mike from 1A Auto. 2015 Chevy Silverado, pretty much the same as a GMC Sierra. We're going to talk about the transmission fluid and how do you check it. There's both a cold procedure, which is kind of a safety procedure, and a hot procedure, which is really how you should check the fluid.
Pop the hood on your Chevy Silverado. Hood release is right here in the middle under the steering column. Then as you're looking at the truck, just go slightly to the left here. There's a little tab that sticks up, just move it to the center of the truck and lift up.
Whenever we check the transmission fluid, you want to have the vehicle running. You can see it's idling here. Then you're going to come into your driver information center and by turning this knob, you go through the different menu items. You want to go to transmission temperature, transmission fluid temperature, and then check it when it's cold. You want it between 80 and 90 degrees Fahrenheit. You can see, we're up at 81 right now, so we'll go check the fluid.
Our transmission's between 80 and 90 degrees Fahrenheit. Again, this is the cold check and this is just to make sure that you have enough transmission fluid in your vehicle so that you can drive it around and heat up the transmission.
We pull our dipstick out, wipe it off, push it all the way back down in, and pull it out. Our fluid level's right here, and if we turn it over we can see we've got our cold marks here and our hot marks here. It was right in the cold marks.
We just want to drive around a little bit until our fluid temperature gets up to between 160 and 200 degrees Fahrenheit. Now you can see our temperature's up to 160, it's actually 170. You want it between 160 and 200. Then they tell you to kind of run it through the different reverse and drive, just a couple times, just to make through that the fluid's all spread out through the transmission. Now we'll pop the hood and check the fluid.
Everything's going to be warm, so just be careful. Pull the dipstick out. Wipe it off, and you can see there's my full hot marks. Put it back down in and then bring it out, and you can see that the fluid is right in between the hot, so it's perfect. One thing to note on this fluid though, see when I wipe it off, how dirty it is? You can see if I dip the dipstick into clean fluid and pull it out, you can see the fluid should be nice and red, not brown or gray. This vehicle's in need of a fluid service.
For these vehicles, use Dextron VI fluid. If you did need to add some just use a funnel and add a little bit at a time until you bring the level up to where you want it. Actually, this hot represents a pint, which is half a quart. It was halfway in between low and high, so if I added half a pint, which is basically an eighth of a quart, or a quarter of a quart, that should bring it up to the right level. But any time you add, if you do need add, make sure to put the dipstick back in, all the way in, and pull it out to check.
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