How to Check Fluids 2006-10 Ford Explorer

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In this video, we're going to be working with our 2006 Ford Explorer 4.6 liter V8. We're going to show you how to inspect the level and conditions of all your critical under hood fluids. This includes our brake fluid, our engine oil, power steering fluid, coolant and our washer fluid. Making sure that these fluids are all in good condition and up at the top levels at all times ensure the health and longevity of your engine and the components that use these fluids. This particular vehicle is a little tricky to check the transmission fluid on, so we're going to make a separate video to show you how to do that. If you like this video, please click Subscribe. We have a ton more information on this truck 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.

Your brake fluid reservoir is located on the top of the brake master cylinder, up against the firewall on the driver's side. To inspect this, the easiest thing to do is remove the cap and place a flashlight over the opening, so you can see where the fluid level is. Ours is between the minimum and maximum line which is acceptable because this vehicle is equipped with disc brakes, front and rear, and as that piston on your brakes goes in to compress the pads and those pads wear in, that piston sits farther and farther out of the caliper to pick up that space and make sure that your brakes grab as soon as you touch the pedal. Moving that piston forward requires fluid to stay down there and keep the piston in that position which is why this level goes down as your brake pads wear out. Only top off your brake fluid after compressing all 4 calipers on the vehicle if you were to do a 4-wheel brake job.

The other thing we want to inspect here is the condition of the fluid. It should look no darker or murkier than a green tea. Ours is very dark and milky which means we're going to want to flush all of this fluid out of our system and replace it with fresh brake fluid.

The engine oil dipstick is located here, just to the side of our brake fluid reservoir. We remove that. Wipe it off with a clean rag. Your fluid level should be between these two lines here. The top of the hash mark shows that our engine oil is full. At the bottom of the hash marks shows that we're down one quart of oil, so add fluid as necessary until it gets up to the top here. Ours is nice and new, so it's almost clear. You can't really see it on the stick aside from the reflection of the light when I move it a little there. Yours could be black, and that's perfectly acceptable. Oil becomes dirty pretty quickly in most engines, especially where ours has higher mileage. As long as you're monitoring your mileage and keeping those changes on time and that fluid up top in the meantime, having a dark oil is perfectly acceptable. If your oil level is low, simply remove the cap here on the front passenger side of the engine and fill it with Ford-approved 5-20 motor oil until the level is back up top.

Your power steering fluid reservoir is located just behind the radiator here which is still more on the driver side of the engine bay, moving toward the motor mount. Unscrew the cap, and just like we did with our brake fluid, we'll place a flashlight on the top. Now, our power steering fluid should be between these two lines here. Ours is a little low, so we'll top it off with the appropriate fluid. This vehicle takes an automatic transmission fluid, not the clear type power steering fluid. This one is very clearly red and you want to inspect that that's a nice bright translucent red color and that it doesn't look dark or burnt in any way or smell burnt. This means that parts of our power steering system would be failing. We want to find out what those parts are, causing fluid to become burnt and contaminated, replace them, flush out the system and fill it with nice clean fluid.

Our radiator cap and our radiator overflow are located here at the front of the engine bay. Push down and turn the radiator cap two clicks and remove it. Always do this when the engine is cold. If you try to remove this radiator cap when the engine is hot, your radiator will be under pressure and it will spray hot fluid out of the top that could injure you or damage under-hood components.

Now, our fluid is actually low in this vehicle. We have a leak we haven't had a chance to look at yet. Normally, you would want to top this fluid off and inspect for a leak, but we're going to leave it alone for now because we know we have a problem to correct. The radiator cap then pushes on and turns two clicks until it locks down and into place. The overflow is checked by removing the cap and going to the fill line, which is located here by our washer fluid reservoir.

The washer fluid reservoir is located at the front passenger side of our engine bay. We'll simply remove the cap and fill it with washer fluid all the way to the top.

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