How to Check Oil Level 2006-12 Nissan Altima

Hey, everyone. It's Lynn down at 1A Auto. Today, I want to show you something on a 2010 Nissan Altima. It's going to be very simple and it's going to be checking your oil.

So, what we're going to do is we're going to come over here. There's an oil dip stick, it's nice and yellow, nice and bright. We're going to lift this right out. I'm going to use a rag and I'm going to lift it up. As you can see the oil looks like it's a little high. That's okay, we're going to clean it off. Once we have it clean, we're going to go ahead and re-insert it.

You never want to do this with the vehicle running. Dip it down for a second. I'm going to come back up. Now we can see the fluid, even though there's a little bit up here that's just what's caught in the dip stick. You can see that there's an air line. So basically what we want to do at this point is re-wipe it off. There's an "L" for low and there's a dot. There's an "H" for high and there's a dot.

So pretty much anywhere between here is good. You don't want it up above the H. That would be bad. If you happen to add oil or somebody adds oil and it's above that, you want to make sure that you drain a little bit of fluid out. What will happen is you'll get aeration in your oil system, and you could burn out your oil pump. So you want to keep it below that dot and above this dot.

Generally speaking, if you're at this dot, you should be clear to add about half a quart of oil. Should bring it up halfway. Or a full quart should bring it up almost to that dot. What I would do is just, if you're at that dot, just go half a quart. And try to keep it anywhere in between there. When the vehicle gets hot, the oil's going to expand and it's going to go up a little bit. So that'll get you right up in here.

So, as for now, the oil level looked great. If we did have to add to oil, we would want to make sure that knew the manufacturers specified oil type and viscosity rating. And here would be your oil cap. We're going to grab hold of that and we're going to turn it counterclockwise to the left. And lift that right up. Check the gasket. If it's dirty, clean it off. If it's cracked, you'd want to replace this.

Right here's where you'd add a little bit of oil. You can use a funnel, that would be optimal so you don't spill oil all over the place. And where we don't have to add oil, for the purposes of this video, I'm not going to show you adding it. Because we don't have too. I'll just make sure that I snug that up. You don't have to rephawn a Hercules, should be fine. We know the dipsticks down.

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