How to Check Your Car's Automatic Transmission Fluid

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By Sidhartha
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Check Your Car's Automatic Transmission Fluid

Your car's transmission fluid is what keeps it shifting through gears smoothly. You generally don't need to change your transmission fluid as much as your car's oil however knowing the status of that fluid level is and if its dirty or clean, is almost as important as knowing when you should change your oil.

Difficulty: Easy

Instructions

Step 1

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Unlike checking your cars engine oil, your transmission fluid can be checked either while the car is on or off. Make sure you park your car on a level plain and locate the dipstick for the transmission fluid. FYI if you have a manual transmission it will not have a dipstick it will only have a fill plug. Which means you will have to manually unscrew it to do a flush and you can't check the level.
Step 2

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From there clean off the tip of the dipstick with a clean rag and re insert back into dipstick hole.
Step 3

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Once you remove the dipstick you can determine if the level of transmission fluid is appropriate or not. On most dipsticks the bottom represents where the oil should be when the car is cold and the the top represents where the oil should be when the car is hot.
Step 4

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Determining the color of the oil will also tell you if the oil needs changing or not. The picture to your left has three oil stains that represent three states of oil health. Click to enlarge.
Step 5

Once you have determined what needs to be done take care of it asap. The longer you wait the more problems you can potentially create. In addition something as cheap and as small as adding oil is a lot cheaper than replacing a whole transmission.

How to Check Your Car's Automatic Transmission Fluid

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