How to Check & Add Radiator Fluid

Video Transcript

"Hi, I'm Richard Goms. We're in Murray, Utah. We're talking about basic car care. Right now I'm going to show you how to check and fill the radiator fluid is actually referred to as antifreeze or coolant. What we have to do first is we need to check the radiator to see if the radiator is full of fluid. And the way we do this first of all we have to wait till the radiator is cool. And this is the top to the radiator on this car, nice and cool. And what what we do is we push down and twist on the radiator cap until it comes off. Then we look down inside the radiator and we see that oh, it's a little bit low. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to take some antifreeze and put it in. Now there's basically two different kinds of antifreeze. There's a green antifreeze and an orange antifreeze. There's also this kind of antifreeze which can be used, it can be mixed with either kind of antifreeze. You need to check your owner’s manual, make sure you're getting the right antifreeze and coolant for your car. This has been diluted 50/50 with water so that you don't have to premix the antifreeze ahead of time. Now this doesn't need a lot of antifreeze so we're just going to pour a little bit in here. And then we let it settle a little bit because it'll it'll go down and bubble a little bit. It looks like it needs a little bit more so I'll add a little more to it. O.k. now that we've filled the radiator with fluid we can pull out the funnel and put the lid back on. And now we're ready to fill the, the reservoir. This reservoir over here is attached to the top of the radiator by a hose. And it operates by the cap which you need to keep a new cap, a good cap on there at all times so it can control the pressure of the the antifreeze in the line. As the pressure increases in the radiator and it gets hotter the valve will open, the cap will open and allow fluid, excess fluid to come threw the hose over here to the reservoir and it also allows fluid to go the other way when the pressure drops. So this is the reservoir and we need to make sure it's kept up to a specific level. There are two measurements on this bottle, one is a low measurement and one is a high measurement for on on the outside of the bottle that you can see threw and see how much antifreeze you have in the bottle. What we're going to do is put the funnel in the bottle and then we're going to start filling it. Now we need to watch the lines on the bottle and make sure we don't over fill it. So now we've finished filling the reservoir about half way up the bottle. And until it gets hot. It will. When it gets hot it will go all the way up to the top line."