How To Change EVERY Fluid on Your Car in 30 Minutes!

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Video Summary
AI GeneratedThis guide demonstrates how to perform essential vehicle fluid maintenance at home to save money and extend a car's lifespan. By replacing engine oil, transmission fluid, coolant, brake fluid, and power steering fluid manually, owners can avoid expensive professional services and prevent premature component failure through regular, proactive care.
There are at least six fluids keeping your car alive right now. And some of them,
if you miss changing them on time, you could be looking at thousands of dollars in repair bills.
Now, a lot of people pay hundreds and hundreds of dollars to have the mechanic change these fluids
for them. But today I'm going to be showing you how to change every single fluid in your car
easily from the super simple ones to the ones the mechanic wants you to think you can't do yourself.
I'm Josh, and I've been working on cars since I was 16 to avoid paying the shop. Now,
we started this channel so I could share my experience so that you could learn how to work
on your own cars and save money as well. Now, the first fluid we're all familiar with,
but is probably the most important fluid in your engine, and that is your engine oil and
an oil filter. This is basically the blood of your engine. This is what keeps all of your parts
working smoothly and not deteriorating internally. Now, I remember the good old days,
you can go get an oil change for 30 bucks down at your local garage. Now, these days,
you're going to pay more than $100 for a synthetic oil change at a shop.
I went and picked up some good synthetic oil and a really good filter for around 35 bucks. Now,
a lot of you already know how to change your own oil, but there is a tip I want to share with you
later on on the oil filter that's going to save you a bunch of time. So, when you jack your car
up or put it up on ramps, obviously, just be careful that you have chocks under the wheels,
your e-brakes set. Now, I usually crack the filler cap just so that the oil comes out a
little faster down below. So, on this Honda, there's a shield underneath to protect the oil
cap. You just have to remove that. Some cars have it, some cars don't. Looks like there's
pretty significant oil leak happening somewhere up above this spot, but I'm going to have to
deal with that another day. 17 millimeter is my drain bolt. I'm going to crack that loose,
but before I take it out, obviously, I need a drain pan. I like to put a magnet on the bolt
as I'm undoing it. That way, I don't drop it into the oil pan and have it block the hole in my oil
pan like that. Well, that didn't work exactly like I planned, but at least if you have the
magnet, you can quickly grab it out of the drain pan. It's super windy today, so the oil dripping
from the engine is blowing my face. So, I'm just going to temporarily oil plug back in,
just hand tight. Now, there's 101 ways to remove oil filters. You can get tools that are often
built kind of like this. I don't like them because there's never room for the handle.
I've had this little tool forever. I really like this one. It's kind of a claw. You can slam a
screwdriver straight through the filter and use that. I've done that before. You get on TikTok,
and there's all kinds of dumb ways to take off filters. I'm just going to get this, tighten it
now, begins to turn it. Okay, while I'm waiting for that to drip, I'm going to do a little
pre-fill on my oil filter. Now, this is something slightly controversial, and people say you don't
need to do it. You do need to do it, but I've always, if I can, if the filter orientation is
up on the engine, I'll fill it half or three quarters with oil so that there's not an air
gap in the oil circulation process. Also, I usually spill a little bit, which allows me to
oil my rubber gasket. All right, we're done dripping. So, right before I put this new filter
on, I just am looking up here on this surface to make sure that there's no grit or rocks or dirt,
and also that the O-ring from the last filter didn't get stuck there. And I definitely don't
want to use the tool to tighten this on because it'll over-tighten it. So, I usually just do
hand-tight as tight as I possibly can, and then over time, it actually tightens up a little more.
I temporarily put this drain plug back in because the oil was blowing in our faces,
but I'm just going to pop it out now. Oh, there's a little more oil coming out. Nice.
So, before I put this back on to the proper tightness, I just want to make sure it's nice
and clean. You just want to inspect that washer. If it looks nice and clean and smooth, then you're
good to go. A lot of mechanics will tell you to just replace this washer every single time you do
an oil change. But for me, as long as they're in good shape and they're not leaking afterwards,
I just reuse the old one. You can kind of do it by feel, nice and snug. But if you have any doubts
about how tight it should be, you'll want to get a torque wrench, which will allow you to set it to
the torque specifications that you can usually find online. Because if you strip this out,
big problem, right? Because now, all of a sudden, you can't seal the oil hole at the bottom of the
engine and it's a huge headache to fix. We definitely don't want to over tighten that
thing. Obviously, you don't want to under tighten it either because if it falls out,
then you blow up your engine. 29 foot pounds is what this engine calls for.
So, I'm just going to wipe any excess drips around the drain plug and on the filter,
so I can watch it after the engine's been running and warmed up, I can check for leaks.
Also going to leave this access panel off until I confirm that it's not leaking.
I'm just going to put the old oil back in the jug so I can take it back to the
recycling center. Now, when it comes to oil change intervals, as I've said in my other videos,
I always use synthetic oil and I change it every 5,000 miles. Now, the oil filter is a little
different. Going back to that tip I mentioned before, I will actually go 10,000 or 15,000
miles on a high quality oil filter. You see, this one claims 20,000 mile interval changes.
And so, what I'll do is I'll change that filter every three oil changes. Now, there's oil that
claims to go 20,000 miles as well. I feel a bit differently about that. I'm always going to change
the oil at 5,000. There's a lot of controversy around this idea, but I've done a lot of research
on the technology they're using in these new filters. And the data is clear to me that with
fresh oil every 5,000 miles, this is more than enough to handle it. Okay, time for new oil.
This is a good time to mentally check that you've actually tightened the drain plug and put a new
filter on so you're not dumping this onto the ground. And this engine takes about four and a
half quarts. So, I'll probably put four and a little bit and then start checking it. So,
this oil is 0W-20, which is what this engine calls for, what the manual calls for. And then,
I also don't really mess around with any oils with a bunch of additives, high mileage this or
high efficiency oils or any of that stuff. You just get straight up synthetic oil. It's usually
cheaper and it doesn't have all the funky additives that you can buy separately anyway.
So, there's plenty of oil in the engine to run it for a minute and drive off ramps.
I just tend to prefer to slowly fill to get up to the level rather than find out I overfilled it
and have to drain out some from the bottom. It's such a hassle. So, I just do little bits
at a time. All right. So, there I am right at the top mark, which is right where I want to be.
All right. So, I'm just going to start the car up and let it fully warm up so that I can check
for leaks underneath. All right. Now that the car is warmed up, I can take a look at the
drain plug and oil filter and there's no drips, nice and dry. So, I can button up this plate
here and I'll be done. This is what your oil is supposed to look like fresh and new. This is what
oil looks like when it's been broken down chemically and got a bunch of junk flowing
through it. If you want your car to last 200,000 miles, you do not want this inside of your engine.
Now, changing this next fluid really intimidates a lot of people and that's why most people feel
like they have to take it into a mechanic. I know a lot of people that will only go to dealerships
to change this fluid and that is the transmission. Now, a couple of things with transmission fluid,
a lot of people have been led to believe that you have to get your transmission flushed with
a fancy machine that thoroughly flushes it out, which I personally don't think is a good idea.
I have a much better way of doing it. The other thing with transmission fluid is a lot of people
ignore it for some reason, potentially because the intervals for transmission fluid changes are much
larger than oil or maybe because some transmissions claim to be lifetime fluid that don't
have to be changed. For whatever reason, a lot of people just ignore their transmissions and that's
where you get really expensive problems because once the fluid becomes so dirty that it's causing
damage to the transmission, you're looking at thousands of dollars in repairs or often
a transmission replacement, which makes the whole car not even worth anything.
So, how much does this job cost? Well, depending on if you take it to a local mechanic or worse,
a dealership, they're probably going to do a transmission flush and that can easily cost you
three to five hundred dollars. And again, that's a flush, which I don't really believe in. If you
want to know all the reasons why, you can check out this video that we made on just that subject.
But I'm going to show you how to do a fluid exchange. You're just taking
part of the fluid out of the pan and replacing it with new fluid and you're doing it more often.
There are a lot of benefits to that, again, in that video. So, that's what we're going to do
today. And because of that, it's something you can do yourself and you're only paying
for the cost of the transmission fluid. In this case, I got a gallon for about 30 bucks.
So, first thing I want to do is get the car up to operating temperature and on level ground
because I want to check the transmission fluid level before I drop any fluid out.
All right, so the car is up to operating temperature and so now I can check the
transmission fluid level. Now, really important thing here, on this Honda, it's meant to have
the transmission fluid level checked when the engine is off. A lot of cars, you're meant to
have the engine running in neutral or park. You just want to make sure you know what the procedure
is with your vehicle. The level is between the hot and cold mark and so I know that the level
is good now. And that's important because I'm only going to put back in exactly the amount that
I take out. Just as a note, a lot of cars these days don't even have dipsticks for the transmission
anymore. You're meant to check with different plugs in the side of the transmission or worse,
they're not even that serviceable. So, you just have to look up what your car has.
Again, we got to remove panel to get to the drain on the transmission. So, reiterating what I said
before, the side of the engine that has the belts on it, alternator power steering, that's the engine
side. On the other side is your transaxle and that's where you're going to look for a drain bolt.
So, on this car, it's this one here which is really nice because you can just put a
3-eighths ratchet right into the drain bolt. I'm just going to crack it loose at first. Oh,
she's tight. Going to need some more leverage. Going with the half-inch drive. There we go.
Holy smokes. I wonder when this was done last. If I didn't mention it before, don't do this when the
engine is hot because you'll burn yourself. But it's nice to have it a little bit warm. The fluid
just flows a little better. I'm going to do the old magnet trick again. See if I can do it properly
this time. There we go. So, you can see this is... Oh, right in my face. So, you can see the color
is pretty dark. Fresh fluid is that bright red. This is closer to black. So, you know it's starting
to get dirty. Now, as I mentioned before, there are car manufacturers and different companies
claiming lifetime transmission fluid like you don't ever have to replace it which I think is
completely bogus. I think it's a way for them to make money on transmission repairs and selling
new cars. Any lubrication fluid is going to break down over time. There's no way you can just let
it go forever. I think it's a big bummer that a lot of manufacturers make it really difficult
for people to change their own transmission fluid. If you can though, it's my rule of thumb.
You change the transmission fluid the way we're doing here every 30,000 miles or every five oil
changes. Again, you're not replacing the entire capacity of the transmission. You're just doing
a third but you're constantly refreshing it. So, while we're waiting for the transmission to fully
drain, I'm just going to clean off the drain plug really well. Most transmission drain plugs have a
magnet on the end. So, you'll get this fuzzy metal residue stuck to it which is how it's designed to
be. You can actually get quite a bit of that on and it's not a problem. It's when you start getting
chunks of metal on there like little shards of metal. That's when you got to start wondering
what's going on in your transmission. Then also, I'm cleaning off the little washer just like the
oil change making sure that's totally free of debris. All right, now that I got that clean
and we're done draining, I'm going to now dump all this transmission fluid into my favorite
fluid change tool and that's my jug with really clear measurements on it. So, I can measure exactly
how much transmission fluid I took out and it's also got a handy little pour spout makes it good.
Okay, so I can see that I took out almost exactly two quarts of transmission fluid. So, that's how
much I'm going to put back in. Okay, so before I put the plug back in, I'm just going to make sure
this is nice and clean. No debris causing leaks. So, thankfully this car has the dipstick which is
actually where we're going to fill our transmission fluid. So, I'm going to use a nice long funnel
into the dipstick hole. All right, because it's so stinking windy, I'm actually going to double
up my funnels just so I don't have to pour from so high up. Now, I'm sure many of you are asking
why aren't you changing the transmission filter and I definitely do think you should do that.
Maybe more on the schedule of the manufacturer's service date. So, maybe 60,000, 80,000, 100,000.
Usually involves removing the transmission pan and then changing the filter there. But again,
I don't think that's something you have to do every single fluid change. So, two quarts are left
in my gallon. So, I am full up. All right, so I've got the car running now and I'm going to run
through the gears. I'm just going to slowly go down through the gears, let it sit 5, 10 seconds
in each gear just cycling that new fluid in. And additionally, I'm going to let the car run,
get back up to operating temperature so that I can check that level just to be sure. Okay,
now that the engine's all warmed up, I'm going to check my level. Again, this car requires the
car to be off and my level is good. Okay, now I'm just going to check for drips at the drain bolt,
make sure that I'm not leaking and we are all dry. Now, I can button it up and put this cover
plate back on. So, here's the fresh transmission fluid. Here's what came out of the transmission.
As you can see, it was definitely time to be changed. Now, this next fluid change,
a lot of people like to cut corners on, which is a terrible idea because when it comes to your
engine coolant, it's obviously very important. Some of the corners they like to cut are things
like using the garden hose to fill up the radiator and just use water in their coolant system. Now,
if you were to take your car into a mechanic to get your coolant flushed,
you'd be looking at $200, $300, $350 to get it done. Whereas, if you do it yourself and buy
the coolant, you're looking at $50, $60 worth of coolant and distilled water.
First thing I'm going to do is get the old coolant out. You can drain the radiator,
it's slow and it doesn't get as much coolant out. So, I like to pop off the lower radiator hose
if possible. So, here's the lower radiator hose and I'm going to pop that clamp off.
Sometimes these hoses are really stuck. The trick I like to do is I gently grab it. I'm
not crushing it, but I'm just grabbing the rubber part and I'm going to twist it back
and forth and break that sticky seal. There we go. Get my drain pan under here.
All right, I'm just going to wait for this to fully drain. There's quite a bit of fluid,
I think, behind the thermostat. If you want to do this a lot faster, you can get up there
and pull out the thermostat. I don't like to get involved with that because then I've got to get
new gaskets and everything like that. So, I'm just going to let this sit until it stops dripping.
Now that it's undraining, I'm going to put the lower radiator hose back on and we're
going to fill it back up. Okay, so we're essentially going to refill and drain this
whole system two or three times in order to get out as much of the old bad coolant as possible.
And to do that, I don't want to use coolant because that's expensive. So, I'm going to use
water and I'm using distilled water because this doesn't have the hard minerals that like tap
water is going to have. It gums up your system. So, now I've got the car running and I'm just
going to get it fully up to operating temperature, which is going to allow the thermostat to open and
really recirculate that water that I just put in. I'm also going to turn on the heat, which is going
to open the heater core and again, get all the coolant that's trapped in the heater core back
into circulation. I'm just going to pop this radiator hose off again. Nice, already it's
clearer. All right, now we just put that hose back on and do it again. All right, now for our third
drain, see how it looks. Sweet, that is looking very clear. Because the coolant in this car wasn't
actually really bad, we were able to get it starting to look clear in just three cycles of
distilled water. But if your car has really dirty coolant, then you may need to do this two or three
more times. You just want to do it until it starts coming out clear. So, now I'm just going to hook
this hose back up for the last time, clamp her on. So, I know that there's half a gallon of distilled
water in there and I need to get a 50-50 mix of water and coolant because I got the concentrate.
You can buy this stuff in 50-50 mix, but then you would be too thin with the water in the engine.
So, I'm going to put three quarters of a gallon of coolant in and then I'm going to add a little
more water. So, it's three quarters of a gallon water and three quarters of a gallon coolant.
I learned this from the what no way guy. I always wanted to try it. You don't need a tool, you just
use the cap. No way. So, I'm just going to use the measurements on the side of the can. I'm going to
take it down to three quarts, which is three quarters of a gallon. Now, if you're wondering
how I knew that the whole capacity of this system was a gallon and a half, well,
I looked it up online. Okay. So, I've used three quarters of the gallon and I can see that it's
almost full and I still need to put in a quarter gallon of this to get to that 50-50 mix. So,
I'm going to top it off with this and then I might need to run the car a little bit, get the bubbles
out in order to put more. All right. So, the car is cooled down and as you can see the coolant level
is back down. All the air is at the top and now I can put in my quarter gallon like I wanted to.
Boom. Perfect. All right. So, this is the old one. This is the new. This is definitely not the worst
I've ever seen. You can tell though it's starting to go dark and the darker it gets, the less
effective it is. All right. We've got three fluids left and although a lot of people are intimidated
by changing your transmission fluid and your coolant, I find that one of the ones coming up
is actually the most involved and most difficult, which is why I'm leaving it till the end. So,
for now, we're going to do one that is very important and has a lot to do with your safety
and that is brake fluid because it's a bad deal when your brakes don't work, obviously, but also
a lot of people don't realize when this stuff goes bad, it destroys expensive elements of your brake
system. If you take your car into the shop to get a brake fluid flush, you're probably going to pay
$100 to $200 to get it done. It's really not that hard to do yourself. In fact, if you use my method,
you can even do it by yourself without an assistant and this costs $10. So, first thing I'm going to
do is take a look at this master cylinder, which is where you fill the brake fluid. Max lines here,
it's a little low, which makes me think brake pads might be getting a little worn out. So,
I can see the fluid in here. It's pretty low and very dirty. So, I'm going to use the old
turkey baster and I'm going to get everything out of the reservoir. Oh, yeah. Nasty. Stuff is
supposed to be clear. Now, brake fluid actually attracts water, which is one of the reasons why
it's so bad when it goes old. It absorbs water into your brake lines, which causes them to rot
on the inside and water does not compress the same way that brake fluid does. So, you'll get
squishy brakes and all kinds of bad stuff. Generally, you want to change brake fluid every 30,000 miles
or so. I'd say most people don't. So, I'm just going to get as much as I can out of the reservoir
and then I'm going to fill it with fresh fluid. Brake fluid will strip your paint, so you definitely
want to keep it off exterior paint of your car. That's about all I can get with the turkey baster.
So, I'm going to completely top off this reservoir with clean brake fluid. Look how clear that's
supposed to be when it's new. I'm bringing it right up to the top and I'm actually going to now
suck this out because it's mixed with any remaining old fluid down in the corners of the
reservoir and it just saves time not having to push old dirty fluid through all the lines. If
you can start with fresh fluid in the reservoir, it really helps. See, it's still a little bit
yellow, so there's old gross fluid mixing in there. Okay, I'm going to top this completely full again with
clean fluid. Okay, so now it's time to start bleeding the brakes and we're going to start on the
farthest away point from the ABS module. That's going to be back left corner. Now, ideally, you do
this without getting any air in the system. That's why we've totally filled this up. We're not actually
bleeding air out of the brake lines. We're just cycling fresh fluid all the way through. So, we're
coming back here. I'm going to pull the cap off the bleeder nipple. It's a little rubber cap. You just
get your fingernail under it. Make sure it cracks loose. It does. I'm not going to loosen it yet.
Now, what I'm going to do is I'm going to put some clear plastic tubing on it. This quarter inch
plastic tubing. Oh, classic. I do this every time. You want to put your wrench on first.
Should be nice and snug. You don't want it falling off and getting a mess everywhere.
So, now I'm going to route this hose out into my bottle, but the secret of this is I want to go high
so that any bubbles that do come out rise in the line and don't get sucked back into the caliper.
This is what I do if I'm bleeding air out of brake lines. Again, we're not trying to do that
right now, but I definitely want to make sure no air goes into the system. So, now I can fully crack
my bleeder loose. All right. So, here comes the fluid. Doesn't look as dirty as what was in the
reservoir, but you can see the bubbles rising up, which is exactly what we want. Now, I'm going to
go push on the pedal. So, this is just normal brake bleeding right now. If you have two people,
that's the classic way to do it. But doing it this way, you can actually do it by yourself.
Main thing, as always, do not let the reservoir go dry and suck in air. Otherwise, if air gets
in there, then this thing becomes way more complicated. So, you want to check that often.
So, I already emptied half of the reservoir. So, I'm just going to top it off all the way up to
the neck. You can actually see the fluid start turning green now. So, we're moving old fluid
from the reservoir end out of the caliper. And because it's the farthest back away from
the master cylinder, this one will take the longest. All right. So, now the fluid is coming
out clear. So, I can close my bleeder and now I can pull my line off. Try not to get it in my face.
I'm just going to give it a little spray off with brake clean, make sure no fluid is getting on my
brake rotors. And let's not forget the rubber cap. That was the toughest one. Now, we're going to the
other side. All right. I'm done doing all four corners. I'm just going to clean up this master
cylinder a little bit. And you want to set your final level when this screen is in. A low brake
fluid usually means the brake pads are getting lower. I'm going to leave it about half so that
when the brakes get replaced, it doesn't overflow the master cylinder. But it's between minimum and
maximum. All right. New brake fluid, old. And that stuff looks really gnarly. And like I said,
it absorbs water. So, I'll bet there's a ton of water in this, which is what kills the brakes.
And now for the fluid change that is probably my least favorite, but it's still one that anyone
can do. And that is power steering fluid. Now, this 2014 Honda actually doesn't have power
steering with hydraulic fluid. It's an electric assist. A lot of cars are like that nowadays.
Luckily, we got this Toyota Tacoma that does have power steering fluid. The thing with power
steering fluid is it's in a very high pressure system. So, if you get contaminants in that system
or the fluid starts breaking down, it can really damage things like power steering pumps, rack and
pinions. And those are very expensive to replace. Now, if you were to take your car in to get your
power steering fluid flushed, you'd be paying $200-$300. Whereas if you do it yourself,
it's like $25-$30 of fluid. Okay. So, this is the power steering pump reservoir. And I want to empty
that of any fluid that's in there. Look how dark that is. Again, this is supposed to be a clear
fluid. Unfortunately, that's all I can get out because of the limited size of the hole. So,
the rest I'm going to have to let come out this hose. Okay. I'm going to try to avoid
getting fluid everywhere. But this is the return line. So, this is the low pressure
line of the power steering fluid. And that's what we need to take off. Probably going to lose a
bunch of fluid when we do that. That stuff is nasty. I'm just trying to get as much fluid out
of here as I can. I'm actually going to pour some air in there with my turkey baster. Okay. So,
what I need to do is block the return line port on my reservoir so that nothing escapes as I fill
it with fresh fluid. If you have a cap that fits, great. Otherwise, I'll use tubing and then
I'll fold it over, make a plug with a zip tie. So, I just got an assortment of tubing. I got
quarter-inch inner diameter, three-eighths, and half to do all this. Now, what I want to do is I
want to intercept the fluid coming back into the pump, which is going to be old fluid. So,
I'm going to use this, shove it in there. This is just an extension of the return line that I can
run into a drain pan. However you lift up, you just want to make sure that you can turn the
wheels without hitting your jack stands or jack or whatever. Now that the front wheels are off
the ground safely, I'm going to fill up this reservoir with clean fluid. See how clear that's
supposed to be when it's new. I'm going to go right to the tippy top. So, I'm going to turn the
key to accessory position so that I can turn the wheel. Don't turn the car on. Otherwise, your
power steering pump is going to engage and you're going to blast off. Ask me how I know.
Okay. So, with the car off, I now am going to turn the steering wheel all the way left,
and doing this is pumping that old fluid out into the bucket. All right. I usually go left, right,
and then by then I've got to go refill that reservoir again. This is one of the things
that I don't like about this process is if you're by yourself, it's just back and forth,
back and forth. It takes a lot of turning to completely clear the system of the old fluid.
But I'm just going to keep doing this until the fluid runs clear. So, as with the brakes,
you're trying not to introduce air into the reservoir, but it's not as big a deal as it
is with the brakes because air doesn't get stuck into power steering systems as easily.
All right. It's coming out nice and clear. Okay. So, I cycled it back and forth a little bit more
just to drain the level of reservoir so I don't make a huge mess. I'm going to take this plug off
this hose and reconnect. So, now I'm just going to top off the reservoir again and run the engine,
get all the bubbles out if there are any. At this point, if there was a bunch of air in the system,
it would make a screeching sound as the bubbles work their way out, but this is sounding just
fine. I'm going to go back and forth a couple times, just fully cycle, and then recheck that
fluid level. All right. Now that we're off the jacks, a little bit more level. I can check my
power steering fluid level. Eh, a tiny bit high. I'm going to pull a tiny bit out.
It looks better than the first time we did that. Perfect. All right. Here's our old fluid,
yark, and new power steering fluid, which is going to make the steering system way happier.
We've got one fluid left to change. Now, remember, there are some additional fluids that you may have
to change on your vehicle depending on the model. I'm going to get into those briefly at the end.
Now, this last fluid is possibly my favorite to do, just because of how straightforward it is.
That is the all-important windshield washer fluid. So, windshield wiper fluid isn't something that
you've got to flush, so it's not something you're going to take to a mechanic to get done,
but it is something you want to keep full, because if you let it go completely empty,
it's really hard on that little pump, and that's often when those pumps fail,
which then, it's a bigger repair and obviously more costly. Now, fun fact, if you do run your
reservoir totally empty, it's usually exactly one gallon, so you can just dump a whole gallon in
and don't have partial gallons sitting around your garage. But like I said, it's better not to let it run dry.
All right, we're all filled up, and no, I did not use Honda's included dipstick,
which is a very cute addition. So, hopefully you can see that changing any one of these fluids
is absolutely something that you can do yourself. Now, it took us all day to film this, but if you
want to do all six yourself, I bet you could do it in an afternoon. Now, let's talk about some costs.
Now, if you were to take your car to a shop and get all six of those fluids changed, you'd be
looking at a bill of $800 to $1,200. Adding up all the costs of the fluids and doing the job yourself,
$150? So, you're saving a ton of money by doing it yourself. So, an afternoon of work and doing
this job yourself, you could save yourself $1,000. Sounds pretty good to me. All right, now there are
four other fluids that you may have to change in your car, specifically if you have a truck
or rear-wheel drive car that has a differential, has a transfer case. Those are gear oils that
will have to be changed occasionally. Additionally, if you have a diesel car, a lot of modern diesels
require DEF. So, it's that diesel exhaust fluid that you have to keep topping off. That's for
emissions. Then, if you have a manual transmission car, a lot of them have a hydraulic clutch. So,
it's very similar to the process of doing brakes, but it's for your clutch. Lastly, if you have a
lead-acid style battery that has serviceable caps on the top, you can pop those off and top them off
with distilled water or electrolytes and extend the life of your battery. We actually have an
awesome video about batteries that we talk about this process, and you can check that in the link
above. Now, on the topic of fluids, we made a video on the best oil that you can put in your car.
You're not going to want to miss it. Check it out right here.
